The episode takes a look at results from the AI Overview themselves, and the surprisingly useful (but often overlooked) forums tab.
For those of you who might be new here, AEO stands for answer engine optimization–basically the AI version of SEO with a few key differences.
Google’s AI overview and other AI-powered discovery surfaces are constantly evolving. One thing that’s clear is the cited sources Google pulls for its AI Overviews is shifting on a regular basis.
About 9 months ago, Google’s AI Overview almost exclusively drew from 3rd party sources when customers made decision-stage searches about products or services.
Example:
Now, we’re seeing web pages, landing pages, and blogs from brands get cited as sources to answer the same questions:
This is a notable shift. It suggests Google’s AI is not just looking for content from neutral third parties, directories, or sites like LinkedIn. It’s increasingly comfortable referencing branded content when it meets certain trust or authority thresholds. It also reinforces that content from your company’s own website is still very much in play if you’ve structured your content in a way that matches search intent and satisfies Google’s standards for source quality.
When a buyer makes a search related to your services on Google (or any LLM for that matter), you should have 2 goals.
Get mentioned by AI Overview = more visibility for your brand
Get cited by AI Overview = more potential for customers to click to your site, which is increasingly valuable as we’re seeing more zero-click searches than ever.
While AI may be citing more brand-owned pages, I wouldn’t abandon efforts to carve out a presence on trusted third-party sources in your industry. As I mentioned–these AEO trends are shifting rapidly, and you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket.
This is one of the tabs located just below the Google search bar alongside "News," "Images," "Videos," etc. When clicked, it restricts search results to community-based platforms like Reddit, Quora. Sometimes this might include industry-specific forums. In a case where we ran searches related to finding law firms, the state bar website frequently appeared on the forums tab.
Google launched this filter to help users access real human conversation, especially in cases where AI summaries or brand content may not offer the nuance or context people are looking for.
For one, not everyone trusts the AI Overview. In many industries, buyers are still turning to community conversations, Reddit threads, LinkedIn groups, or niche directories when looking for information on a brand or service.
For HubSpot agencies like us, that might be the HubSpot Partner Directory or a platform like G2. For a medtech company, it could be peer-reviewed association sites. For law firms, their state bar associate. In all of these cases, Google will often surface what it believes to be the most trusted “peer-reviewed” source, even if that means skipping your homepage entirely.
If you’re seeing a pattern where third-party sources like directories, databases, review websites, or forums are consistently cited in your industry’s search results, it’s time to investigate.
Click on the “Forums” filter under the Google search bar. You’ll then see which threads, platforms, and communities Google is elevating. This can give you a better understanding of:
This is useful for AEO benchmarking, as well as fine-tuning your content positioning.