Google Answers Before the Click: Its AI Overviews Cover 88% of Commercial Search
Semrush found that Google's AI Overviews now appear in 88% of tracked US commercial keywords, up from 45.75%, while the volume of click-through traffic coming from them remains weak.
AI summaries displayed by Google at the top of search results now appear in 88% of US commercial keywords tracked by marketers, according to a study conducted by Semrush. The company tracked 400 commercial keywords across the banking, software, and e-commerce sectors from September 2025 to August 2026, finding that coverage rose from 45.75% to 88%, reaching 97.08% when weighting results by search volume. Queries containing the word "reviews" recorded an increase from 30.14% to 89.04%, while e-commerce rose from 32.62% to 85.11%.
However, the study measures summary visibility only, excluding click or traffic data, and is limited to desktop devices in the United States. PPC Land estimates that the sample does not exceed 27 keywords per sector and per search format, pointing out that Semrush sells the tools recommended by the study's findings.
Other research indicates that traffic coming from AI assistants remains small. After analyzing 12 months of Google Analytics 4 data across 100 sites, Marie Haynes found that ChatGPT sessions accounted for only 0.62% of the traffic driven by regular Google search, albeit with a higher conversion rate for visitors coming from the assistant. She stated that Google drove 96.5% of conversions. SEO Works found that organic search brought 39 times the traffic brought by AI assistants. After studying 12 sites, Kevin Indig said there is as yet no reliable correlation between visibility in AI tools and brand search or direct visits.
Measurement is becoming increasingly difficult. Ahrefs states that Google provides modified results for between 5% and 20% of requests coming from search engine data analysis tools, filtering out unnatural results, requiring alternatives, and cleaning historical data. DemandSphere recorded a daily error rate of about 11% on October 13, while Nozzle's error rate peaked at 27.0% on September 29, whereas AccuRanker found a rate under 1% in mid-October. The common conclusion is that ranking first no longer brings the same traffic, and measuring this decline has become more difficult.
What Do These Terms Mean?
AI Overviews: Concise AI-generated answers provided by Google at the top of search results, summarizing content from multiple pages before a user clicks on any link.
Commercial Keywords: Search phrases used by people intending to purchase or compare products and services, which marketers focus on because they are closer to conversion.
Referral Traffic: Visits that arrive at a website from a link on another site or from a search result, the volume of which is measured to compare visitor acquisition channels.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as buying or signing up, out of total visitors.
Weekly Newsletter
Read between the lines before everyone else. Decode the most important economic, tech, and decision-maker movements in the region.. in 5 minutes every Saturday.
