AI Overviews now hit 88 percent of US commercial keywords, Semrush finds: Reveneau

Why it mattersCommercial search traffic now flows through a Google summary first. A brand page not inside the summary sits one scroll below it.

Commercial Google search is now an AI summary with the blue links below it. Semrush published a 12-month study on October 21. The study tracked 400 US commercial keywords across banking, software and ecommerce. The share with an AI Overview went from 45.75 percent in September 2025 to 88 percent in August 2026. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable grouped the figure with new data from SE Ranking and seoClarity.

What Semrush measured

Semrush ran the same 400 keywords each month through its US desktop Sensor tool. The 88 percent figure is keyword-weighted. The volume-weighted figure counts how often each term is searched. It reached 97.08 percent in August 2026. The study split keywords into five modifier groups. Review searches rose the most. AI Overview coverage for review queries went from 30 percent to 90 percent. The other groups were alternatives, brand vs brand, best X for Y, and pricing or cost searches.

What SE Ranking and seoClarity say

SE Ranking checked 1,000 US and 1,000 German brand keywords three times each. Yulia Deda at SE Ranking reports AI Overviews on 82.5 percent of US brand searches. Germany sat at 40.4 percent. SE Ranking also found that 62.2 percent of cited brand-site URLs sit outside Google's organic top 10. Mark Traphagen at seoClarity told Barry Schwartz his data showed over 62 percent coverage across all queries. The range by industry runs from 55 to 84 percent.

What this changes for a team that ranks on Google

The AI Overview is now above the organic results for most commercial searches a US buyer runs on desktop. A page in the top 10 may still not be quoted in the summary. SE Ranking's figure says 62.2 percent of cited brand URLs sit outside the top 10. The two games are now separate. A team can rank for a brand term and still watch a competitor get quoted in the summary.

Both studies measure US desktop. Mobile and non-US ratios can differ. The Semrush data was gathered through August 2026. The next quarterly release will show whether the curve holds. The direction of the change is not in doubt. A 2027 plan that treats the organic top 10 as the first thing a searcher reads is behind the data.

Three vendors tracking the same question with different methods and three different numbers all point at the same shape. The headline Barry Schwartz uses is a round 80 percent across all Google searches. Semrush and SE Ranking each measure a slice, commercial and brand, and each slice is above 80. The scope of each study is published alongside the figure. A reader can match the data to the search mix on their own site.

Source

Search Engine Roundtable on data from Semrush, SE Ranking and seoClarity.

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