Semrush tracked 400 commercial keywords across banking, software and ecommerce for twelve months and found Google AI Overviews on 88% of them in August 2026, up from 45.75% in September 2025. Weighted by search volume, the August figure was 97.08%.
What Semrush measured
The study, published October 21, built a fixed panel of 400 keywords split across five groups of modifiers that searchers add when they near a decision: alternatives, best X for Y, price and cost, reviews, and brand vs brand. Semrush checked each keyword every month from September 2025 through August 2026 using its U.S. desktop data. The main figure is keyword-weighted coverage, the share of keywords in a group that triggered an AI Overview.
Where the growth landed
Every modifier group finished above 80%. In September 2025 coverage ranged from 30.14% for reviews to 63.41% for brand vs brand. By August 2026 it ranged from 82.05% to 96.12%. Best X for Y searches ended highest at 96.12%, up 53.4 points. Reviews gained the most, 59 points, moving from the least likely modifier to trigger an AI Overview to the second most likely. Brand vs brand searches started highest and grew least, up 23.18 points.
The industry gaps closed as well. Ecommerce rose from 32.62% to 85.11%, while software started highest at 68%. By August all three industries sat between 85% and 91%. Three industry and modifier pairs reached 100%: best X for Y in banking, alternatives in software and best X for Y in software. Three stayed under 80%: alternatives in banking at 65%, price and cost in ecommerce at 71.43%, and reviews in software at 75%.
Why the weighting matters
Counting keywords equally gives 88% for August. Weighting each keyword by its estimated monthly search volume gives 97.08%. The 12% of keywords with no AI Overview accounted for less than 3% of total search volume in the dataset. Semrush concludes that keyword counts alone may understate how often AI Overviews appear, because the commercial queries with the most demand were the ones most likely to show one.
Earlier Semrush data points the same way
A Semrush study published July 2 looked at more than 600,000 keywords in ten industries between November 2025 and April 2026. AI Overviews on commercial-intent results pages grew 71% over that period, while those on transactional results fell 5%. Google Ads and AI Overviews appeared on the same results page about twice as often as a year earlier. In finance, keywords that triggered an AI Overview averaged $4.84 in cost per click against $2.14 for those that did not. In jobs and education the figures were $5.02 and $1.51.
Semrush’s June AI Visibility Index analyzed 126 million U.S. AI search prompts from January through April 2026. It found that 45% of marketing leaders cannot accurately measure their brand visibility in AI-generated answers, and that only 9% have the tools to track all relevant metrics across platforms. Andrew Warden, Vice President of Marketing at Adobe and former CMO of Semrush, said in that release: “AI is now intrinsic to the default search experience, and brands need to adapt.”
Who gets cited
The October study shows what a commercial AI Overview is built from, using the search mailchimp vs klaviyo as its example. The AI Overview cites Klaviyo’s own guide for the choose-Klaviyo option and a third-party site, Zapier, for the Mailchimp option, with a YouTube video and another third-party site among the other prominent citations. Semrush’s point is that the answer to a brand-versus-competitor search can draw on YouTube videos, Reddit threads and review sites as well as the brand’s own pages and its competitor’s. The June index found a similar split on Gemini, where the overlap between mentioned brands and cited domains can be as low as 30%.
What it means for the marketing leader
Budgets built on organic click forecasts for comparison, pricing and review pages assume a click path that the search page now interrupts. Semrush says ranking first likely will not bring as much traffic as it did a year ago, although such content still has a role in shaping the AI summary. In our reading, the volume-weighted figure is the one a finance team will care about, since it describes the searches that carry the demand. Related coverage: Measurement Disputes Are Moving From the Number to the Definition on why the definition now decides the number, AI Search Anxiety Is Becoming a Budget Argument on how the worry reaches planning, and Google Ads Adds Channel Priority and Budget Allocation Controls on the paid side of the same results page.
Semrush recommends tracking AI Overview visibility next to traditional rankings, mapping which review platforms, roundups, videos and community threads get cited, keeping comparison and pricing pages current so the summary has less room to misstate them, and asking customers for reviews on the sites the AI Overviews cite.
Limits of the data
Semrush sells AI visibility tracking, and the study ends with an offer of a free trial. The October panel is 400 keywords in three industries on U.S. desktop data, and Semrush describes the search volumes as estimates. A panel that size shows direction better than it shows a market-wide rate, which is why the July study’s 600,000 keywords is useful context. All three sources here are Semrush’s own research, and none is independent.
Before the next planning cycle, ask for both coverage figures on your own list of commercial keywords, and ask which sources the AI Overview cites when a buyer searches your brand against a competitor.
Source: Semrush
