AI Overviews Are Now on 88% of Commercial Searches: What to Do About It

I read the Semrush study, its earlier six-month study, Google's October 15 announcement and Google's own documentation for site owners on October 27, 2026. What follows is what the data says, what it doesn't, and the plan I'd run for a business with a few important pages and no SEO agency.

What does the new data say?

That the AI answer has moved from research questions to buying decisions. Semrush followed a fixed panel of 400 US desktop keywords across banking, software and ecommerce from September 2025 to August 2026, split into five types of commercial search: "best X for Y", brand vs brand, reviews, alternatives, and pricing and cost. AI Overview coverage across the panel went from 45.75% to 88%. Weighted by estimated search volume, so that popular searches count more, it reached 97.08% (Semrush, October 2026).

Panel of 400 US desktop keywords, Semrush, published October 21, 2026, from the study's text and its chart of coverage by modifier.

The industries moved together. Ecommerce keywords went from 32.62% to 85.11%, and by August all three industries sat between 85% and 91%. Semrush's summary: whether someone is comparing coffee makers, CRM software or credit cards, they're now about equally likely to see an AI Overview first.

An earlier Semrush study points the same way with a much bigger sample. Across more than 600,000 US keywords in 10 industries, the share of commercial-intent results pages with an AI Overview grew 71% between November 2025 and April 2026, while the share of transactional pages, the ones with buying words like "buy" or "order", fell 5% (Semrush, July 2026).

Two limits worth stating. Semrush is a vendor that sells AI visibility tracking, and both studies measure how often an AI Overview appears, not what happens to clicks afterwards. The 88% figure describes a fixed panel of 400 keywords, not all searches. Pew's independent sample from March 2025 put AI summaries on 18% of all Google searches, which was before the expansion and across every kind of query (Pew Research Center, July 2025). The two numbers don't contradict each other. They measure different things.

What is a commercial search?

The search someone runs after they know what they want and before they decide where to get it. "Best accountant for a small business", "QuickBooks vs Xero", "dentist near me reviews", "Mailchimp alternatives", "website design cost". Google's own AI answers these by reading several pages, writing a short comparison, and linking some of the sources.

That stage used to be where a small business won the click. You ranked for "best X in [city]" or had the review page that came up, and the person landed on your site. Now the AI often writes the shortlist, and your site is one of the links inside it, or it isn't. Transactional searches, where someone already types "buy" or "order", still mostly show the classic results, which fits Google's statement that AI Overviews appear only when its systems judge them additive.

What happens to clicks when an AI Overview appears?

Fewer people click, and more people leave without clicking anything. Pew tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. When a Google results page showed an AI summary, 8% of visits included a click on a regular result, against 15% without a summary. Only 1% of visits included a click on a link inside the summary. And 26% of visits to a page with a summary ended the browsing session there, against 16% without (Pew, July 2025).

Ahrefs compared Search Console data for 300,000 keywords between December 2023 and December 2025 and found the top-ranking page's average click-through rate is 58% lower when an AI Overview is present. For keywords with an AI Overview, the click-through rate of position one fell from 7.3% to 1.6% (Ahrefs, February 2026). I'd read that figure with some care for commercial searches: Ahrefs didn't split its AI Overview keywords by search type, and nobody has published the same measurement for "best X for Y" or pricing searches yet.

The clicks that remain look better. Google says clicks from results pages with AI Overviews tend to be higher quality, with people more likely to spend time on the site (Google Search Central). Semrush measured the average visitor from AI search tools such as ChatGPT as worth 4.4 times a traditional organic visitor by conversion rate (Semrush, July 2025). That's one company's data, so treat the exact number with care. The direction, fewer but warmer visits, matches what I see in most small business analytics.

My read: if your site lives on commercial searches, your Google clicks have probably dropped over the last year even if your rankings haven't. Checking that is the first step of the plan below, and it takes about ten minutes.

Does this mean SEO stopped working?

No. For Google's own AI features, ranking is still the main way in. Google's documentation says a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, with no additional technical requirements, no special markup and no AI text files (Google Search Central, updated December 2025). Ahrefs found that 76% of AI Overview citations come from pages in Google's top 10 for the search (Ahrefs, August 2025).

What changed is what ranking buys you. Position one used to be the click. Now it's a good chance of being one of the links inside the answer, plus a smaller share of the classic clicks underneath. The work is the same as before, with more weight on the pages that answer comparison questions directly. If the difference between ranking and being cited is new to you, my guide to SEO vs GEO explains it, including why ChatGPT and Claude follow different rules from Google.

What did Google change on October 15?

It made the links inside AI answers easier to find, which is good news for anyone who gets cited. In a post on October 15, 2026, Google announced that inline links, the links attached to words and phrases inside an AI response, will appear higher in AI Mode and AI Overviews responses more often. It's also testing a dedicated section at the top of some responses for the one or two official websites a task needs, with a note on why each is useful, and it's expanding carousels of timely articles to more countries and languages (Google, October 2026).

Google also reported that the number of people using Preferred Sources has grown more than seven times since the start of the year. Preferred Sources lets a person pick the sites they want to see more of, and Google's documentation says a chosen site gets a "preferred" badge in Top Stories, AI Mode and AI Overviews for that person. To be eligible in AI Mode and AI Overviews, a site has to be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console. Google provides a button and a link that any site can add so readers can select it (Google Search Central, updated September 2026).

For a small business, the official-sites test is the one to watch. When someone searches your business name or "your business pricing", the official site Google wants to show at the top of the answer should be yours. That only works if your site states your prices, hours and services in plain text and your Business Profile and site agree.

How do you check whether you appear in AI Overviews?

Open Search Console. Since August 31, 2026, every verified site has Search generative AI performance reports showing how often its pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date, down to the hour (Google Search Central, June 2026). The reports show impressions, not clicks. Clicks from those pages are still counted in the regular Performance report under the "Web" search type (Google Search Central).

Then do the manual check the report can't do: search your own commercial terms and see who Google's AI picks.

A 30-day plan for a small business

Four weeks, about two hours a week, and nothing that needs an agency:

1. Week 1, measure. Open the generative AI report in Search Console and note your AI Overview impressions and your top pages there. Open the regular Performance report, compare clicks for your top ten commercial queries with the same period last year, and run the Quick Win searches. Write the results in one sheet.
2. Week 2, fix the pages the AI reads. For every commercial search where you want to appear, you need one page that answers it directly: a pricing page with actual prices, a comparison page that honestly compares you with the obvious alternatives, a services page that says who the service is for. Put the answer in the first two sentences, then the detail. Google's advice is the same as it has always been: helpful content, important information in text form, structured data that matches what's on the page (Google Search Central).
3. Week 3, add facts the AI can quote. In the original GEO research from Princeton and IIT Delhi, adding statistics and quotations to a page raised its visibility in AI answers by roughly 30% to 40% in the authors' tests, while keyword stuffing made it worse (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024). Specific numbers (prices, turnaround times, years in business, what's included), clear comparisons and a short FAQ are the practical version of that.
4. Week 4, work on the sources the AI already trusts. In your Quick Win notes, the sites cited next to yours are the places to be listed and reviewed. Semrush's own recommendation from the study is to ask customers for reviews on the sites AI Overviews cite, where the platform's rules allow it. Ahrefs found that how often a brand is mentioned across the web correlates with its AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for the number of backlinks (Ahrefs, May 2025). If your site is eligible, add Google's Preferred Sources button to your blog or news page. Then rerun the Week 1 measurements and put a repeat in your calendar for next month.

The ordering matters. Measuring first stops you rewriting pages that already appear. Fixing your own pages before chasing reviews means the AI finds something worth citing when it looks.

If you'd rather have the full plan written out, the GEO Action Plan Generator builds a personalized 90-day plan from 14 questions, and The Complete GEO Readiness Guide goes through all of it in 10 chapters.

What this doesn't tell you

Three gaps in the data, so you don't over-plan.

The studies measure Google on a US desktop. Mobile, other countries and local-intent searches like "plumber near me" aren't in Semrush's panel, and Google's AI Overviews don't trigger on every search even in the US. Your own Search Console numbers beat any industry average.

Nobody has measured clicks on commercial searches with an AI Overview separately. Ahrefs didn't split its 58% figure by search type. The direction is clear, the size for your business isn't, which is why Week 1 is measurement.

And AI Overviews are one of several AI answers your customers use. Google says AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly users (Google, July 2026), and ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity cite pages that often don't rank on Google at all. The free test in is your business invisible to ChatGPT and Claude? covers those. And Google's AI has started acting for customers as well as answering them: it can now phone a local business to check prices, which I covered in what to do when Google's AI calls your business.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of Google searches show an AI Overview?

It depends on the type of search. Semrush found AI Overviews on 88% of the 400 US commercial keywords it tracked in August 2026, up from 45.75% in September 2025. Pew's independent sample of all Google searches in March 2025 found an AI summary on 18%. Buying-stage searches show them most; searches with words like "buy" show them least.

Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?

Yes. In Pew's study, people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits to pages with an AI summary, against 15% without. Ahrefs measured a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page on searches with an AI Overview. Google says the clicks that remain tend to be higher quality.

How do I get my business into Google's AI Overviews?

Rank for the search, and have a page that answers it directly. Google says a page needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet, with no special markup, and Ahrefs found 76% of AI Overview citations come from Google's top 10. Clear prices, direct comparisons, specific facts and consistent business details across the web all help.

Does Google need special schema or an llms.txt file for AI Overviews?

No. Google's documentation says there are no additional technical requirements, no special schema and no AI text files needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Structured data should match what's visible on the page, but it doesn't buy you a place in the answer.

How do I see AI Overview impressions in Search Console?

Open Search Console and use the Search generative AI performance report, available to all sites since August 31, 2026. It shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. Clicks are counted in the regular Performance report.

What is a commercial keyword?

A search someone runs while comparing options before buying: "best X for Y", "X vs Y", "X reviews", "X alternatives" or "X pricing". Semrush's study tracked those five types. Transactional keywords, with words like "buy" or "order", are the step after that.

Are AI Overviews showing on "buy" searches too?

Much less. In Semrush's six-month study of more than 600,000 keywords, the share of transactional results pages with an AI Overview fell 5% while commercial pages rose 71%. Google says AI Overviews appear only when its systems judge them additive, and a plain "buy" search usually isn't one.

Where to go from here

Spend the first ten minutes on the Quick Win searches and the Search Console report. If you're in the AI Overviews for your commercial terms, protect it with current prices and honest comparisons. If you're not, Week 2 of the plan is where to start, and the free AI Search Gap Calculator will tell you how much is at stake.

If you'd like one short, practical note on AI and risk a week, The Risk Memo goes out every Tuesday.

Researched with AI tools, written and fact-checked by Dominic.

Sources

1. Semrush, AI Overviews have nearly doubled across five commercial search modifiers (Oct 21, 2026)
2. Semrush, AI Overviews are expanding across commercial intent search [Study] (Jul 2, 2026)
3. Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results (Jul 22, 2025)
4. Ahrefs, Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% (Feb 4, 2026)
5. Google Search Central, AI features and your website (updated Dec 10, 2025)
6. Semrush, AI Search & SEO Traffic Case Study (Jul 21, 2025)
7. Ahrefs, Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google's Top 10 for the Original Prompt (Aug 11, 2025)
8. Google, More ways to connect with the web from Search (Oct 15, 2026)
9. Google Search Central, Help your readers find your site through preferred sources in Google Search (updated Sep 18, 2026)
10. Google Search Central Blog, Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (Jun 3, 2026; all sites since Aug 31, 2026)
11. Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024
12. Ahrefs, An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied) (May 26, 2025)
13. Google, Q2 2026 earnings call: Remarks from our CEO (Jul 22, 2026)