Google's AI answers quote YouTube and GOV.UK far more than Amazon

Seven in ten everyday searches opened with an AI answer

The first thing to check is whether AI answers are a sideshow. On this panel they were the main event: Google showed an AI Overview on seven in ten of the 360 searches.

That figure comes with two limits. The panel is a fixed list chosen to cover common kinds of search, so it is not a random sample of everything people in the UK type into Google. Each search was also checked only once, and Google shifts its results by person, place and moment, so this is a snapshot of one check rather than what every user sees.

Not every overview named its sources. The ones that did are the basis for everything that follows.

Video, social and official sites fill the source boxes

Sort the cited sources into groups and the shop-first idea starts to wobble. YouTube and TikTok together appeared in close to six in ten of the overviews that listed sources, more than any other group counted. GOV.UK and the NHS came second of the five groups, cited in more than one overview in four.

Reddit and other forums followed. Wikipedia and Amazon finished level at the foot of the five groups, each cited in exactly seven overviews. On this panel, then, the source row under an AI answer was far more likely to carry a video thumbnail than a shopping basket.

The groups overlap, because a single overview can cite several kinds of site. The shares below therefore add up to more than 100%.

YouTube was the single site Google's AI quoted most

Look site by site and the picture sharpens. Out of 919 different sites cited across the panel, youtube.com came first, appearing in more than half of the overviews with listed sources. Facebook ranked second of the 919 and google.com third, which means Google's AI was often pointing readers back to Google's own pages.

None of the three most-cited sites is a shop. For a retailer hoping to be the voice behind a buying answer, the competition at the top of the citation list is a video host, a social network and the search engine itself.

Most quoted sites sat outside Google's own top ten

The obvious answer from a marketing team is that none of this changes the job. Rank well in the ordinary results, the thinking goes, and the AI box will quote you anyway.

The panel points the other way. More than four in five of the sites the overviews cited did not appear in the first ten ordinary results for the same search. About one overview in four cited no top-ten site at all. Here "top ten" means the first ten unpaid results on that same check, leaving out Google's own boxes and panels.

So a page can sit proudly on page one of Google and still be missing from the paragraph above it. The reverse holds too: a forum thread or a video buried well down the ordinary results can end up as the source the AI leans on.

Shops share Google's AI answer with video, forums and the NHS

Set against the starting assumption, the November check points one way. The single retailer the check counted on its own sat level with an encyclopaedia at the bottom of the source groups.

None of this measures sales or clicks. It shows who gets quoted, which is a question of visibility rather than of who wins the purchase.

What this means for UK businesses

• Check your own searches by hand. The questions your customers ask before the sales may well be answered by an AI Overview first. Look at which sites it quotes before assuming it is you.
• Treat video as part of your shop. YouTube led the citations on this panel. Short product demos, size guides and set-up videos give the AI something of yours to quote.
• Ranking well is no guarantee of being quoted. Most cited sites sat outside the ordinary top results, so being quoted and ranking well are separate goals worth tracking separately.
• Agree with the official sources. Where a question touches rules, refunds or safety, expect the AI to lean on GOV.UK or the NHS. Make sure your pages say the same thing and link to them.
• Know what forums say about you. Reddit and similar sites feed some answers. Reading those threads tells you what the AI may repeat about your products.

The small icons under an AI answer have become a kind of shop window. On this check, the window mostly showed someone else's video.

How we built it

This analysis checked a fixed panel of 360 everyday UK Google searches across twelve topics (shopping, home, health, money, travel, food, tech, motoring, jobs, legal, fashion and property), once per search in November 2026, on mobile results from google.co.uk. What appeared on each results page is a direct count for that check, but each check is a snapshot: Google varies results by person, place and moment, so a single check is not every user's view. The panel was chosen to cover common kinds of search and is not a random sample of all UK searches; no statistical weighting or significance testing was applied.

Of the 360 searches, 253 showed an AI Overview, and 244 of those listed their sources. All source shares are out of those 244. An overview counts towards a site or group if it cited that site at least once, so groups overlap and shares do not sum to 100%. Across the 244 overviews there were 1,709 citations to 919 different sites; 1,405 of those citations were to sites outside the first ten organic results for the same search. "Top ten" means the first ten organic (unpaid, non-feature) results on the same check.

The panel covers everyday searches generally. It was not limited to Boxing Day or January sale searches, and it did not tag sources as retailers, marketplaces or deal publishers. Amazon is the only retailer counted as its own group, so the wider share of retailers among cited sources was not measured. Results describe the run-up to the sales only.

Reference table: November 2026 panel, mobile, google.co.uk