Ahrefs analysed 232.8 million Google searches and found AI Overviews now appear on 83 percent of branded queries, with Wikipedia and YouTube as the most cited outside sources

When someone searches for a brand on Google now, the answer above the first blue link is written by Google from Wikipedia, YouTube and LinkedIn more often than from the brand's own site. Ahrefs published measurements on 2 October 2026 that put a number on how quickly this happened.

Ryan Law, Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs, with contributor Xibeijia Guan, analysed 232.8 million US desktop Google crawls from July to September 2026, split into 92.5 million branded-keyword crawls and 140.2 million non-branded-keyword crawls. On 29 September 2026, AI Overviews appeared on 82.91 percent of US desktop search results for branded keywords.

The gap between branded and non-branded is almost gone

The monthly averages tell the fuller story. Branded keywords with an AI Overview went from 61.3 percent in July to 65.1 percent in August to 73.3 percent in September. Non-branded keywords moved from 73.5 percent to 74.7 percent to 78.3 percent over the same months.

Ahrefs says that is a 12-percentage-point increase for branded searches in three months, against 4.8 points for non-branded. The gap between the two groups narrowed from 12.2 points in July to 5 points in September. Ahrefs says that reverses a pattern from its earlier research in November 2025, when AI Overviews were more common on unbranded queries than on branded ones.

For the top 100 brands, the AI Overview is usually above the brand's own site

A separate panel checked bare brand-name queries ("bluehost", for example) for 100 brands from Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2025 at 14 weekly checkpoints. On 1 July only 5 of 98 usable results had an AI Overview. By 30 September, 63 of 100 did.

Of those 63 AI Overviews, 48 appeared in position one on the search page, with an average position of 1.49. In Ahrefs' words, this means the AI Overview, rather than the brand's own website, sits at the top of the page for most brand-name searches today.

Where the AI Overviews get their outside information

Looking at the external citations in the same 100-brand panel, Wikipedia was cited in 72 percent of the branded AI Overviews that pulled from an outside source. YouTube appeared in 38.6 percent, LinkedIn in 22.8 percent, Yahoo Finance in 15.8 percent, Facebook in 10.5 percent and Walmart in 7.0 percent.

Ahrefs reports one piece of better news. Of 58 AI Overviews whose full text was readable, only two explicitly discussed competitors: Pepsi's answer named Coca-Cola in a description of the "cola wars", and Intel's named TSMC and NVIDIA. Across 57 available citation lists, only one verified competitor-owned website appeared.

A brand that wants to change what the AI Overview says about it has three places to work on, and only one of them is its own website. The Wikipedia article is the first. The YouTube channel, including videos uploaded by other people about the brand, is the second. The LinkedIn page is the third. Ahrefs quotes Chris Long on the stakes: outside sources can now control the narrative of a brand directly in the search results. Keeping the brand's own site accurate and current still matters, but it is no longer enough on its own.

Source

Ahrefs, AI Overviews Currently Appear for 83% of Branded Searches, by Ryan Law, 2 October 2026.