At Google I/O last month, Google announced the biggest change to Search in 25 years.
The "10 blue links" are officially being demoted. AI answers, interactive results and background agents are now the main features, with traditional links pushed below the AI layer (TechCrunch).
AI Overviews already reach 2.5 billion people a month.
- 68% of Google searches now end without a single click, the fastest acceleration in a decade
- AI Overviews appear on roughly 48% of queries and cut click-through by up to 60% when present
- The upside is brands cited inside AI answers gain around 35% more clicks than the top organic result sitting below them
Video can get you cited by AI.
- YouTube just overtook Reddit as the most cited source in AI chatbot answers (16% vs 10%, Jan 2026), with its citation share doubling in five months
- YouTube appears in around 30% of Google AI Overviews and is cited 200x more than any other video platform
- AI algorithms read video transcripts. The words spoken in your videos literally become search copy
Video is where your audience already is
- 1.6 billion people regularly watch short-form video
- YouTube Shorts alone does 70+ billion views per day. TikTok users average 55 minutes daily
- Short-form video is the #1 ROI content format per HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report
What this means for your brand.
The old model of ranking a webpage and collecting clicks is shrinking. The new model is being the source AI answers cite. Webpages still matter, but they now need to support a wider content system.
Prioritise storytelling through video. It creates rich on-page content, builds reach and brand recall, and gives AI systems the kind of transcript-led source material they can understand, summarise and cite.
Learn more about best practice shortform video here.
