AI answers now show on most searches, even your brand name
Three separate data sets put AI Overviews above 80% of queries, and brand name searches are not exempt.
AI Overviews, the AI written answer Google puts at the top of results, now show up on more than 80% of search queries. Barry Schwartz reported the figure, citing data from three sources that track this separately, Semrush, SE Ranking and seoClarity.
The part that matters most for a small business is what happens when someone searches your business name. SE Ranking found that 82.5% of US brand searches now pull up an AI Overview. On those searches, the brand's own website is cited only 39% of the time. So in most cases Google is writing an answer about you, and most of the time it is not pointing at your site while it does it.
Smaller brands get hit harder
Mordy Oberstein, posting the SE Ranking data, pointed out that the 82.5% figure drops for very large brands. In other words, the biggest names trigger these AI answers less consistently than everyone else does.
Google picks different pages than it does in normal results
The same data shows Google reaches for different pages on your site when it builds an AI answer. In normal organic results, 71.1% of the cited brand pages are the home page and 3.8% are the About page. In AI Overviews, the home page drops to 36.8% and the About page climbs to 11.7%, which lines up with earlier findings on About pages getting cited.
Aleyda Solis, sharing the same study, added two details. About 3 in 5 brand pages cited in AI Overviews do not rank in the top 10 for that search. And 61% of AI Overview citations come from platforms the brand manages or takes part in.
About 3 in 5 brand pages cited in AI Overviews don’t rank in the top 10 for that search.
If you run a small business, search your own business name in Google and read the AI answer. Check whether it is accurate and whether it links to you. If your About page is thin or out of date, rewrite it with who you are, what you sell and where you operate, because Google is now using that page far more than it used to.
that number falls off for enterprise brands - so SMBs and mid-size companies beware
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