How I Got My Videos Cited in Google AI Overviews

Search changed, and text stopped getting credit for the ideas it carries. I ran two tests to see whether video answers could win that credit back, and both of them landed in Google's AI Overviews.

Key Takeaways

• My video answering one specific buyer question showed up in the top slot of Google's AI Overviews the next day.
• That winning video was 2 minutes and 19 seconds long. Length and view count did not decide it.
• About 40 days later, the same search returned four of my videos: the top spot, one on the side, and two below.
• Google owns YouTube and earns billions in ad revenue from it, so it has a financial reason to surface video citations.
• My name, my video title, and my thumbnail all showed up intact. The AI did not summarize me away.
• Recency matters. You cannot post an answer once and claim that ground forever.

This fits inside a bigger picture. If you want the foundation first, here's the full picture.

Why is your text content disappearing from search?

SEO is not going away, but GEO now sits on top of it, and that has created a new problem. Your text content gets scraped and summarized, then the language model presents your ideas without citing you as the one who had them.

That is the part that stings. You did the thinking, and someone else's answer box gets the visibility you spent years earning. A lot of companies are feeling this right now as a traffic drop, but it is really a change in buyer behavior as much as a technical one.

"They're sort of eating your lunch and taking away from the visibility that you had been earning in the past." — Dane Frederiksen

Why is YouTube the fastest growing source in AI search?

I got onto this from an article by AirOps asking whether your brand is missing out on the fastest growing source in AI search. They were not joking. By the numbers in that piece, YouTube is growing as an AI search source at roughly 150%, while text is losing ground.

The mechanics make sense once you follow the money. Google owns YouTube and makes billions in ad revenue when people watch those videos, so inside the Google ecosystem there is a strong financial reason to surface and cite YouTube results.

It also happens to be good for the person asking. People like having things explained, and video lets you show and tell. When your video gets cited, you also get that big thumbnail in the results, which is far more real estate than a blue link.

One caveat worth saying out loud: none of this is guaranteed. These systems are probabilistic, not deterministic. You are improving your odds, not buying a slot.

Test one: can one video answer win the top slot?

My theory was simple. If I made the best answer to a real buyer question, and I made it in video format, I could get cited in AI search.

So I picked a question I knew my buyers actually ask, in their exact words: does video help B2B companies show up in AI searches? I know their language from sales conversations and recorded transcripts, and that part matters more than people expect. Your buyers often describe the problem differently than you do, so you have to answer in their words, not yours.

I made a video that answered that question as directly and specifically as I could. It showed up the next day in the top slot of Google's AI Overviews.

The detail I keep pointing at is the runtime. That video was 2 minutes and 19 seconds long. This was not about length, and it was not about view count. It was about being the best answer to that specific question.

Test two: what happened 40 days later?

I ran the same search again at least 30 days later, closer to 40 or 50. By then I had been publishing and interviewing people about video and GEO for a while.

This time, four of my videos came back on the same question. One in the top spot, a different video than the first test. One over on the side, only 49 seconds long. Two more below that, at varying lengths and recencies.

One of those was a 15 minute interview I did back in April with Cassie on why video content is mission critical for B2B marketers. That one is worth noting for a different reason: interviewing an expert adds real value for viewers, teaches me something, and produces original thinking neither of us had alone.

Reddit held the very top text result in that search. But compare the size of a Reddit link to the size of my video thumbnail. You can decide which one you would click. Taken together, four video results is a lot of real estate on one screen.

What actually makes a video get cited?

Three things showed up clearly across both tests.

• Precision beats meandering. A podcast that wanders around a topic without answering a question is less likely to be cited. Get clinical and surgical about answering an exact buyer question in the buyer's language.
• You show up whole. My result was not summarized. It showed my name, my video title, and my thumbnail. That is very different from having your text paraphrased with no credit.
• Recency counts. These systems check for freshness because things change. Advice that is right today may be wrong in six months, six weeks, or six days. You cannot claim that land permanently with one post.

How do you find the gaps in your own YouTube page?

Because YouTube has become this important for GEO, I built an audit that looks at your YouTube page specifically through that lens. Are you showing up when buyers ask questions? Are you answering those questions with video?

I think about it like content bingo. Find the holes, then decide together which one to plug first. If people are falling out of the sales funnel at one spot, that is where you start.

The audit covers seven areas:

• Strategy: is the channel narrow enough to make sense, or is it videos of your kids next to a Claude Code video next to something about accounting?
• Channel health: are you posting regularly, and is it working?
• Packaging: thumbnails, banner, the things that decide whether anyone clicks.
• Substance: are you making what is useful for your buyers, or what is convenient for you to produce?
• AI visibility: is any of it actually showing up?
• Conversion: do your videos move buyers from one step to the next?
• Ownership: who is actually driving the video initiative so success can be measured?

You get a simple document with the areas above, three recommendations, and the one with the biggest impact called out. They are real steps you can take yourself, or I can help.

The only catch is that you have to ask for it.

Still getting your head around this? Start with the foundation. It's the foundation the rest of this sits on.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can YouTube videos get cited in Google AI Overviews?

Yes. I made a video answering one specific buyer question and it appeared in the top slot of Google's AI Overviews the next day. About 40 days later, four of my videos appeared on the same search. It is not guaranteed, since these systems are probabilistic, but it works.

How long does a video need to be to get cited in AI search?

Length is not the deciding factor. The video that won my first test was 2 minutes and 19 seconds. In the second test, one of the cited videos was only 49 seconds, and another was a 15 minute interview. What mattered was how directly the video answered the question.

Why does Google surface YouTube videos in AI search results?

Google owns YouTube and makes billions in ad revenue when people watch those videos, so it has a strong financial interest in surfacing them. Cited videos also get a large thumbnail in the results, which takes up far more space than a text link.

How do you pick which question to answer on video?

Use your buyers' exact words, not your own. I pull the phrasing from sales conversations and recorded transcripts. Buyers often describe the problem differently than you do, so answering in your language instead of theirs is how you miss the citation.

Does a video keep its AI citation once it ranks?

No. Recency is part of how these systems decide what to cite, because information changes fast. Advice that is accurate now may not be in six months, six weeks, or six days, so you cannot post one answer and assume you own that ground forever.

Full Transcript

Hey, everybody. Today I want to talk about how I got my videos to show up in the top slot of Google's AI overviews. And the reason that that's a good thing is because, as you know, search has changed, and we've got GEO now, which is in addition to SEO, which ain't going away. But it's presented some new problems.

And so that problem is the text content frequently will get summarized, gets scraped, and then the LLMs will present this information without actually citing you as the one who has these great ideas. They're sort of eating your lunch and taking away from the visibility that you had been earning in the past. So let's take a look about what's happening there and what we can do about it. So great article here from AirOps.

I'll show you this URL again in case you want to read it, take a screenshot. But yeah, a good article talking about YouTube and how that can help with AI search to solve this exact problem of less invisibility, less incitation, and less than traffic. So here's the article. And it's, is your brand missing out on the fastest growing source in AI search?

And they're really not joking. It's been a big and quick shift. A lot of you are probably feeling this already. Maybe your traffic is down.

Maybe the AI visibility thing is a priority for you as a company because you're realizing that this has been a change in buyer behavior as well as sort of a technical change. So here's that article again from AirOps. If you want to check it out, take a screenshot. I'll give you a few more seconds.

Three, two, one, moving on. So the data in that article, basically the big thing for me was that YouTube is a way to get cited. And what we mean by that is when buyers ask a question in AI search, the YouTube videos can get cited. It's not guaranteed, of course, because these are deterministic.

I'm sorry, not deterministic, probabilistic. So, but I've tested this. And within the Google ecosystem, this is really especially true because Google owns YouTube and they make billions of dollars in ad revenue when you watch their videos. So they have a very strong financial interest to surface these YouTube videos and cite them.

It's also good for people who are trying to get their questions answers. I like video. It's helpful. Have people explain things.

They get to show and tell. And then plus, when they show up in search citation, you get to see in the search results that big video thumbnail, which is like a lot of real estate. So the rate of growth is like 150% for YouTube. And text is now losing ground.

So I think you want to be on the right side of this. So really, the point is YouTube is the fastest growing source in AI search. And that's something I really don't think you can afford to ignore YouTube. You've probably used it in the past, but the way that you're going to use YouTube now is going to be a little bit different.

It's really all about answering specific buyer questions. So right now, the citations are moving over to video very fast. And so I think it's like a closing window or a land grab or something like that. I've seen this work for myself, and we'll get into that in a minute.

But so I do know that this can work. So I had a theory that I wanted to test based on the points in this article and what's happening in GEO. And the theory was I thought if I made the best answers in video format, that I could then get cited in AI search, AI overviews or AI search. So I said about making a test.

And the test was let's answer specific buyer questions, my buyers, their questions, in their exact words. And I know this from sales conversations and from transcripts that get recorded. I have their exact language. And that's very important because so often, your buyers may be using different language than you are.

So you got to know what are they actually searching for. And if you have that or you have a really good idea or good enough idea, you can start to test that. So here's what I came up with. I wanted to answer this question.

Does video help B2B companies show up in AI searches? And so I made a video that answered that is directly and specifically as possible. And lo and behold, it showed up the next day. And so you can get quick results, at least within the Google ecosystem.

So this video I made very specifically answered that question. I think the idea is that this is the best answer it could find to that specific question. So therefore, it's the one that is serving up is sort of like the prime spot right there. So just a closer look.

Yeah, that's me right there. You can see my name down there. And look, the video, it's only two minutes and 19 seconds long. So it says not about length.

This is not about how many views you get. This is about how good you are at answering their specific question. That's the real game. So that was test one.

And that showed up the next day in the top spot in Google's AI overviews. So a little bit later, I ran another test. Test number two, about 30 days after it might have been more like 40, 50, something like that. But at least 30 days.

And by this point, I've been talking about GEO and video or AEO answer engine optimization, basically a whole idea of AI search and using video to show up there. I've been talking about this and interviewing people. So I think as far as I can tell, I'm the world's leading expert at the intersection of video and GEO or AEO. I don't know anyone that's talking about that specific sliver of overlap more than me.

So I'm probably the best answer for this. I talk about it on my website. I talk about it on my blog. And I talk about it in YouTube content and on LinkedIn.

So test two. Ask the same question, does video help B2B companies show up in AI searches? And guess what? We got four of my videos now showing up.

I got one in the top spot. I think it's a different video than the first one I showed you. And then we've got over here on the side, another one of my videos. And then down there below, we've got two more.

So these are varying lengths and recencies. This one is an interview with someone else who's actually a GEO expert. So kind of leaning on their expertise to add to the conversation, to add value to my viewers, and also to help educate me so I can be more helpful and more of an expert on this topic. So it's sort of like two birds, one stone.

I get the visibility and kind of piggyback on their expertise a little bit. And then we together, we put our ideas together and get some original thought leadership. New ideas coming out of our shared experiences. So just digging in a little bit closer, you can see a little fuzzy there, but the link is YouTube for my video.

Got Reddit up there at the top spot, but look at that little link. Says Reddit and then compare that to the real estate of my thumbnail. Much more visual impression. You can decide for yourself which one's more valuable, but it's just worth noting that taken together, it's a lot more real estate.

Over there on the side, you can also see I've got another one also on YouTube. I can see my name right there. That one's only 49 seconds long. So again, the video answers don't have to be about length.

It's about how good you answer the question. Another look down below. We've got the interview I did with Cassie. That one's back in April.

So why video content is mission critical for B. D. B. marketers?

The longer stuff, there's a 15 minute conversation that also can show up clearly. And let's get into the takeaways here. What does this mean for you? Number one, obviously video can show up as far as top spot for AI citations.

And then you'll notice on the Google AI overviews, it was not summarized. It showed exactly my name. It showed the name of my video and it got the thumbnail. So you get to really show up.

Clearly the best answers are the ones that tend to show up. I think if you're having conversations like in a podcast format and you're kind of meandering around a topic without specifically answering questions, that's probably going to tend to be less likely to be cited. But when you get really clinical and surgical and precise about answering exact bio questions in their language with the exact answer that resonates in their language, you're going to be more likely to win. And then also I think it's pretty obvious that recency is important.

You can't just post these answers and just leave them out there and say that you've claimed that land forever. These things are going to be checking for recency because things change. Advice you give now may not be relevant in six months or six weeks or six days. You know how things are going right now.

So what should we do about this? Because of all these changes in the primacy of YouTube for GEO, I've developed an audit where we're looking at your YouTube page specifically through the lens of GEO. Are you showing up when buyers are asking questions? Are you answering their questions with video?

So we're going to look at that. We're going to find what holes are there. And then we're going to plug them. We'll prioritize together what needs to happen first.

I like to think about it like content bingo. If there's a big gap, we probably want to cover that. If you're losing people in the sales funnel, that's probably the first place to plug that hole. So I can help you with this.

We'll review your YouTube page. And what I'll do is I'll give you the top three recommendations for what we or you can do. And then we'll identify which one's going to have the number one impact. So how does that work?

Well, we're going to look at your buyer questions. What are your buyers asking? Now if you've got transcripts or you've been in business for a while, you probably know this stuff intuitively by now. But it's important that we get good answers about exactly the words they're using.

And we can use tools to find out. I don't know what tools you would have, but there's a lot of stuff out there to help get a better idea of that. So the areas that we cover, we're going to look at the strategy of your YouTube page. Is it sort of narrow enough that it makes sense?

Or are you posting videos of your kids and then a Claude Code video and then something about accounting? Or are you more focused? We'll look at your channel health. Are you posting regularly?

Is it working? Is it looking good? Are people watching? We'll look at the packaging, like the thumbnails, things like that, the banner on the page, the substance of your content.

Are you producing the stuff that's actually useful for your buyers, answering their questions? Or is it just more stuff that's convenient for you to produce or a way that you prefer to make video that's doable for you, but not necessarily valuable for them? We'll look at that through the AI visibility lens. Is it showing up?

We'll look at conversion. Are your videos converting? Are they leading your buyers from one step to the next step and so on? And are you kind of putting that into your video content itself?

And then who owns this channel? Who's got ownership of your video initiative? A lot of times that's sort of an open question, so we need to make sure that someone's driving that so we can measure success. So what you're going to get, you're going to get a simple document that has those things we talked about, the three recommendations and the number one most impact, and these are going to be actual steps that you can either take yourself or I can help you with.

So what's the catch? You have to ask for it. I don't know if you want to do this or not, so just reach out if you want to do it and I'll do it for you and with you. So there's my email address.

Take a screenshot if you want and just reach out and we'll see where you stand and what we can do about it. I hope that helps and good luck.

The rules here keep shifting. I send a short note whenever something actually changes worth acting on. Subscribe to the newsletter.