Semrush Reports Rise in AI Overviews for Commercial Searches

AI Overviews appeared on 88% of the commercial keywords tracked in a Semrush study, compared with 46% previously. The increase spans searches using five commercial modifiers, including terms related to reviews, pricing and comparisons. The findings point to a change in how often Google’s AI-generated summaries are present for the queries included in the research.

The overall increase was 42 percentage points. In relative terms, the later figure was nearly twice the earlier one. Those figures describe the share of tracked keywords with an AI Overview, rather than the share of users who saw, read or clicked on a particular result. The distinction matters when evaluating what the study can tell marketers about search visibility.

Semrush examined commercial search modifiers, which are terms added to searches to express a more specific purpose. The categories highlighted in the study include searches about reviews, prices and comparisons. The supplied summary does not provide separate figures for each category, so the overall change should not be treated as the increase for every individual modifier.

The reported percentages also apply to the keywords Semrush tracked. They do not, on their own, establish how frequently AI Overviews appear for every commercial query or for a specific company’s target searches. The summary does not identify the study’s keyword count, measurement dates or other sampling details, which would be useful context for interpreting the results.

For marketing teams, the findings provide a reason to examine search results by query type rather than relying only on an overall figure. A review-related search and a pricing-related search can serve different information needs. Teams can check which of their tracked searches show an AI Overview and assess those results alongside the other information available to potential customers.

What this means for marketers

Review a representative set of commercial keywords, including relevant review, pricing and comparison terms, to see where AI Overviews appear. Record the results by category and revisit them over time. Use those observations alongside your own search-performance data; the Semrush figures alone do not show an effect on any individual site’s traffic or conversions.