AI Overviews cover 88% of buying-intent searches, Zapier wins

Google's AI Overviews now appear on 88% of commercial keywords tracked by Semrush, up from 45.75% a year earlier. The growth is sharpest on "best X for Y", "brand vs brand" and "alternatives" searches, the exact moment shoppers compare options before buying. Worse for brand owners, these AI summaries often cite comparison sites, YouTube and tools like Zapier rather than the brand's own page.

What changed?

Semrush tracked the same 400 US desktop keywords every month for a year, split across banking, ecommerce and software, and across five commercial search types: alternatives, best X for Y, price or cost, reviews and brand vs brand. AI Overview coverage across these keywords reached 88% in August 2026, up from 45.75% in September 2025.

The growth wasn't even across search types, but it was consistent. "Best X for Y" coverage reached 96.12%, the highest of the five, while "brand vs brand" coverage rose 23.18 percentage points to more than 86%, and "brand alternatives" coverage rose 34 percentage points to more than 82%. All five commercial search types ended above 80% coverage, up from a range of 30% to 63% in September 2025.

Ecommerce brands saw the steepest rise of the three industries studied, with AI Overview coverage for ecommerce keywords climbing from nearly 33% to 85%. AI Overviews appeared for every tracked keyword in three specific groups: banking searches for "best X for Y", software searches for alternatives, and software searches for "best X for Y".

The picture gets starker once you weight by how many people actually search those terms. When weighted by estimated monthly search volume, AI Overview coverage reached 97% in August, compared with 88% when each keyword counted equally. It isn't a handful of obscure long-tail terms pulling the average up, it's the searches with the most traffic.

Separately, PPC Land's analysis of the same Semrush data flagged who actually gets cited on these pages. Review keywords triggering an AI Overview jumped from 30.14% to 89.04% in 12 months, and comparison pages now share answers with Zapier, YouTube and review sites. That's a pointed detail: a workflow automation tool and a video platform are showing up alongside, or instead of, the brands people are actually searching for.

Why does this matter for your business?

If your product or service shows up in "best X for Y" or "X vs Y" searches, those pages are no longer just a ranking contest between your site and a handful of competitors. They're now a contest to be the source Google's AI pulls into a written answer that sits above every blue link.

This is the bottom of the funnel, where people have narrowed their options and are close to a decision. These are the searches people run just before they buy, and the summary often quotes other websites, videos and review sites rather than the brand's own page.

That's the real risk. A customer researching your product against a rival's could get an AI-written answer built from a review site, a YouTube video or a third-party comparison tool, with your own product page barely mentioned. You can have the best landing page in your category and still lose the moment that matters if someone else is doing the talking on Google's behalf.

It also changes what "ranking well" means. Traditional SEO success on a comparison page used to mean a top-three blue link. Now it can mean nothing if Google's summary cites a third party instead of you, even when your page technically ranks. This gap has shown up elsewhere too: Google's AI Overviews now appear on nearly 80% of branded searches, according to Search Engine Land's coverage of DemandSphere data, so the pattern of AI summaries sitting between you and the customer is spreading from category research into brand-name searches as well.

What should you do now?

Start by checking whether your comparison, "best of" and "vs" pages are actually being cited when AI Overviews fire for your category, not just whether they rank in the traditional results. The two are no longer the same thing.

If third-party sites, tools or video content are winning those citations instead of you, that's a sign your own comparison content isn't structured or specific enough for Google's AI to lift directly. Clear, factual comparison tables, direct answers to questions like "is X better than Y for Z", and transparent pricing information tend to get quoted more easily than marketing copy.

Watch your industry specifically. By August, coverage ranged from 85% to 91% across banking, ecommerce and software, so if you're in one of those sectors, assume most of your comparison-stage searches already carry an AI Overview, whether you've checked recently or not.

This is also a good moment to check your own AI visibility across the queries that matter to your business, which is exactly what Sited's free audit at https://sited.online is built to show, rather than guessing from anecdotal searches.

Finally, don't treat this as a one-off study to file away. Semrush tracked this monthly for a year precisely because coverage kept climbing, and there's no reason to assume it plateaus at 88%, especially on high-volume terms already sitting close to full coverage.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a commercial keyword in this study?

Semrush defined commercial keywords as searches tied to five specific modifiers: alternatives, best X for Y, price or cost, reviews, and brand vs brand comparisons. It tracked 400 of these keywords across banking, software and ecommerce topics from September 2025 to August 2026. These are distinct from purely informational searches or final transactional searches like "buy now" queries.

Does this mean AI Overviews are taking over all shopping-related search?

Not entirely, but coverage is now the default rather than the exception for comparison-stage searches. All five commercial search types ended above 80% coverage, up from a range of 30% to 63% in September 2025. Transactional, ready-to-buy searches weren't part of this particular study, so the picture there may differ.

Why does it matter who gets cited, not just whether an AI Overview appears?

Appearing in the search results doesn't guarantee your brand is mentioned inside the AI-generated summary. Analysis of the same dataset found that comparison pages now share answers with Zapier, YouTube and review sites, meaning brands can rank well traditionally while a third party gets quoted in the AI answer that most people actually read.

Which industry should be most concerned?

Ecommerce saw the sharpest rise of the three industries tracked, with AI Overview coverage for ecommerce keywords rising from nearly 33% to 85%, the largest increase among the three. Banking and software also now sit at similarly high coverage levels.

How was this study conducted?

Semrush used a fixed, repeatable methodology rather than a one-off snapshot. It tracked the same 400 US desktop keywords across five commercial search types and three industries from September 2025 through August 2026, and the findings reflect this sample, not all commercial searches.