Sean Walsh
Sean is a Director at Intelligency heading up our digital marketing and client services operations. Sean has 15+ years experiencing working both in-house and agency with brands including Lloyds, Alstom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Viaplay, DFDS Seaways and Mercedes-Benz.
If you’re trying to get your content featured in Google’s AI Overviews, it turns out your homepage probably won’t help much. A new report from BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO platform, reveals that the majority of citations in AI Overviews are coming from deeper pages on websites—not the homepage.
Key findings from the report
BrightEdge analysed millions of URLs cited by Google’s AI Overviews and found:
- 82.5% of citations come from deep content pages (these are pages that take two or more clicks to reach from the homepage)
- Just 0.5% of citations link directly to homepages
- 86% of citations appeared for only one keyword
What this means for marketers
Traditionally, the homepage and main category pages have been seen as the most important parts of a website. But this research suggests that with AI Overviews, any page can be your first impression.
That means it’s essential to make sure all your content is properly crawled and indexed by Google. You’ll also need to keep it updated so it stays relevant. Every page now has the potential to boost your brand visibility, not just the big, obvious ones.
This means that content such as below are likely to be good places to try rank for AI overviews:
- Detailed blog posts that are helpful and informative to the user
- How to guides that respond directly to commonly asked questions
- Research papers that easily readable and accessible (e.g. not behind payment gateways_
Why deeper pages matter more now
BrightEdge noted that the keywords triggering these citations tend to have high search volumes—around 15,000 monthly searches on average. Around 1 in 5 keywords had over 100,000 monthly searches. So, a well-optimised deep page could actually bring in more visibility through AI Overviews than it might through normal search rankings.
If you want your brand to appear in Google’s AI Overviews, it’s time to look beyond your homepage. Make sure your content—especially on deeper pages—is well-written, regularly updated, and easy for search engines to find. Every page is now a chance to be seen.
