• Dofollow Digest
  • Posts
  • Dofollow Digest #58: The AI Citation Pool Just Got a Lot Bigger

Dofollow Digest #58: The AI Citation Pool Just Got a Lot Bigger

Author

Eric Carrell
March 21, 2026

Hey, it's Eric 👋

Some interesting new data on how AI is actually driving traffic to SaaS sites. Short version: it's working better than the headlines suggest.

We'll dig into it below, plus the usual roundup of what's worth reading this week.

📣 Demand is up - Build authority with our link building packages
We’ve been signing a strong wave of B2B SaaS companies into our core backlink packages lately. That means fewer spots left than usual.

Our standard packages focus on high-DR placements (70, 80, 90+), helping you increase visibility and build authority that drives consistent inbound demand.

We’ve got a few slots open for March, so if you want to learn more, get in touch here.

🔍 DEEP DIVE: The AI Citation Pool Just Got a Lot Bigger

Google's AI Overviews used to pull almost exclusively from page-one results. If you ranked in the top 10 for a query, you were likely to get cited. If you didn't, you were largely invisible to the AI layer. It was a narrow window.

That window has opened up considerably. Ahrefs published an updated study last week analyzing 863,000 keyword SERPs and 4 million AI Overview URLs. They found that Google's AI is now drawing from a much broader set of sources. Around 31% of citations come from pages ranking in positions 11 to 100, and another 31% come from pages that don't rank in the top 100 at all for the original query.

For context, their previous study from July 2025 showed 76% of citations coming from the top 10. That's not because page-one content became less valuable. It's because Google expanded the pool. The AI is now pulling in more sources per response, from more places across the web.

Two things drove the shift. In January 2026, Google switched AI Overviews to Gemini 3 globally, which delivers roughly 32% more source URLs per response than the previous model. And the system now leans heavily on fan-out queries, where Google breaks a single search into multiple related sub-queries and pulls sources from across all of them. A page that ranks well for a related sub-query can now get cited in the AI Overview for the parent search, even if it doesn't rank on page one for that exact keyword.

There's also a YouTube angle worth noting. YouTube is now the most cited domain in AI Overviews, and its citation share has grown 34% over the past six months. If your SaaS company has tutorial videos, product walkthroughs, or webinar recordings sitting on YouTube, those are now legitimate citation sources.

What this means for SaaS companies:

This is genuinely good news for companies that have been building out their content footprint. That blog post you published six months ago ranking #30 for a related query? It's now eligible for citation in an AI Overview for the parent topic. Integration pages, help docs, comparison guides, feature deep dives: all of it is front-line content now.

The key connector here is domain authority. When Google's AI fans out across sub-queries, it still needs to decide which sources to trust. Quality backlinks from relevant publications signal that your domain has authority across a topic, not just on one page. That trust carries across the fan-out, making your entire content library eligible for citation.

Think of it this way: a strong backlink profile used to help you rank for specific keywords. Now it helps you show up across an entire cluster of related queries via AI. My best guess is that the return on link building has actually expanded alongside the citation pool.

SaaS companies investing in broad topical coverage and strong link profiles are well positioned for this shift. Every piece of quality content backed by real domain authority is another entry point into Google's AI answers.

🔗 LINK ROUNDUP

Til next time,

Eric