A research team from the SEO platform SE Ranking analyzed 58,007 health-related queries collected from searches in Germany. The results showed that YouTube was the most frequently cited source among those used by AI Overviews.
Study Finds YouTube Most Frequently Cited in Google AI Overviews Health Answers
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YouTube accounted for 4.43% of total citations, with 20,621 occurrences. This significantly exceeds citations from professional institutions such as hospital networks, government health portals, and medical associations.
The research team pointed out that "YouTube is not a medical publisher," noting that it is a general video platform where content can be posted not only by doctors but also by influencers and unqualified individuals.
Google explained that AI Overviews are designed to display high-quality content from reliable sources. However, it stated that because this study was limited to German-language queries, the findings cannot be generalized to other regions.
Source: Google AI Overviews cite YouTube more than any medical site for health queries（HN 415pt・208コメント）（HN Search (backfill)、2026-01-26）