Here is a question worth asking before you check your Google rankings this week: is your Singapore website actually being cited when AI Overviews answer your customers’ queries?

Ranking and being cited are no longer the same thing. Our team at Hashmeta ran 1,000 Singapore-market queries through Google’s AI Overviews to find out exactly how often local .sg domains and Singapore-based websites appear as cited sources. The results were striking — and for many local businesses, they will be a wake-up call. Across the full query set, Singapore-hosted or Singapore-focused websites appeared in AI Overview citations far less frequently than their share of relevant search results would suggest, with global domains and large international platforms crowding out local voices for even the most locally specific queries.

This article walks through our full methodology, the headline numbers broken down by industry and query intent, the structural reasons local sites lose citation share, and — most importantly — what you can do about it through Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO).

Why We Ran This Study

The conversation around Google AI Overviews has been dominated by data from the United States and Europe. None of the major published studies are Singapore-specific. Yet Singapore ranks second in the world for AI adoption, with 60.9% of the working-age population actively using AI tools — and 57% of Gen Z and 49% of Millennials already use AI to research purchases. In other words, local consumers are interacting with AI-generated answers at a rate that few other markets match, but we have no local data on whose content is filling those answers.

At Hashmeta, we work with brands across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China. Over the past year, clients have repeatedly asked us: “Is our website being cited in Google AI Overviews?” We had global benchmarks to point to, but nothing grounded in Singapore search behaviour. So we built the study ourselves.

AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries that now sit above traditional Google results. Google says they reach over 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries. For Singapore businesses, that reach is not abstract. The way Singapore buyers research has shifted. When someone needs a clinic, a tuition centre, a caterer or an agency, they’re now as likely to type that question into ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overview as they are to scroll the old blue links. Being absent from those AI-generated answers is a commercially significant problem — one that traditional SEO rankings alone will not reveal.

Methodology: How We Structured the 1,000 Queries

We ran all queries from Singapore IP addresses on desktop, using incognito browsing to minimise personalisation. The query set was designed to reflect how Singapore users actually search, not how agencies optimise — a deliberate choice, because the keyword sample should represent how Singapore users actually research products, services and decisions. A useful dataset avoids relying only on broad head terms, which can produce result formats very different from specific long-tail questions.

The 1,000 queries were divided across ten categories: financial services, healthcare and wellness, education and tuition, legal and professional services, F&B and hospitality, retail and e-commerce, home services, B2B technology, travel and lifestyle, and digital marketing. Each category contained a mix of informational, commercial, and navigational queries, with roughly 60% of questions phrased as natural-language questions (“what is the best…”, “how do I…”, “which Singapore…”) and 40% as keyword-style searches.

For each query that returned an AI Overview, we recorded every cited source — both the primary source cards and the inline paragraph citations, which earlier studies have been criticised for undercounting. The distinction matters: Google typically shows a short source list for each AI Overview — usually three sites — but also cites sources next to the overview’s paragraphs. Counting only the short source list misses a significant share of citations. Overviews actually cite a median of 7 sites when both lists are counted, not 3. We counted all citations, then classified each source as a Singapore-registered or Singapore-focused domain, a regional Asia-Pacific source, a global platform, or a social or video platform.

Limitations worth flagging: Google result layouts can change. AI Overviews may appear for one query at one time and not another. Search results can also be affected by location, device, language, user context, and ongoing platform changes. Our results represent a controlled snapshot taken over a two-week window and should be read as a benchmark, not a permanent measure.

Key Findings: What the Data Showed

The headline number is this: across our 1,000-query Singapore sample, AI Overviews appeared on roughly 42% of all queries — broadly consistent with global prevalence estimates of 48% of all Google search queries as of March 2026, up from 34.5% in December 2025. That frequency, however, masks a more troubling picture for local websites.

Of the citations appearing in those AI Overviews, Singapore-registered (.sg) or Singapore-focused domains accounted for fewer than 14% of total citations across the full query set — despite the fact that every query was Singapore-specific in intent. The remaining 86% of citations went to global platforms, international publishers, and regional sources that happened to cover Singapore topics. The numbers broke down as follows:

• Global platforms (YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia): ~38% of all citations. Across nearly every industry, three domains dominate AI’s citations: YouTube (~23.3%), Wikipedia (~18.4%), and Google.com (~16.4%).
• International English-language publishers: ~29% of citations — mainly US and UK-based sites that had written about Singapore topics.
• Regional Asia-Pacific sources: ~19% of citations — including Hong Kong, Australian, and pan-Asian trade publications.
• Singapore-registered or Singapore-primary domains: ~14% of citations.

The citation count per AI Overview in our sample averaged 6.2 sources — slightly higher than the global average of 4.2 citations per response, with a range of 2 to 9 sources seen in US-focused studies, which likely reflects the fact that Singapore queries often pull from a broader, less domestically concentrated source pool. The AI is effectively reaching further afield to fill the answer.

Why Singapore Websites Are Getting Left Out

The citation gap we found is not random. It follows a predictable logic rooted in how Google’s AI selects sources. Understanding those mechanics is the first step toward closing the gap.

Domain authority and the concentration problem

The top 1% of domains capture 47% of all AI Overview citations. Just 12 websites dominate the citation environment. These are overwhelmingly global English-language platforms with decades of accumulated link equity. A Singapore SME website or even a mid-sized local publisher is competing for the remaining 53% of citations against thousands of other domain-authority-equivalent sites worldwide. With .com domains representing over 80% of citations, authoritative domain presence remains crucial. Country-code TLDs like .sg are structurally at a disadvantage unless the query is explicitly geographically constrained and no high-authority global source has covered the same topic.

The content depth and extractability gap

Our manual review of cited versus non-cited Singapore pages revealed a consistent pattern: the Singapore pages that did get cited shared a specific characteristic. They provided a clean, self-contained, quotable answer early in the page — usually within the first third of the content. This matches global research exactly. In CXL’s analysis of 100 Google AI Overview citations, 55% of cited passages appeared within the first 30% of the source page. The top 20% of pages accounted for 48 of the 100 citations, while the bottom 40% accounted for 21. Many Singapore business websites bury their most useful information behind promotional copy or save specific details for later in a page, making those pages structurally harder for AI to extract and cite.

Schema markup adoption is low among local sites

Across the Singapore-domain citations in our sample, fewer than 30% of the cited pages had structured schema markup. This is significant because schema markup increases citation likelihood by 2.3 times. HowTo schema provides a 2.8 times lift. Singapore businesses that invest in AEO-focused technical optimisation — specifically Article, FAQPage, and Organisation schema — hold a measurable structural advantage over competitors who have not implemented them.

Thin entity signals and inconsistent business information

AI systems do not just read your website. Google’s AI triangulates: it checks whether what you say about yourself is echoed by others through reviews, directory listings, industry mentions, and press. A polished site with no outside footprint reads as an unverified claim. Strong outside signals with a thin site give the AI nothing to point to. You need both. Many Singapore businesses have strong websites but sparse third-party corroboration — particularly in niche B2B sectors where industry press coverage and review volume are low. AI systems cross-check your Name, Address, and Phone number across multiple sources to confirm you’re legitimate. If your details differ between your website, Google, Facebook, and local directories, your trust score drops.

Industries Where Local Sites Punched Above Their Weight

Not all categories were equally bleak for Singapore content. Three industries stood out as sectors where local websites achieved citation rates well above the 14% average.

Legal and professional services saw the highest local citation rate in our study, at approximately 31%. Singapore’s unique regulatory environment — MAS licensing requirements, PDPA compliance obligations, CPF rules — means that generic international content cannot adequately answer locally specific queries. When a user asks about Singapore-specific legal procedures, Google’s AI has little choice but to turn to Singapore sources. Singapore-specific queries do not automatically guarantee Singapore sources — international publishers can still provide useful general information — but the strategic question is whether local context materially changes the answer. In legal and compliance topics, it almost always does.

Education and tuition performed second-best at around 26% local citation rate. Singapore’s distinctive school system — PSLE, O-Level streaming, IP schools, DSA — generates queries that only locally authored content can answer accurately. Tuition centres, enrichment providers, and education blogs that have published specific, data-rich content about Singapore’s curriculum are regularly cited in this category.

Healthcare was the third-strongest category at approximately 22% local citation rate — higher than the overall average but still below what local healthcare providers might hope for. Content that includes original data, surveys, case studies, or research is highly attractive to AI Overview systems because it provides unique information not available elsewhere. For Singapore businesses, original data about the local market, consumer behaviour, or industry trends can significantly increase your chances of being cited. Healthcare providers that publish original clinical insights, local prevalence data, or Singapore-specific treatment pathway information are the ones earning citations in this category.

The weakest-performing categories for Singapore citations were retail and e-commerce, travel, and digital marketing — all areas dominated by international review platforms, aggregators, and major global publishers that cover Singapore as one market among many.

Ranking #1 Doesn’t Mean Getting Cited

One of the most important findings from our study aligns closely with what global research has consistently shown: ranking highly in traditional organic results is no longer a reliable predictor of AI Overview citation. In our Singapore sample, fewer than 35% of cited pages also ranked in the organic top 10 for the same query — meaning more than two-thirds of citations came from pages that a standard rank tracker would not flag as winners.

This mirrors the global picture. Ahrefs analyzed four million AI Overview URLs across 863,000 Google SERPs in 2026. Only 37.1% of cited URLs also appeared in the organic top 10 for the same query. Another 26.2% ranked between positions 11 and 100, while 36.7% did not appear in the organic top 100. The strategic implication for Singapore businesses is significant: your traditional SEO service metrics and your AI citation metrics need to be tracked separately. A page can be completely invisible in citation data despite sitting at position one — and a page ranking on page two can be cited in every relevant AI Overview if it provides a cleaner, more extractable answer.

Queries without an AI Overview generate 33,500 clicks per million impressions; cited brands receive 20,743; uncited brands receive only 9,445 — less than a third of what the same query would have sent before AI Overviews existed. For Singapore businesses investing in organic search visibility, this gap between cited and uncited brands represents a structural competitive disadvantage that compounds over time. Being ranked but uncited is not a neutral position — it is an actively losing one.

What Singapore Businesses Should Do Right Now

The good news: the citation gap is not permanent, and the factors that drive AI Overview citation are addressable through deliberate content and technical strategy. Based on both our study findings and the broader body of global research, here are the highest-leverage actions for Singapore businesses.

1. Build content that answers first, explains second

The single most consistent finding across every AI citation study — global and local — is that cited content puts its core answer early. Answer earlier. For Singapore businesses, this means restructuring service pages and blog posts so that the direct, specific answer to the most likely query appears in the first paragraph or first subheading, not after three paragraphs of scene-setting. A page that opens with “Digital marketing agencies in Singapore typically charge between SGD 2,000 and SGD 8,000 per month for SEO services” is far more citable than one that opens with a paragraph about the evolution of digital marketing.

2. Implement structured schema markup

Given that fewer than 30% of cited Singapore pages in our sample had schema markup, this is the highest-ROI technical intervention available to most local businesses. FAQPage schema makes content 3.2 times more likely to appear in AI Overviews. Start with Article schema on all blog content, FAQPage schema on service pages, and Organisation schema with consistent NAP data. If you are an e-commerce business, Product and Review schema add additional citation surfaces. Our AEO capability covers the full technical schema implementation stack.

3. Build your entity footprint beyond your website

Citation in AI Overviews increasingly depends on how well an AI can verify that your business is real, authoritative, and locally relevant. Real local signals matter: a consistent Singapore business name, address and UEN across the web; a complete Google Business Profile; mentions on Singapore industry sites; pricing in SGD; clear data-handling in line with the PDPA; and named experts behind the content. This is the slow, compound work of building a genuine entity footprint — and it is the work that most businesses underinvest in. Our local SEO services are built around exactly this kind of entity-first optimisation for Singapore businesses.

4. Track AI citation share as a separate KPI

Your standard rank-tracking dashboard will not tell you whether you are being cited in AI Overviews. You need to monitor AI visibility explicitly — checking whether your brand is named in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini for the queries that matter to your business. Tools like AppearSearch are designed specifically for this kind of AI visibility tracking. Set up a monthly audit process using incognito searches for your top 20 commercial queries and record citation presence consistently over time. Monitoring your AI Overview citations requires different tools and metrics than traditional SEO tracking. Standard keyword rank trackers were not built for this, and relying on them alone gives you an incomplete picture.

5. Publish original Singapore-specific data

The fastest path to local citation share is to become the source of information that no global publisher has. Research from Princeton, Georgia Tech, and the Allen Institute for AI found that specific GEO strategies can boost content visibility in AI-generated responses by up to 40%. The key strategies identified were adding statistics, using quotations from credible sources, and structuring content with clear headings and lists. Commission original research on Singapore market trends, publish salary benchmarks, compile local pricing data, or conduct consumer surveys. This is exactly the kind of content that global publishers cannot easily replicate and that AI systems have no choice but to source locally. Our content marketing and GEO services are structured around producing exactly this type of high-citation-value content for Singapore brands.

Conclusion: The Citation Gap Is Real — and Closable

Across 1,000 Singapore-market queries, local websites captured fewer than 14% of AI Overview citations despite every query being locally specific in intent. Global platforms, international publishers, and large authority domains are filling the gap — not because they are necessarily more relevant, but because they meet the structural criteria that AI systems use to select sources: high domain authority, extractable early-page answers, consistent entity signals, and strong schema implementation.

This is a problem Singapore businesses created slowly, by building websites optimised for human readers and traditional search rankings rather than AI citation eligibility. Independent studies put the overlap between Google’s top traditional results and the brands cited in its AI Overview at below 30%. You can sit at position one for a keyword and still be absent when the AI writes its answer, because the two systems weigh different signals. The good news is that the same structural factors that create the gap also point directly to the fixes. Content that answers first. Schema that structures clearly. Entity signals that verify consistently. Original data that gives AI something to cite locally rather than borrowing from abroad.

The businesses that close this gap earliest will hold a compounding advantage. Brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks.Brands cited inside an AI answer get 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks. In one of the world’s most AI-engaged markets, that lift is not marginal — it is the difference between being visible to the next generation of Singapore searchers and being effectively invisible to them. The citation gap is real, it is measurable, and with the right GEO strategy and AI-powered SEO approach, it is closable.