Chicago SEO Consultant Kyle Eggleston Publishes Two Studies on How Google Treats AI Content and AI Overview Citations

A 400-query study of 1,764 AI Overview citations and a five-month case study of a 100 percent AI-written site that grew through three Google updates.

CHICAGO, IL, UNITED STATES, October 21, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Kyle Eggleston, a Chicago SEO consultant with more than 20 years in search, has published two original studies on kyleeggleston.com that examine how Google’s systems treat AI-written content and which pages Google cites in its AI Overviews. Together, the studies offer first-party data on two of the most debated questions in search marketing today.

The first study, “How to Rank in AI Overviews,” matched every link in the AI Overviews for 400 US searches against the organic top ten for the same queries. The 400 queries were drawn from a pool of 3,804 keywords across ten verticals, with Ahrefs SERP snapshots captured between September 1 and September 24, 2026. After removing Google Shopping cards and unresolvable redirects, 1,561 outside citations remained from the 1,764 links in the overview blocks.

The findings point to a strong relationship between traditional rankings and AI Overview citations. Just over half of all citations, 51.0 percent, pointed to a URL already ranking in the organic top ten, and the figure rises to 63.7 percent when counted by domain. A page ranking first organically was cited in 56.0 percent of the overviews studied, compared with 9.9 percent for a page ranking eighth. Among pages cited from outside the top ten, 99.2 percent still rank in Google’s top 100 for at least one keyword. YouTube was the single most-cited domain, with 265 citations across 145 of the 400 overviews, while Reddit accounted for 5.1 percent of citations and received none at all in the health vertical.

The second study, “AI Content Case Study: Three Google Updates, Zero Setbacks,” tracks a website built and written entirely with AI tools from its launch on a brand-new domain on April 27, 2026 through September 13, 2026. During that period the site recorded 1,978 clicks and 127,262 impressions in Google Search Console while holding an Ahrefs Domain Rating of zero with no dofollow backlinks. The site grew through the May 2026 core update, the June 2026 spam update and the August 2026 spam update without a ranking setback.

“A site written with AI does not automatically fail when Google updates its ranking systems,” Eggleston said. “No backlink tricks explain these results. The useful question is what the published pages do for readers, not simply which tool produced the text.”

Eggleston is careful to frame the case study as one anonymized example rather than a guarantee. The report states that it does not show every AI-written site will succeed, that backlinks never matter, or that the updates caused every increase. The AI Overviews study likewise describes correlation, not causation, and is limited to a single snapshot of US desktop results.

The studies reflect a shift in how Eggleston works with clients. After building his first website in 2004 and working through every major Google algorithm era, including seven years leading SEO at Walgreens corporate, he rebuilt his own consultancy around AI-native development and AI search visibility. His current practice covers SEO, local SEO, AI search visibility and answer engine optimization for businesses in Chicago and nationwide, along with free tools on kyleeggleston.com including an SEO Tools Directory, an SEO Resume Builder for search and AI marketing job seekers, and Ask Kyle, an AI assistant trained on his published work.

Both studies are available in full on the kyleeggleston.com blog, with methodology, limitations and the underlying numbers published alongside the conclusions.

About Kyle Eggleston

Kyle Eggleston is an independent SEO consultant based in Chicago, Illinois, and the founder of Digital Marketing Solutions, LLC. He has worked in search engine optimization since 2004 and focuses on organic growth through Google search and AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. He publishes original research, case studies and free tools at https://www.kyleeggleston.com.

Kyle Eggleston
Digital Marketing Solutions LLC
+1 708-879-9375
kyle@kyleeggleston.com

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