When AI Overviews started, they were mostly used for information queries. That’s no longer the case. In the last year alone, AI Overviews have continued expanding across commercial-intent search.
We wanted to see if that growth was evenly spread across the commercial stage, or whether AI Overviews were more likely to appear for comparison queries than price check queries.
To do this, we tracked 400 commercial keywords across banking, software, and ecommerce topics from September 2025 to August 2026. For each keyword, we included a modifier that people use when they’re nearing a decision:
- Alternatives: e.g., “sofi alternatives”; “crowdstrike alternatives”
- [Brand] vs. [brand]: e.g., “keurig vs nespresso”; “hubspot vs salesforce”
- Best X for Y: e.g., “best credit union for car loan”; “best smartwatch for women”
- Pricing and cost: e.g., “coffee maker under 100”; “price antivirus software”
- Reviews: e.g., “amazfit smartwatch review”; “chase checking account review”
Across all these five groups, we found that coverage has grown significantly. Just a year ago, searches for "review" triggered an AI Overview less than a third of the time. Now, that figure is 90%. In fact, every one of these commercial modifiers now sees an AI Overview between 82% and 96% of the time.
Here, we’ll break down the results of our study, explain what they mean for your brand and tell you how you can increase your visibility for AI Overviews.
Key takeaways
- A year ago, "review" searches triggered an AI Overview less than a third of the time. Now, that's up to 90%.
- AI Overviews for "brand vs brand" searches increased by 23 percentage points in the last year, now covering over 86% of brand comparison SERPs.
- For "brand alternatives" searches, AI Overviews have increased by 34 percentage points in the last year, appearing on more than 82% of brand comparison SERPs.
- Across the 400 commercial modifier keywords we tracked, AI Overview coverage reached 88% in August 2026, up from 45.75% in September 2025.
- Ecommerce queries saw the largest industry increase when compared with banking and software queries, rising from 32.62% to 85.11%.
- By August 2026, 12 of the 15 industry-and-modifier combinations had keyword-weighted coverage of at least 80%.
What an AI Overview on a commercial search means for your brand
SEO and content marketing teams target these types of keywords all the time, when they build a page that compares your product to the alternatives, publishes your pricing, or aims to get listed as the “best” option.
In the past, if the page was strong enough to earn links, it tended to rank higher and get clicks.
But with AI Overview, there’s more to the challenge. Now, Google summarizes the information above the organic results on the SERP, and for some searchers, that summary is enough to make a decision.
Ranking for keywords is still a critical goal. But now that AI Overviews makes the first impression, you also need to target and track that answer.
Getting your brand mentioned in AI Overviews, and described the way you want, is now key to winning these commercial searches.
l>Methodology
For this analysis, we built a fixed panel of 400 keywords across five commercial search modifier groups (“alternatives”, “best X for Y”, “price/cost”, “reviews”, and “brand vs brand”) and three industry categories(banking, ecommerce, and software).
Using Semrush U.S. desktop data, we tracked whether AI Overviews appeared for each keyword every month from September 2025 through August 2026 .
For the main analysis, we use keyword-weighted coverage — the share of keywords in each fixed group that triggered an AI Overview. We also measured volume-weighted coverage, which weights each keyword according to its monthly search volume.
From there, we measured:
- The share of keywords that triggered an AI Overview each month, by modifier and industry
- How coverage changed across the 12-month study period
- Differences across industry-and-modifier combinations
- Volume-weighted coverage to account for search demand behind each keyword
AI Overview coverage rose sharply across every commercial modifier
All of the modifier groups in our study finished above 80% coverage, and the gap between them narrowed. In September 2025, coverage ranged from 30.14% for “reviews” to 63.41% for "brand vs brand". By August 2026, the range was 82.05% to 96.12%.
A year ago, the searches we tracked that included “reviews” saw an AI Overview just 30% of the time. Now, AI Overviews appear in those search results nearly 90% of the time. That 59-point increase was the highest jump of any modifier group.
“Best X for Y” searches finished with the highest coverage of any modifier, at 96.12%, with the second highest increase, at 53.4 points.
While "brand vs brand" had the highest coverage a year ago, those queries have grown the least, up 23.18 points.
What this means for SEO teams
Expect an AI Overview above organic results on nearly any commercial keyword you target. That now includes searches for reviews, which went from the least likely modifier to trigger an AI Overview to the second most likely.
Track your mentions in the AI Overviews for key searches, and check which sources get cited. Then, make sure your own pages and the third-party pages that mention you describe your product accurately.
AI Overview coverage across industries has reached similar levels
In our study, we looked at banking, ecommerce, and software keywords to see if and how the industry impacted the trend for AI Overviews. The results didn’t show much difference. By August 2026, all three industries landed between 85% and 91% coverage.
A year ago, there was a wider range of coverage rates between these industries. However, as each category became more saturated, that gap has shrunk.
In September 2025, keyword coverage ranged from 32.62% in ecommerce to 68% in software. That was a gap of more than 35 percentage points across the three verticals.
By August 2026, all three industries were above 85%, and the difference between the highest and lowest was less than six percentage points.
This suggests that whether a searcher’s comparing options for a coffee maker, a CRM solution, or a credit card, they’re just as likely to see an AI Overview that consolidates and summarizes the commercial information for them.
Some industry-and-modifier combinations are already saturated
By August 2026, three industry-and-modifier combinations from our sample had reached 100% keyword-weighted coverage, meaning that every searcher saw an AI Overview. These were:
- "Best X for Y" searches in banking
- “Alternatives” searches in software
- “Best X for Y" searches in software
Three combinations have remained below 80%:
- “Alternatives” for banking at 65%
- “Price/cost” for ecommerce at 71.43%
- “Reviews” for software at 75%.
However, all three of these groups have still risen substantially over the last 12 months. Ecommerce price/cost keywords, for example, rose from 4.76% in September 2025 to 71.43% in August 2026.
Banking reviews moved even further, from 13.79% to 89.66%. All 15 combinations finished higher than they started.
What this means
While a few segments have lower coverage than others, most corners of commercial search are now being covered by AI Overviews. If the past year’s trend holds, expect the remaining gaps to keep closing.
Weighted by search volume, coverage hit 97%
AI Overviews appeared on 97.08% of estimated commercial searches in August 2026 when weighted by search volume. This is up from 88% when every keyword was weighted equally.
Because some keywords are searched much more often than others, weighting each query according to its estimated monthly search volume reveals that the highest-demand commercial searches in the dataset were more likely to surface an AI Overview.
The pattern appears across all five modifier groups:
Keyword-weighted coverage shows how widespread AI Overviews are. Volume-weighted coverage shows how much search demand they reach.
In August 2026, the 12% of keywords that did not trigger an AI Overview accounted for less than 3% of total search volume.
In other words, keyword counts alone may understate the rate of AI Overviews.
This matters for SEO teams, as the queries with the most commercial demand may also be the ones where traditional organic visibility is most likely to compete for visibility with an AI-generated answer.
What this means for SEO teams targeting commercial-intent search
AI Overviews should be expected across the middle and bottom of the commercial search funnel, and teams should adapt to this reality.
Your site may already have comparison pages, alternatives roundups, pricing guides, and listicles already intended to rank for these commercial searches.
While ranking number one likely won’t lead to as much traffic as it did this time last year, this type of content will still have a role to play in influencing the AI summary.
Take this example for the search term “mailchimp vs klaviyo.”.
The AI Overview cites Klaviyo’s own guide for the option “Choose Klaviyo if…” However, it cites a third-party website (Zapier) when it says “Choose Mailchimp if you run a general small business…” . The other prominent citations are a YouTube video and another third party site.
AI Overviews compiled these summaries from multiple sources. The answer people see when searching “[your brand] vs. [competitor]” can draw on YouTube videos, reddit threads, and review sites, as well as your own site and your competitor’s.
Here’s how to influence your AI Overview visibility:
- Track AI Overview visibility alongside traditional rankings. Analyze mentions, citations, and sentiment for the commercial queries you already target.
- Map the sources AI Overview uses in its answers. Identify the review platforms, industry roundups, videos, community discussions, and competitor sites that get cited.
- Keep your commercial-intent content updated. Update comparison pages and pricing guides, and structure them so Google can pull clean passages. Outdated details give the AI Overview room to misrepresent you.
- Partner with YouTube creators. Product and service reviews on YouTube show up as cited sources, so reach out to YouTube channels your audience already trusts to review your product or service.
- Earn more reviews on the sites AI Overviews cite. Find which review platforms appear as sources for your commercial queries, then check each platform’s review guidelines. Where requests are allowed, invite every customer after a purchase or onboarding.
Semrush lets you track your AI Overview visibility and find competitive opportunities. Try it today with a free 7-day trial.
