Google AI Overviews Jump From 26% to 80%+ of Branded Queries in a Month

According to DemandSphere's DemandMetrics tracking, reported by Search Engine Land on October 1, the share of branded search queries showing a Google AI Overview jumped from about 26% in early September to a peak of 90.48% on September 27, before settling into the 80% range by month's end (80.23% on the 28th, 82.06% on the 29th). The tracking covered branded keywords daily across all markets and devices.

Around the same time, separate testing by Nectiv co-founder Chris Long using SerpApi on 100 well-known brands — including Reddit, Salesforce, Mailchimp, and Facebook — found AI Overviews appearing for 93 of them, backing up a similar trend to DemandSphere's numbers.

Both studies measured only how often AI Overviews appeared, though — neither determined what actual effect this has on branded search click-through rates, the article noted.

"Branded queries" here means searches that directly include a company or product name. These searches traditionally skewed toward the official site or review pages appearing first, since the user's intent to find that specific brand was clear. This data shows AI Overviews are now moving quickly into that territory too.

Worth noting for brands here: once AI Overviews start appearing on brand-name searches too, it's worth checking what sources the AI is drawing on to summarize that brand. If the summary diverges from what's on the brand's own site, or mixes in outdated information, there's a real risk of a brand's own story getting garbled on a screen it doesn't control.

In Korea

This data is specific to Google Search, and since Naver holds a larger share of search in Korea, it doesn't translate directly. Still, for a brand with meaningful overseas revenue, it's worth checking whether a Google AI Overview appears for your own brand name — and if so, what it actually says.