What is the Share of the AI Overview Feature in Google Search Results?
On May 14, 2024, Google announced the nationwide rollout of AI Overview to all search users in the United States. Previously, this feature was exclusive to the Search Labs section, used for testing experimental features.
Despite the general discontent with the low quality of AI Overview responses, this feature is poised for global expansion. Besides, Google has already announced the upcoming integration of ads products into its AI-generated snippets, which indicates they are here to stay.
There has been a lot of talk around the impact of AI Overview on SERPs, conversions, and SEO. Given its limited presence, one critical question arises: how many search queries actually receive an AI-generated response? The short answer is that there are no official and first-party statistics, and likely never will be. However, a few independent researchers have already conducted studies on the topic.
Statistics on AI Overview from Semrush
First of all: the popular statement about AI Overview showing in less than 0.5% search results is inaccurate. This data originates from Semrush, specifically Semrush Sensor, a service that tracks various SERP features across multiple industries in several countries, including the United States, and lists a percentage of occurrences for each feature relative to the total number of search results.
Thing is, Semrush Sensor tracks the presence of each SERP feature separately for desktop and mobile devices. Tracking of AI Overview occurrences in Semrush began on May 17, 2024, and their number was indeed below 0.5% in the first few days, but only for desktop devices. For mobile devices that account for a majority of search traffic, this metric was significantly higher from the outset.
So, according to Semrush, AI Overview appears in approximately 0.76% of desktop search results (data as of May 29), and about 1.08% of mobile SERPs (effective 28th of May).
ZipTie’s Claims about the Share of AI Overview
Another frequently cited source about the frequency of AI Overview in search results comes from ZipTie, a startup that introduced a feature for SEOs to check the presence of AI Overview snippets in SERPs for selected keywords they work with.
This information is, in fact, based on a single tweet from ZipTie co-founder Bartosz Góralewicz:
Góralewicz claimed to have conducted research of “25k eCommerce queries” and found that almost 16% of queries from that sample returned AI Overview snippets. However, neither Góralewicz nor his team has published a full paper that would contain the details on their methodology or sample selection method. He also did not clarify what they meant by “ecommerce queries.”
Final Thoughts
Based on the two sources discussed in this article, I can only conclude that there is currently no definitive evidence regarding the prevalence of AI Overview in search results. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Semrush provides general statistics across all Google searches, while ZipTie’s findings suggest that Google’s new AI feature may be rolling out more actively for certain types of queries, particularly ecommerce-related ones. Anyway, as Google expands AI Overview to more users, getting a website into a snippet will become (already has) another task for SEOs.
