Google AI Overviews Nearly Double for Commercial Keywords

Google AI Overviews are appearing more frequently when people compare products, explore alternatives, read reviews, or check prices. A new Semrush study found that AI Overview coverage increased from 45.75% to 88% across 400 tracked commercial keywords.

The Semrush study analyzed U.S. desktop search results across software, banking, and ecommerce industries over 12 months. Researchers examined five categories of commercial queries to measure how frequently Google’s AI-generated summaries appeared in search results.

The findings apply to the selected keyword sample rather than all commercial searches on Google. The research measured AI Overview appearances, not changes in website traffic, leads, or conversions.

AI Overview Coverage Expands Across Commercial Search Categories

Semrush divided the tracked keywords into five categories based on the information people look for when researching products or services.

By the end of the study, every category had AI Overview coverage above 80%, although the increases varied.

Here’s how each category performed:

• Best products or services – 96.12%: This category recorded the highest coverage. It includes queries looking for products or solutions that meet specific requirements, such as software suited to a particular business need.
• Product reviews – 89.04%: Coverage rose from 30.14%, representing the largest increase among the categories. These searches focus on evaluating individual products and customer experiences.
• Brand comparisons – 86.59%: Searches comparing competing brands increased by 23.18 percentage points.
• Product alternatives – 82.81%: Queries exploring alternatives to existing products increased by approximately 34 percentage points.
• Pricing and cost – 82.05%: More than four out of five tracked pricing-related keywords displayed AI-generated summaries.

Product reviews showed the biggest change in their relative position. They started with the lowest coverage among the five categories but finished second, behind searches for the best products or services.

AI Overview Growth Across Software, Banking, and Ecommerce

Semrush also examined how the results differed across industries.

At the beginning of the research period, software searches recorded 68% AI Overview coverage, while ecommerce searches stood at 32.62%. This represented a gap of more than 35 percentage points.

By the final measurement, all three industries had reached approximately 85% to 91% coverage, reducing the difference between them to fewer than six percentage points.

Ecommerce recorded the largest industry-level increase, rising from 32.62% to 85.11%.

The researchers then examined individual search categories within each industry to identify where AI Overviews appeared most frequently.

Software and Banking Searches Reach 100% Coverage in Selected Categories

Three industry-and-keyword combinations reached complete coverage within the tracked sample:

• Software alternatives: Every tracked keyword looking for an alternative software solution displayed an AI Overview.
• Best software solutions: All tracked searches involving the best software for a particular requirement included an AI-generated summary.
• Best banking products: The banking category also reached 100% for searches involving the best financial products or services.

For B2B software companies, the first two categories relate to searches where potential customers compare business technology solutions. The study included examples such as “HubSpot vs Salesforce” and “CrowdStrike alternatives” to illustrate commercial search patterns.

However, several combinations remained below 80%:

• Software reviews: 75%
• Banking alternatives: 65%
• Ecommerce pricing and cost: 71.43%

Despite remaining below that level, each of these groups recorded growth during the research period. Ecommerce pricing searches, for instance, rose from just 4.76%, while banking reviews increased from 13.79% to 89.66%.

All 15 industry-and-search-category combinations finished with higher coverage than their starting levels.

High-Volume Commercial Keywords Show Greater AI Overview Coverage

Semrush also analyzed AI Overview presence based on estimated monthly search volume, giving greater weight to keywords that receive more searches.

Using this method, coverage reached 97.08%.

Only a small share of the estimated search demand came from queries without AI-generated summaries. Those keywords accounted for less than 3% of the dataset’s combined monthly search volume.

The result indicates that higher-demand commercial keywords were particularly likely to display AI Overviews within the study’s selected search queries.