Semrush: AI Overviews Nearly Double on Commercial Keywords

Semrush tracked 400 commercial US keywords across banking, software, and ecommerce monthly from September 2025 through August 2026, and found that AI Overview coverage rose from 45.75% to 88%, a 1.92x increase, PPC Land reported on October 22. Volume-weighted coverage reached 97.08%, meaning the keywords without an AI Overview accounted for less than 3% of total search volume.

Semrush grouped the keywords into five intent types: alternatives, brand-vs-brand comparisons, best-X-for-Y recommendations, pricing and cost, and reviews. Reviews saw the sharpest jump, climbing from 30.14% to 89.04%, while best-X-for-Y rose from 42.72% to 96.12%. Brand-vs-brand comparisons grew more modestly, from 63.41% to 86.59%.

By industry, software reached 91% coverage, banking 89%, and ecommerce 85.11%, all up sharply from a year earlier, when ecommerce stood at just 32.62% and software at 68%. Three specific combinations, banking's best-X-for-Y queries and software's alternatives and best-X-for-Y queries, hit 100% coverage.

Volume-weighted figures broke out by type as well, with best-X-for-Y reaching 98% and brand-vs-brand reaching 99%, suggesting AI Overviews are even more likely to appear on higher-volume searches. Semrush illustrated the brand comparison pattern with a Mailchimp vs. Klaviyo screenshot, showing an AI Overview drawing on both companies' sites along with Reddit threads and review sites.

The study covered US desktop data only and did not track clicks, traffic, or conversions. Semrush did not disclose how many keywords fell into each type-industry combination, and the article noted this makes some of the 100% cells, drawn from what could be a small sample, harder to generalize. Semrush also sells AI-visibility tracking tools, a detail worth keeping in mind when reading its own recommendations.

In Korea

The gap in AI Overview exposure between keyword types widened sharply over the past year, now backed by hard numbers. Brands competing on review or recommendation-style queries in particular may want to check not just their rankings, but how their content is being summarized inside AI Overviews.

Source: PPC Land, October 22, 2026. Checked October 23, 2026. Read the original