YouTube Shows Up in Google AI Answers, Not ChatGPT
YouTube is the top cited domain in Google’s AI Overview and AI Mode answers in our data, yet ChatGPT almost never cites it. SOLEDAD, White Wood’s AI-monitoring engine, found YouTube in 36.9% of AI Overview answers and 38.9% of AI Mode answers across 66 brand projects from 18 May to 14 October 2026, against 0.7% of ChatGPT answers.
Mercy Tahitoe, Studio Head, White Wood, Jakarta.
1. What we counted
We counted answers, not videos: for each engine, the share of answers that cite at least one YouTube link. SOLEDAD logs the source links each engine shows when it answers a tracked prompt. The pool here is 66 brand projects, with prompts in Bahasa Indonesia and English and 573,203 cited links across 42,072 answers. One answer means one project, one day, one prompt and one engine. We left out a demo project and one hospitality project built on English tourist prompts.
2. Engine by engine
The split is by engine, and it is wide. YouTube is the first domain by number of citations on three engines and close to invisible on the other three:
| Engine | Answers in the pool | Answers citing YouTube | Share of answers | YouTube’s rank among cited domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Mode | 7,962 | 3,097 | 38.9% | 1 |
| Google AI Overview | 6,881 | 2,542 | 36.9% | 1 |
| Perplexity | 7,846 | 1,094 | 13.9% | 1 |
| Gemini | 3,994 | 115 | 2.9% | 58 |
| ChatGPT | 6,510 | 43 | 0.7% | 535 |
| Copilot | 8,879 | 3 | under 0.1% | 1,039 |
Google’s two search surfaces carry the bulk of it. Perplexity also ranks YouTube first, but cites it in far fewer of its answers. Gemini, which is also a Google product, behaves like ChatGPT here, not like Google Search.
3. The same split on our own prompts
Our own ten unbranded prompts show the same pattern, which is why we looked at the wider pool. From 18 September to 19 October 2026, YouTube appeared in 112 of 277 AI Overview answers (40.4%) and 96 of 309 AI Mode answers (31.1%). It appeared in 3 of 257 ChatGPT answers and 4 of 233 Gemini answers, and in none of the Copilot or Perplexity answers. On “cara muncul di hasil pencarian AI”, a prompt we have not won yet, a YouTube link sat in 28 AI Overview and 25 AI Mode answers.
One part of this surprised us. On the journal we have said that a podcast needs a text page, because machines read text. For ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini our data still points that way. On Google’s AI surfaces, the video page itself is a common citation.
4. How to use this
Treat YouTube as a question about Google’s surfaces, not about AI in general. Three checks before you put video into a plan:
- Split your report by engine. If the buyers you care about search on Google, AI Overview and AI Mode are where video already competes for the citation.
- List the YouTube links cited on your own prompts and who published them. That tells you which channels are answering your buyers on those surfaces today.
- Don’t promise a ChatGPT or Copilot result from video. In this pool those engines cite YouTube in under 1% of answers.
What this check cannot tell you
SOLEDAD sees the links an engine shows, not clicks or watch time. Our counts treat a link to youtube.com with no video ID as YouTube too. The pool leans toward the categories our clients work in, so other categories may differ. A share of answers is not a share of citations: one answer can hold many links, so these percentages are not comparable with figures that divide by all citations. Nothing here shows that publishing a video changes what an engine cites.
Declared interest: White Wood sells this work and measures it with SOLEDAD, our own AI-monitoring engine.
FAQ
Does ChatGPT cite YouTube?
Rarely, in our data. YouTube appeared in 43 of 6,510 ChatGPT answers, 0.7%, between 18 May and 14 October 2026.
Is Gemini the same as Google AI Overview here?
No. Gemini cited YouTube in 2.9% of its answers, against 36.9% for AI Overview.
Should every brand start a YouTube channel for AI search?
Not on this evidence alone. Check which engines your buyers use and which videos are already cited on your prompts first.
Sources
- SOLEDAD, White Wood’s AI-monitoring engine: cited links per answer, 66 brand projects on six engines, 18 May to 14 October 2026 (re-run 29 October 2026)
- SOLEDAD: cited links per answer for whitewood.ai’s 10 unbranded prompts on six engines, 18 September to 19 October 2026