/ THE SHORT ANSWER
- 01The Google-to-AI overlap in local-service queries fell below 3% for auto repair and IT support in the paper’s sample.
- 02Automotive citation sets contained 350 distinct Claude domains, 347 Perplexity domains, and 212 ChatGPT domains, with low pairwise Jaccard overlap.
- 03Language shifts changed source domains more than prompt paraphrases in the tested query set.
- 04A useful dashboard must retain engine, locale, prompt, and capture date instead of compressing everything into one GEO score.
/ dotSuper point of view
Visibility is a distribution, not a rank. Measure the query set, engine, market, language, and date together.
Google and AI search can surface very different local domains
Even the highest overlap, home cleaning at 20.6%, leaves most domains unmatched between the two surfaces.
LOCAL DISCOVERY
Overlap falls from one in five to almost zero.
Share of domains appearing in both Google results and AI citations for the sampled local-service queries.The paper reports category-level overlap for its sampled prompts. It does not establish the expected overlap for every city or service market.
View the chart data
| Service category | Overlap |
|---|---|
| Home cleaning | 20.6% |
| Roofing | 17.1% |
| Tax preparation | 15.4% |
| Dentists | 11.9% |
| Auto repair | 2.5% |
| IT support | 0.1% |
Each engine builds a different citation neighborhood
Pairwise Jaccard overlap ranged from 0.096 to 0.251.
Consumer electronics showed a similar pattern, with pairwise overlap from 0.088 to 0.200.
The practical consequence is simple.
A page appearing in one engine does not establish broad AI visibility, and an engine-level win can disappear when the prompt, locale, or answer mode changes.
AUTOMOTIVE DOMAIN SETS
Similar questions, different source universes.
Distinct domains cited in the paper’s automotive experiment.A high unique share means many domains appeared only in that engine’s citation set.
View the chart data
| Engine | Distinct domains | Unique share |
|---|---|---|
| Claude | 350 | 50.3% |
| Perplexity | 347 | 56.5% |
| ChatGPT | 212 | 60.8% |
Language matters more than small wording changes
GPT showed near-zero cross-language overlap, while Claude reused more English-language authority sources.
Gemini and Perplexity sat between those patterns.
Paraphrases were more stable.
AI engine domain overlap often fell between 0.3 and 0.7, while Google was usually lower except for closely related imperative and keyword variants.
This supports a market-language strategy, not a program of publishing one page for every wording variation.
| Dimension | Minimum capture | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Engine | ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI features | Source systems behave differently |
| Intent | Decision, comparison, implementation, troubleshooting | Retrieval changes with the job behind the query |
| Locale | Country and language kept separate | Cross-language overlap can be very low |
| Prompt form | Natural question plus two justified variants | Tests robustness without manufacturing thin pages |
| Time | Monthly capture with model and date | Results are temporally unstable |
What this page cannot conclude
- 01Both papers are preprints. Their findings should be treated as evidence to test, not as a settled ranking formula.
- 02The GEO engine study collected data in August 2025. Models, retrieval systems, interfaces, and citation behavior can change quickly.
- 03Observed citation patterns do not prove that changing one page element will cause an engine to cite that page.
- 04Google states that there is no special schema, file, or content format required for its generative AI features. Core SEO and useful, original content remain the foundation.
Sources
- 01Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI SearcharXiv · accessed Sep 1, 2026
- 02Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google SearchGoogle Search Central · accessed Sep 1, 2026
Our editorial standard · Found an error? Send a correction with its source.
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dotSuper Research Desk. (September 1, 2026). AI search engine overlap and query volatility. dotSuper. https://dotsuper.net/feeds/search-discovery/ai-search-engine-overlap-and-query-volatility