Comment by xnx

> Google’s search feature AI Overviews cites YouTube more than any medical website when answering queries about health conditions

It matters in the context of health related queries.

> Researchers at SE Ranking, a search engine optimisation platform, found YouTube made up 4.43% of all AI Overview citations. No hospital network, government health portal, medical association or academic institution came close to that number, they said.

> “This matters because YouTube is not a medical publisher,” the researchers wrote. “It is a general-purpose video platform. Anyone can upload content there (eg board-certified physicians, hospital channels, but also wellness influencers, life coaches, and creators with no medical training at all).”

Yea, clearly this is the case. Also, as there isn't a clearly defined public-facing medical knowledge source, every institution/school/hospital system would be split from each other even further. I suspect that if one compared the aggregate of all reliable medical sources, it would be higher than youtube by a considerable margin. Also, since this search was done with German-language queries, I suspect this would reduce the chances of reputable English sources being quoted even further.

To the Guardian's credit, at the bottom they explicitly cited the researchers walking back their own research claims.

> However, the researchers cautioned that these videos represented fewer than 1% of all the YouTube links cited by AI Overviews on health.

> “Most of them (24 out of 25) come from medical-related channels like hospitals, clinics and health organisations,” the researchers wrote. “On top of that, 21 of the 25 videos clearly note that the content was created by a licensed or trusted source.

> “So at first glance it looks pretty reassuring. But it’s important to remember that these 25 videos are just a tiny slice (less than 1% of all YouTube links AI Overviews actually cite). With the rest of the videos, the situation could be very different.”

Might be but aren't. They're inevitably someone I've never heard of from no recognizable organization. If they have credentials, they are invisible to me.