# What Google AI Overviews Cite for Perth Searches: 2026 Study > 2,845 citations from 393 Google AI Overviews across 200 commercial Perth searches, matched to the organic results on the same page. What gets cited, and how often it already ranks. Source: https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/google-ai-overviews-perth/ --- Research # What Google AI Overviews Cite for Perth Searches: 2026 Study We took every Google AI Overview from the Perth AI Search Study 2026, recorded all 2,845 sources it cited, and compared each one to the organic results Google returned on the same page for the same search. Most cited pages were already ranking. Nearly half of everything handed to a business website was the homepage. Status Published Author Dorian Menard, founder of Search Scope Published 21 September 2026 Methodology [v2.5](https://aiseoperth.net.au/methodology/) Across 200 commercial Perth searches run three times over three days, Google returned an AI Overview on 393 of 600 occasions and cited 2,845 sources. Once Google's own business panels are set aside, 57.6% of those citations were the exact URL of a page already ranking in Google's organic results on the same page for the same search, and a further 7.5% were a different page on a domain that ranked. Of everything cited on a business's own website, 47.9% was the homepage. ## Key findings 1. 01 57.6% of AI Overview citations to ordinary web pages were the exact URL of a result already ranking in Google's organic top 10 on the same page for the same search. OBSERVED 2. 02 Where an AI Overview cited a domain that also ranked, it cited the exact ranking URL 88.4% of the time rather than a different page on that site. OBSERVED 3. 03 47.9% of citations to a business's own website were the homepage, and 32.9% of cited business domains were only ever cited at the homepage. OBSERVED 4. 04 Reddit was cited on 73 of the 200 searches, across 19 of the 20 industries, more than twice the reach of any other non-Google domain. OBSERVED 5. 05 15.5% of citations pointed at Google's own properties rather than any website, almost entirely Google Business Profile panels, concentrated on 32 of the 200 searches. OBSERVED 6. 06 Across three days, a typical pair of AI Overviews for the same search shared under half its cited URLs, and only 23.5% of cited URLs survived all three rounds. OBSERVED ## Scope and sample Scope and sample Platforms Google AI Overviews Query classes recommendation, commercial, local, comparison, trust-validation Industries plumbers, electricians, dentists, mortgage-brokers, conveyancers, family-lawyers, accountants, financial-advisers, physiotherapists, chiropractors, veterinarians, mechanics, solar-installers, air-conditioning, builders, pest-control, removalists, buyers-agents, reticulation, seo-agencies Prompts in set 200 Runs per prompt 3 Observation records 600 Observation dates 2026-09-08 to 2026-09-10 Methodology v2.5 Collected under [observation methodology v2.5](https://aiseoperth.net.au/methodology/). ## Results Cited domains, by number of observations citing them Domain Observations reddit.com 135 facebook.com 45 google.com 31 westernpower.com.au 19 perthsolarwarehouse.com.au 18 studiohawk.com.au 18 vervebuyersagency.com 17 pwd.com.au 17 solarquotes.com.au 17 propertywizards.com.au 16 summithomes.com.au 15 hiltonplumbing.com.au 15 reticulationperth.com 15 seotakeoff.com 15 perthsolarforce.com.au 15 youandmepps.com.au 14 osullivandavies.com.au 14 regenpower.com 14 mckinleyplowman.com.au 13 ambienceair.com 13 canstar.com.au 13 vickiphilipoff.com.au 13 perthreticrepair.com.au 13 perthbuyersagents.com.au 12 momentumwealth.com.au 12 Brands recommended, by number of observations Brand Observations McKinley Plowman Property Accountants 9 StudioHawk 9 Property Wizards Buyer's Agents 8 Sprinkler Fixers 8 Perth Solar Warehouse 7 SolarQuotes 7 Hilton Electrical 6 Find a Mover 6 Perth SEO Studio 6 Home Group 5 Summit Homes Group 5 HotDoc 5 Legal Aid WA 5 Oak Advisory 5 Launch Finance – self-employed home loans 5 Allpest - WA 5 Bonfire 5 Positive Energy Solutions 5 Ford & Doonan Air Conditioning West Perth 4 KDD Conveyancing 4 Highly Recommended Perth Brokers 4 Mortgage Choice in Perth 4 Hilton Plumbing 4 Fox Removals 4 Regen Power 4 Observation records for What Google AI Overviews Cite for Perth Searches: 2026 Study. ID Date Platform Class Prompt Recommended Cited domains Run accountant-a1-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation best accountant Perth none named no citations 1 accountant-a1-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation best accountant Perth none named no citations 2 accountant-a1-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation best accountant Perth none named no citations 3 accountant-a2-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation top accountant Perth DPS Accounting Perth, Pine Tax Accounting Perth, RBizz Corporate Accountants bestaccountantsaustralia.com.au, rbizz.com.au 1 accountant-a2-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation top accountant Perth none named no citations 2 accountant-a2-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation top accountant Perth none named no citations 3 accountant-a3-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommended accountant Perth none named no citations 1 accountant-a3-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommended accountant Perth none named no citations 2 accountant-a3-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommended accountant Perth none named no citations 3 accountant-a4-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation who is the best accountant in Perth none named no citations 1 accountant-a4-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation who is the best accountant in Perth Munro's, McKinley Plowman Property Accountants, Carbon Group, BDO Australia reddit.com, mckinleyplowman.com.au, carbongroup.com.au, bestaccountantsaustralia.com.au, munros.com.au, bdo.com.au 2 accountant-a4-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation who is the best accountant in Perth Best Accountants Australia nexustas.com.au, accountantinperth.com.au, mckinleyplowman.com.au, bestaccountantsaustralia.com.au, m.yelp.com, munros.com.au, pkf.com.au 3 accountant-a5-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommend a good accountant in Perth McKinley Plowman Property Accountants, DPS Accounting Perth, Perth Mobile Tax and Business Services, Popular Local Accounting Options airtasker.com, dpsaccounting.com.au, facebook.com, mckinleyplowman.com.au, munros.com.au, perthmobiletax.com.au 1 accountant-a5-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommend a good accountant in Perth McKinley Plowman Property Accountants carbongroup.com.au, mckinleyplowman.com.au, munros.com.au 2 accountant-a5-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommend a good accountant in Perth McKinley Plowman Property Accountants facebook.com, carbongroup.com.au, munros.com.au, mckinleyplowman.com.au 3 accountant-b1-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews commercial best accountant in Perth for small business none named no citations 1 accountant-b1-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews commercial best accountant in Perth for small business none named mckinleyplowman.com.au, tfptax.com.au, munros.com.au, elevateaccounting.com.au 2 accountant-b1-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews commercial best accountant in Perth for small business McKinley Plowman Property Accountants accountantperthwa.com.au, mckinleyplowman.com.au, dpsaccounting.com.au, facebook.com 3 accountant-b2-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews local accountant Perth for late tax returns Accounting Services Perth WA, Local Perth Accounting Services, Nexus Tax & Accounting Solutions nexustas.com.au, accountingservicesperthwa.com.au, taxreturninperth.com.au, byfordaccountants.com.au, taxagentinperth.com.au, etax.com.au 1 accountant-b2-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews local accountant Perth for late tax returns Etax accountingservicesperthwa.com.au, taxreturninperth.com.au, taxagentinperth.com.au, etax.com.au 2 accountant-b2-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews local accountant Perth for late tax returns none named no citations 3 accountant-b3-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews commercial affordable tax accountant Perth individual returns none named no citations 1 accountant-b3-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews commercial affordable tax accountant Perth individual returns Perth Mobile Tax and Business Services, H&R Block hrblock.com.au, reddit.com, perthmobiletax.com.au, pinetax.com.au, tfptax.com.au 2 accountant-b3-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews commercial affordable tax accountant Perth individual returns Perth Mobile Tax and Business Services, H&R Block hrblock.com.au, reddit.com, perthmobiletax.com.au, stptax.com 3 accountant-b4-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews trust-validation most recommended accounting firm Perth Moore Australia (WA) dpsaccounting.com.au, munros.com.au, bestaccountantsaustralia.com.au, moore-australia.com.au, drykirkness.com.au 1 accountant-b4-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews trust-validation most recommended accounting firm Perth none named no citations 2 accountant-b4-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews trust-validation most recommended accounting firm Perth none named nexustas.com.au, munros.com.au, bestaccountantsaustralia.com.au, moore-australia.com.au, rsm.global, carbongroup.com.au, accru.com, elevateaccounting.com.au 3 accountant-b5-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews commercial best accountant Perth for property investors McKinley Plowman Property Accountants, Key Services to Look For mckinleyplowman.com.au, camdenprofessionals.com.au, griffithswa.com.au, munros.com.au, kshtax.com.au 1 accountant-b5-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews commercial best accountant Perth for property investors Munro's, Key Services to Look For mckinleyplowman.com.au, camdenprofessionals.com.au, griffithswa.com.au, munros.com.au, accountantperthwa.com.au, accountants-south-perth.com 2 accountant-b5-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews commercial best accountant Perth for property investors Camden Professionals - Part of The Investax Group, McKinley Plowman Property Accountants, Griffiths Advisory Price Guide, Munro's, Key Services to Look For mckinleyplowman.com.au, camdenprofessionals.com.au, griffithswa.com.au, munros.com.au, kshtax.com.au 3 air-conditioning-a1-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation best air conditioning installer Perth none named no citations 1 air-conditioning-a1-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation best air conditioning installer Perth none named no citations 2 air-conditioning-a1-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation best air conditioning installer Perth Ford & Doonan Air Conditioning West Perth, Jeff Mouritz, Airforce Airconditioning mouritz.com.au, airconditioningperth.com.au, ambienceair.com, fordanddoonan.com.au, airforceairconditioning.com.au 3 air-conditioning-a2-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation top air conditioning installer Perth none named no citations 1 air-conditioning-a2-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation top air conditioning installer Perth none named no citations 2 air-conditioning-a2-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation top air conditioning installer Perth none named airconditioningperth.com.au, ambienceair.com, perthcityair.com.au, airforceairconditioning.com.au, mouritz.com.au 3 air-conditioning-a3-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommended air conditioning installer Perth Ford & Doonan Air Conditioning West Perth reddit.com, fordanddoonan.com.au, ambienceair.com, perthcityair.com.au, stinsonair.com.au 1 air-conditioning-a3-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommended air conditioning installer Perth none named no citations 2 air-conditioning-a3-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommended air conditioning installer Perth none named no citations 3 air-conditioning-a4-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation who is the best air conditioning installer in Perth Perth City Air, Airforce Airconditioning & Solar, Stinson Air & Solar, Ambience Air productreview.com.au, hipages.com.au, ambienceair.com, airforceairconditioning.com.au, stinsonair.com.au 1 air-conditioning-a4-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation who is the best air conditioning installer in Perth none named mouritz.com.au, perthcityair.com.au, ambienceair.com, airforceairconditioning.com.au, airconperthwa.com.au 2 air-conditioning-a4-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation who is the best air conditioning installer in Perth none named airconditioningperth.com.au, mouritz.com.au, ambienceair.com, airforceairconditioning.com.au 3 air-conditioning-a5-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommend a good air conditioning installer in Perth none named airconditioningperth.com.au, aircondinstallswa.com.au, perthcityair.com.au, mouritz.com.au, google.com 1 air-conditioning-a5-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommend a good air conditioning installer in Perth DACS Electrical & Air Conditioning airconditioningperth.com.au, reddit.com, ambienceair.com, airconperthwa.com.au, stinsonair.com.au 2 air-conditioning-a5-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews recommendation recommend a good air conditioning installer in Perth TOTAL AIR CONDITIONING PERTH airconditioningperth.com.au, perthcityair.com.au, ambienceair.com 3 air-conditioning-b1-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews commercial best ducted air conditioning installer Perth Ford & Doonan Air Conditioning West Perth mouritz.com.au, stinsonair.com.au, airconditioningperth.com.au, fordanddoonan.com.au, ambienceair.com, homeinwa.com.au 1 air-conditioning-b1-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews commercial best ducted air conditioning installer Perth none named no citations 2 air-conditioning-b1-aio-sources-20260910-r03 2026-09-10 Google AI Overviews commercial best ducted air conditioning installer Perth Ford & Doonan Air Conditioning West Perth mouritz.com.au, reddit.com, airconditioningperth.com.au, fordanddoonan.com.au, productreview.com.au, customisedairconditioning.com.au, airforceairconditioning.com.au, homeinwa.com.au 3 air-conditioning-b2-aio-sources-20260908-r01 2026-09-08 Google AI Overviews commercial cheapest split system installation Perth The Good Guys Home Services rickhartoutlet.com.au, thegoodguys.com.au, thequoteyard.com.au, google.com 1 air-conditioning-b2-aio-sources-20260909-r02 2026-09-09 Google AI Overviews commercial cheapest split system installation Perth The Good Guys Home Services, Airconditioning Wholesale thegoodguys.com.au, thequoteyard.com.au, google.com 2 Observation records for What Google AI Overviews Cite for Perth Searches: 2026 Study. Showing 50 of 600 rows. ## What we did We took the 200 commercial Perth searches from the [Perth AI Search Study 2026](https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/perth-ai-search-study-2026/), covering 20 industries, each run three times on three separate days between 8 and 10 September 2026. That is 600 Google searches. Google returned an AI Overview on 393 of them and cited 2,845 sources in total. For every one of those citations we recorded the URL, the page it pointed at, and what kind of source it was. Then we compared each citation to Google’s ordinary organic results, captured in the same request that returned the AI Overview, so the search, the day, the location and the device match exactly rather than approximately. No new data was collected for this report. Everything here is a second reading of the parent study’s records, and it cost nothing to produce. This report is published by AI SEO Perth, a research publication operated by Search Scope. Search Scope is an SEO agency in Perth, and “SEO agency” is one of the 20 industries measured. Search Scope’s own pages were cited 6 times out of 2,845, on 2 of the 200 searches, which places it nowhere near the most-cited domains below. We are stating that at the top rather than the bottom. **This page exists as evidence, not because anyone searches for it.** Our own Search Console records 1,795 impressions for “ai seo perth” and 1,366 for “ai search optimisation perth” since 1 June 2026, at average positions of 23.9 and 49.5. There is no measurable demand for a question about AI Overview citation sources specifically, and we are not claiming any. ## Most of what it cites was already ranking Set aside the citations that point at Google itself, and 57.6% of what a Perth AI Overview cited was the exact URL of a page already ranking in Google’s own organic results on the same page for the same search. Where the cited page sat in the organic results on the same page Citations Share Exact URL, organic positions 1 to 3 600 25.0% Exact URL, organic positions 4 to 10 783 32.6% Same domain ranking, but a different page cited 181 7.5% Not observed in the organic results we captured 839 34.9% That is 2,403 citations to ordinary web pages. Counting all 2,845 citations, including the ones pointing at Google’s own properties, the exact-URL figure is 48.6%. The detail that surprised us is the second row from the bottom. When the AI Overview cited a domain that also ranked on page one, it cited the exact ranking URL 88.4% of the time, 1,383 times out of 1,564. Citing a different page on a ranking site is the rare case, not the common one. Read the same data from the other direction and the gradient is shallower than you would expect. Of every organic result Google captured at position 1, the AI Overview on that same page cited it 64.1% of the time. By position 8 that had fallen to 32.3%. Organic position Cited by the AI Overview on the same page 1 64.1% 2 51.7% 3 39.3% 4 44.7% 5 40.8% 6 34.3% 7 39.2% 8 32.3% 9 31.7% Almost all of the drop happens between positions 1 and 3. From position 4 down to position 9 the citation rate sits in a narrow band between 32% and 45%. Being eighth is worth roughly half of being first here, not a tenth. One caveat travels with every number above, and it is load bearing. We captured Google’s first page of organic results only, a median of eight results per search. A cited page that did not match is recorded as not observed in those results. It is not evidence that the page does not rank at all, so 57.6% is a floor and the true overlap is higher by an amount we cannot measure. **Nothing here is causal.** Ranking and being cited are two things the same system does on the same search at the same moment. We have no experiment that separates them, and neither does anyone else reading this data. ## But it does not always appear, and what it cites keeps changing Before any of that is useful, two instabilities have to be on the table. An AI Overview did not reliably appear. Of the 200 searches, 91 produced one in all three rounds, 71 produced one in some rounds and not others, and 38 never produced one at all. Roughly a third of these searches were unstable at the level of whether an AI answer appeared, before anyone looks at what was inside it. When one did appear, its bibliography moved. We compared the cited sources for every pair of rounds where an AI Overview appeared in both, 322 pairs across 140 searches. We never treat a missing AI Overview as an empty citation list, because the two are different phenomena. At URL level At domain level Average overlap between two rounds 0.43 0.48 Pairs sharing at least one source 94.1% 94.1% Pairs sharing nothing at all 5.9% 5.9% Those overlap figures are Jaccard scores, where 1 means the two rounds cited exactly the same set and 0 means they shared nothing. Among the 91 searches that produced an AI Overview on all three days, only 23.5% of cited URLs appeared in all three, and 55.9% appeared in exactly one round. At domain level it is steadier: 32.9% appeared in all three. The practical reading is that the AI Overview stays recognisably the same answer while swapping out the pages it credits for it. Checking once whether Google’s AI Overview cites your page is taking a single reading of a number that moves. ## Nearly half of what a business gets is its homepage Of the 1,861 citations that went to a business’s own website, 891 of them, or 47.9%, were the bare homepage. What was cited on the business’s own site Citations Share Already ranking as the exact URL Homepage 891 47.9% 67.7% Service or product page 555 29.8% 44.7% Article or guide 142 7.6% 38.7% Location or suburb page 130 7.0% 52.3% The business’s own “best of” style page 129 6.9% 51.2% Everything else 14 0.8% mixed Looked at per business rather than per citation, 499 business domains were cited at least once. Of those, 164 were only ever cited at their homepage, 252 were never cited at their homepage, and 83 were cited both ways. Homepages were also far more likely to be a ranking page in their own right: 67.7% of homepage citations were an exact organic match, against 45.8% for every deeper page combined. Two readings fit that and we cannot choose between them with this data. The homepage may simply be the strongest ranking URL a small business has for a head commercial search. Or the system may prefer an entity-level page when the question is “who should I use”. Both are guesses, and we are labelling them as guesses. ## What it actually cites Source type Citations Share Domains Searches it appeared on Business’s own website 1,861 65.4% 499 160 Google’s own properties 442 15.5% 2 32 Forums and user discussion 151 5.3% 2 73 Comparison and “best of” pages 122 4.3% 21 53 Directories and listing sites 114 4.0% 12 45 Social networks 61 2.1% 7 31 Government and regulators 37 1.3% 3 17 Unclassified 24 0.8% 15 17 Review platforms 10 0.4% 3 8 Industry associations 9 0.3% 5 6 Software and tools 9 0.3% 1 4 News and editorial media 5 0.2% 1 2 The parent study reported this same split two ways, strictly at 38.2% and broadly at 70.9%, the difference being whether a site had to be matched to a business we had already identified or merely had to look like a business website. The 65.4% above is the broad figure after we corrected three classification faults in our own work, which we describe at the end of this report. Two rows are worth pausing on. **News and editorial media are effectively absent.** Five citations out of 2,845, one URL, two searches. Whatever a Perth AI Overview is built from for a commercial question, it is almost never a news story. We are reporting that as a null result because null results are what stop a study being a sales argument. **Google cited itself 442 times.** 427 of those were Google Business Profile panels, the business cards Google hosts rather than any page on the open web. They appeared on 32 of the 200 searches, and 9.6% of citing AI Overviews contained at least one. These citations cannot appear in organic results by construction, which is why every overlap figure in this report is published twice, once over everything and once over ordinary web pages alone. ## Reddit reaches more Perth searches than any other source Domain Searches it was cited on Citations Industries What it is reddit.com 73 147 19 Forum google.com 26 436 13 Google’s own panels facebook.com 25 48 14 Social canstar.com.au 10 13 3 Comparison site westernpower.com.au 9 19 1 Government-owned utility studiohawk.com.au 9 18 1 Business website perthsolarwarehouse.com.au 8 19 2 Business website pwd.com.au 8 17 1 Business website seotakeoff.com 8 15 1 Comparison article regenpower.com 8 14 1 Business website We rank this table by how many different searches a domain reached, not by how many citations it collected. A domain cited three times on one search because we asked that search three times has not reached three searches, and ranking by raw count rewards exactly that. The automatically generated table further down this page counts something different again, the number of individual observations citing a domain, so its figures are higher than the search counts here by design. Reddit reached 73 of the 200 searches across 19 of the 20 industries. No other non-Google domain reached more than 10. Reddit and Facebook together were cited on 87 of the 200 searches. Reddit threads were also unusually well aligned with the organic results, matching exactly 70% of the time, which is consistent with those threads ranking on page one in their own right. Underneath that, the tail is long and thin. Of the 571 domains cited, 326 were cited on exactly one search and 171 were cited exactly once in the whole study. The ten domains above account for a large share of citations but still only reach 115 of the 200 searches between them. The same is true at page level. The single most widely cited page was one Western Power consumer-advice article, [“What to look for in a reliable solar installer in Perth”](https://www.westernpower.com.au/resources-education/consumer-advice/solar/finding-a-reliable-solar-installer/), cited on nine different solar searches across all three rounds. No page in the top 20 spanned more than one industry, so breadth here is within a vertical rather than across the market. ## Asking a question changed what got cited, not just whether an answer appeared For 100 of the 200 searches we used five fixed phrasings per industry, changing only the wording while keeping the service and the location identical. Phrasing Produced an AI Overview Share of its citations that were Google Business Profile panels Share that were the business’s homepage “best \[service\] Perth” 6 of 20 searches 0.0% 52.6% “top \[service\] Perth” 10 of 20 0.0% 53.6% “recommended \[service\] Perth” 12 of 20 28.2% 34.3% “who is the best \[service\] in Perth” 19 of 20 24.9% 39.2% “recommend a good \[service\] in Perth” 20 of 20 21.9% 43.0% The trigger-rate half of that was reported in the parent study. What is new here is the right-hand side. Google Business Profile panels were entirely absent from the two keyword phrasings and supplied between 22% and 28% of citations on the other three. Directory and business-profile pages rose from around 3% to 5% of citations to between 27% and 35%. What did not move is how closely the citations tracked the organic results: 47.5% exact overlap for keyword phrasings against 48.1% for question phrasings. So phrasing appears to change whether an AI Overview appears and what kind of source it reaches for, while leaving its relationship to the organic results alone. We cannot say why the panels switch on. It may be a different AI Overview template being served for recommendation-style wording. Nothing in this data identifies a template, so that stays a guess. ## The differences between industries Each industry here is only 10 searches and 30 observations, so these are indicative rather than precise, and we are deliberately not producing 20 separate findings from 20 industries. Five differences are large enough to be worth stating: **AI Overviews appeared far more often in advice-heavy industries.** Buyers agent searches returned one on 93.3% of observations and SEO agency on 86.7%. Chiropractor, electrician, plumber and veterinarian all sat at 53.3%. **Google Business Profile panels clustered in health and trades.** They were 47.9% of physiotherapy citations, 39.1% of plumbing and 37.3% of reticulation, and exactly zero for SEO agency, builder, family lawyer, conveyancer, financial adviser and accountant. **The business-website share ranged from 45.3% to 88.9%.** Electricians, builders, family lawyers and accountants sat at the top. Mechanics, mortgage brokers, solar installers and physiotherapists sat at the bottom, where panels and directories took the space instead. **Mechanics were the directory industry.** 27.4% of mechanic citations went to directories or “best of” pages, against 8.3% across the study. **Organic overlap ranged from 30.8% to 63.0%**, and the low end is explained by panel share rather than by weaker alignment, because a Google panel can never match an organic result. ## What we got wrong, and fixed Two things went wrong while producing this report, and both are worth reporting because both changed a published number. **Our first page-type classifier was wrong about Australian URLs.** It treated any “-perth” or “-wa” in a slug as evidence of a location landing page. Manual review of a sample showed that reading was wrong for 19 of the 23 pages we checked, because almost every Australian service page carries a city modifier. We rewrote the rule to require a real locality signal, a suburb name or a locations section, and re-reviewed. The final classifier agrees with manual review on 90.8% of an independent 11% sample, and the remaining disagreement sits on the boundary between service pages and articles, which does not affect the homepage finding. **We found three classification faults in our own parent study.** A brand-matching step was overriding the source taxonomy, so Canstar, SolarQuotes, AutoGuru, HotDoc, HealthEngine and five “best of” domains were being counted as business websites, 164 citations in all. Domain rules were matching as unanchored substrings, so driftrealestate.com.au matched realestate.com.au and schonautomotive.com.au matched automotive.com.au. Nine further domains needed a human decision, among them Western Power, which is a Western Australian Government-owned network operator publishing consumer advice rather than a business we could have recommended. Correcting all three moves the business-website share of AI Overview citations from 70.9% to 65.4%. We have kept the original labels in the dataset alongside the corrected ones so anyone can see exactly what changed. ## What we cannot tell you We cannot tell you why any page was cited. We can tell you what was cited and what it looked like, and that the same system had those pages in its organic results at the same moment. We did not measure schema markup, page structure, llms.txt files, word counts, freshness, brand mentions or anything about what those pages say. We have nothing to offer about them in either direction. We cannot see past Google’s first page of organic results, so every overlap figure is a floor. We cannot say whether any of this holds outside Perth, outside these 20 industries, outside English, or outside the three days in September 2026 when we collected it. And we cannot tell you that appearing in an AI Overview is worth anything, because we did not measure a single click. ## Provenance ``` Published by: AI SEO Perth Research conducted: Search Scope Lead researcher: Dorian Menard Derived from: Perth AI Search Study 2026 Surface: Google AI Overviews only Collection period: 8 to 10 September 2026 Observations: 600 searches, 393 AI Overviews, 2,845 citations Methodology version: 2.5 parent, 1.0 derived Additional cost: nil, no new collection ``` This is a derived study. It adds no observations to the parent record and modifies none. The full collection method, including the frozen question set and its checksum, every endpoint and parameter, and the exclusions, is on the [Perth AI Search Study 2026 methodology page](https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/perth-ai-search-study-2026/methodology/). The 600 observations behind this report are published alongside it, at [/data/google-ai-overviews-perth.csv](https://aiseoperth.net.au/data/google-ai-overviews-perth.csv) and as [JSON](https://aiseoperth.net.au/data/google-ai-overviews-perth.json). They are the same records as the parent study’s Google AI Overview rows, carried through unchanged except for the corrected source classes. The citation-level working dataset behind the page-type and organic-overlap tables holds one row per citation, with the normalised URL, the source type under both the original and corrected taxonomy, the page type and its rule, and the organic position of that exact URL and of its domain on the same search and round. ## Limitations - This is an observational study. Nothing here shows that ranking causes citation, or that citation causes ranking. Both are outputs of the same system answering the same search. - We captured Google's first page of organic results only, a median of eight results per search. A cited page that did not match is recorded as not observed in those results, which is not the same as not ranking. Every overlap figure is therefore a floor. - Three rounds over three days measure short-term stability, not long-run behaviour. - This is a structured sample of 200 commercial Perth searches, not every possible Perth search. - Page type is assigned by rule and agreed with manual review on 90.8% of an independent sample. The homepage category, which carries the main page finding, is determined mechanically and was verified on every page in it. - The publisher of this site, Search Scope, is an SEO agency in Perth and SEO agency is one of the 20 industries measured. Search Scope's own pages were cited 6 times out of 2,845, on 2 of the 200 searches. ## Data Dataset 600 rows ### What Google AI Overviews Cite for Perth Searches: 2026 Study: observations Every observation record behind this report, one row per prompt run. - [Download CSV](https://aiseoperth.net.au/data/google-ai-overviews-perth.csv) - [View JSON](https://aiseoperth.net.au/data/google-ai-overviews-perth.json) Updated 2026-09-21 ## Cite this research Citation AI SEO Perth (2026). What Google AI Overviews Cite for Perth Searches: 2026 Study. Published by Search Scope, Perth, Western Australia. Methodology v2.5. https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/google-ai-overviews-perth/ Title What Google AI Overviews Cite for Perth Searches: 2026 Study Publication AI SEO Perth Publisher [Search Scope](https://searchscope.com.au/), Perth, Western Australia Research lead Dorian Menard Published 21 September 2026 Last updated 21 September 2026 Methodology [v2.5](https://aiseoperth.net.au/methodology/) Canonical URL [https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/google-ai-overviews-perth/](https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/google-ai-overviews-perth/) Dataset [CSV](https://aiseoperth.net.au/data/google-ai-overviews-perth.csv) and [JSON](https://aiseoperth.net.au/data/google-ai-overviews-perth.json) Quoting the findings, reproducing a table or a chart, and reusing the dataset are all allowed with attribution to AI SEO Perth and a link to this page. The full terms are under [reusing content and data](https://aiseoperth.net.au/terms-of-use/#reuse). ## Definitions used in this report - [ Parent study Perth AI Search Study 2026 ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/perth-ai-search-study-2026/) - [ Methodology Perth AI Search Study 2026 methodology ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/research/perth-ai-search-study-2026/methodology/) - [ Reference Google AI Overviews ](https://aiseoperth.net.au/google-ai-overviews/) On this page - [Executive answer](#executive-answer) - [Key findings](#key-findings) - [Scope and sample](#scope) - [Results](#results) - [What we did](#what-we-did) - [Most of what it cites was already ranking](#most-of-what-it-cites-was-already-ranking) - [But it does not always appear, and what it cites keeps changing](#but-it-does-not-always-appear-and-what-it-cites-keeps-changing) - [Nearly half of what a business gets is its homepage](#nearly-half-of-what-a-business-gets-is-its-homepage) - [What it actually cites](#what-it-actually-cites) - [Reddit reaches more Perth searches than any other source](#reddit-reaches-more-perth-searches-than-any-other-source) - [Asking a question changed what got cited, not just whether an answer appeared](#asking-a-question-changed-what-got-cited-not-just-whether-an-answer-appeared) - [The differences between industries](#the-differences-between-industries) - [What we got wrong, and fixed](#what-we-got-wrong-and-fixed) - [What we cannot tell you](#what-we-cannot-tell-you) - [Provenance](#provenance) - [Limitations](#limitations) - [Data](#downloads) - [Cite this research](#cite) Published by Search Scope AI SEO Perth is published by Search Scope, a Perth SEO consultancy founded by Dorian Menard. Search Scope provides commercial SEO and AI search optimisation services; this website is maintained as its specialist Perth AI search research and reference publication. [Search Scope](https://searchscope.com.au/)