Google Now Shows an AI Answer on 57.6% of Commercial Searches

Someone searches Google for "mortgage refinance rates" or "best payroll software". Before any company's link appears, the top of the page shows a block of AI-written text that answers the question, cites a few sources and pushes the regular results down. That block is an AI Overview.

For a business, this changes what a top ranking is worth. The first thing a searcher reads is increasingly Google's summary, not your page title and description, and a searcher who gets an answer from the summary has less reason to click. Knowing how often your searches trigger an AI Overview tells you how much of your search traffic now runs through Google's AI.

57.6% of Google searches for products and services show an AI Overview on desktop, and 61.2% do on mobile. The rate depends heavily on the industry, from 83.4% for software searches down to 34.4% for moving companies.

The study covers Google US results for 20,000 keywords customers type when they look for a product or service, spread across 24 industries from software and mortgages to plumbing and senior care, collected on September 23, 2026 through a licensed search data provider. For each keyword we recorded whether the results page included an AI Overview. We then checked the mobile results for the first 10,000 of those keywords to compare the two devices.

An AI Overview is the AI-generated summary Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the websites it draws from. Industry figures cover the 23 industries with at least 100 keywords each. Every rate is the share of searches whose results page included an AI Overview.

That is 11,512 of 20,000 results pages where Google's AI answer sits above the regular listings. These are not general knowledge questions. They are the searches small and mid-sized businesses rely on for leads: service names, product categories, prices and local providers.

When an AI Overview appears, the top organic result sits lower on the page, and the searcher has already read a summary before reaching it. A business that ranks first for these searches is now, more than half the time, ranking second to Google's own answer. Being one of the sources the AI Overview cites becomes part of winning the search.

For the same 10,000 keywords, 61.2% of mobile searches showed an AI Overview against 55.4% of desktop searches, a gap of 5.8 points. That works out to about 580 more results pages per 10,000 searches that open with an AI answer on a phone than on a computer.

The difference matters more than the numbers suggest, because a phone screen is short. On mobile, an AI Overview can fill most of the first screen, so the searcher sees Google's answer and little else before scrolling. For businesses whose customers search on their phones, such as local services, the mobile rate is the one to plan around.

Google shows an AI Overview on 83.4% of searches for software products, the highest rate of 23 industries. Real estate follows at 78.5%, mortgages at 72.4%, higher education at 70.2% and banking and loans at 66.2%. These are information-heavy purchases: buyers compare features, rates and terms before they decide, and Google answers those questions directly.

In these industries, most commercial searches now start with Google's summary. A software company or mortgage lender should assume that an AI Overview sits above its best rankings on more than two searches in three.

At the other end, Google shows an AI Overview on 34.4% of searches for moving companies, less than half the rate for software. Senior care follows at 35.2%, personal injury law at 38.8% and home remodeling at 40.7%. These are searches where people usually want a provider near them rather than an explanation, so Google leans on its map results and business listings instead.

Local services are not uniformly low, though. Searches for electricians show an AI Overview 70.9% of the time and pest control 68.7%, close to the top of the list, while plumbing sits at 49.3% and dental at 49%. Electrical and pest control searches often describe a problem as well as a service, and Google answers the problem with an AI Overview before it shows providers.

Check your own keywords. Search the phrases your customers use most, on a phone and on a computer, and note which ones open with an AI Overview and which websites it cites. If you sell software, real estate or financial products, expect most of those searches to show one, and plan for fewer clicks per ranking than you had before.

Then work to be cited inside the AI Overview, not only ranked below it. Pages that answer the question in the first few lines, with specific figures, prices or steps, are the ones Google's AI can quote. For local services with lower rates, the map listing and Google Business Profile still carry more weight, but review how your key searches look on mobile, where rates run higher.

As an ai seo company, Suff Digital tracks which of your keywords show an AI Overview and whether your website is one of its sources.

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