Last updated June 2026.
The answer box is the new first position, and the numbers below tell you exactly how fast it is growing and what it costs you to be absent from it.
Every statistic in this piece has a named source and year. Where a figure comes from a single vendor’s proprietary dataset, that caveat appears inline. No number here is invented or extrapolated.
How to read this stat bank
Three important caveats apply to all AI Overview prevalence figures:
- Query sample matters. A dataset of broad navigational queries produces very different AI Overview rates than a dataset of commercial-intent buying queries.
- Measurement method matters. Different trackers (BrightEdge, Semrush, Peec AI) use different keyword panels, geographies, and detection methods.
- Vendor provenance matters. Several figures below come from companies that sell AEO software. They are included with attribution and notes, not endorsed as industry-wide benchmarks.
With those caveats stated, here is what the data actually says.
Section 1: AI Overview prevalence
Full stat table: AI Overview appearance rates
| Statistic | Metric | Engine | Source | Year | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ~48% of monitored queries triggered AI Overviews | Prevalence across all query types | Google AI Overviews | BrightEdge (tracked keyword panel) | February 2026 | Single-vendor proprietary panel; other trackers report materially lower figures |
| ~30% of monitored queries triggered AI Overviews one year earlier | Year-ago baseline | Google AI Overviews | BrightEdge (tracked keyword panel) | February 2025 | Same panel and caveats as above |
| ~58% year-over-year growth in AI Overview prevalence | Growth rate | Google AI Overviews | BrightEdge (derived from 30% to 48% movement) | Feb 2025 to Feb 2026 | Derived from same proprietary panel |
| 86.7% of commercial buying-intent queries triggered AI Overviews | Prevalence on commercial queries | Google AI Overviews | Peec AI (500k prompts, April 2026) | May 2026 | Dataset deliberately skewed toward purchase-intent queries; excludes navigational; substantially higher than all-query studies |
| Peak coverage near 24.6% across 10M+ keywords | Prevalence across broad keyword set | Google AI Overviews | Semrush (10M+ keyword study) | July 2025 | Broader, methodologically distinct study; lower figure reflects more navigational query mix |
What those numbers actually mean
BrightEdge and Semrush are studying different universes of queries, which is why one reports ~48% and the other peaks near 25%. Neither number is wrong. They are measuring different things.
Peec AI’s 86.7% figure is the most striking, but it carries the heaviest caveat: the 500,000 prompts in that dataset were collected across April 13-20, 2026, from a sample explicitly built around buying-intent and commercial searches, excluding navigational queries. That is exactly the slice of the query universe where AI Overviews appear most often, so the number is accurate for that lens but cannot be generalized to all Google searches.
Section 2: Zero-click rates
Full stat table: zero-click data
| Statistic | Metric | Engine | Source | Year | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ~83% average zero-click rate when an AI Overview is present | Zero-click rate, AI Overview-triggered queries | Google AI Overviews | Similarweb (clickstream analysis) | May 2025 | Similarweb does not disclose full sample size, time period, or geographic scope for this figure |
| ~60% zero-click rate when no AI Overview is present | Baseline zero-click rate | Google (no AI Overview) | Similarweb (clickstream analysis) | May 2025 | Same caveats as above |
| 92-94% zero-click rate inside Google AI Mode | Zero-click rate, AI Mode sessions | Google AI Mode | Semrush (analysis of ~69M US desktop sessions, May-July 2025, Datos clickstream data) | 2025 | US desktop only; Searchless.ai collaboration; observational study |
| 68% of US Google searches ended without a click in early 2026 | Overall zero-click rate across all searches | Google (all searches) | SparkToro / Rand Fishkin (Similarweb clickstream data, Jan-Apr 2026) | June 2026 | Up from ~58-60% in 2024 |
The zero-click floor is rising
The SparkToro June 2026 figure (68% of US searches end without a click) is the broadest available data point, covering all query types. When you narrow to queries where an AI Overview fires, Similarweb’s 2025 analysis puts the zero-click rate at 83%. Inside Google AI Mode, which is an even more expansive AI-first experience, Semrush found 92-94% of sessions ended without any click to an external website.
That progression (68% overall, 83% with AI Overview, 92-94% in AI Mode) is the core pressure driving urgency around AEO.
Section 3: Click lift from being cited
Full stat table: citation click impact
| Statistic | Metric | Engine | Source | Year | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +120% more organic clicks per impression when cited vs. uncited on same SERP | Click premium for cited pages | Google AI Overviews | Seer Interactive (53 brands, 5.47M tracked queries, 2.43B impressions, Jan 2025-Feb 2026) | 2026 | Single agency proprietary dataset; Seer notes correlation, not proven causation |
| ~38% fewer clicks per impression on an AI Overview SERP vs. a non-AI Overview SERP | Net click penalty even for cited pages | Google AI Overviews | Seer Interactive (same study) | 2026 | Same dataset and caveat |
| Organic CTR fell 61% (from 1.76% to 0.61%) for AI Overview queries | Organic CTR decline | Google AI Overviews | Seer Interactive (September 2025 study) | 2025 | Seer proprietary agency data |
Being cited helps, but it does not make you whole
The Seer Interactive data tells a precise and uncomfortable story. When a Google AI Overview appears, uncited pages lose the most. Cited pages recover substantial ground (+120% more clicks than uncited peers on the same SERP) but still underperform equivalent pages on SERPs where no AI Overview appeared at all, by about 38%.
The practical implication: getting cited is necessary for staying visible, but the existence of the AI Overview itself compresses the click pool for everyone. You are fighting for a larger share of a smaller pie.
Section 4: AI Overviews and buyer behavior
| Statistic | Metric | Engine / Context | Source | Year | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 51% of B2B software buyers now start research in an AI chatbot | Share starting research in AI | AI chatbots generally | G2 “The Answer Economy” (survey of 1,076 B2B software buyers, March 2026) | April 2026 | G2 is a software review marketplace with commercial interest; no independent replication |
| 29% of B2B buyers started research in an AI chatbot one year earlier | Prior-year baseline | AI chatbots generally | G2 “The Answer Economy” (prior wave) | April 2025 | Same caveat as above |
| 69% of B2B buyers chose a different vendor than initially planned based on AI chatbot guidance | Changed vendor selection | AI chatbots generally | G2 “The Answer Economy” (April 2026) | 2026 | Same caveat; survey-based, not behavioral |
The G2 data is from a marketplace with an interest in demonstrating AI search importance. Include that context when citing it. The directional signal (B2B buyers starting research in AI at roughly double the prior-year rate) aligns with independent behavioral data, which makes the G2 figure plausible even if the exact percentages may shift in future independent replication.
Section 5: Citation overlap and engine diversity
| Statistic | Metric | Engines | Source | Year | Caveat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Only 13.7% overlap between AI Overview and AI Mode citations | Cross-surface citation overlap | Google AI Overviews vs. Google AI Mode | Ahrefs (540,000 query pairs, September 2025 US data) | December 2025 | Ahrefs Brand Radar tool; US data only |
| Only ~12% of AI-cited URLs also rank in Google top 10 | Citation-to-rank overlap | ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity (combined) | Ahrefs (15,000 long-tail queries) | August 2025 | Non-Perplexity engines average closer to 8%; Perplexity outlier at ~29% |
These two Ahrefs figures matter for AEO strategy. The 13.7% overlap between AI Overviews and AI Mode means winning one does not automatically give you the other: they draw from mostly different source pools. The 12% Google top-10 overlap means most AI citations go to pages that do not rank well organically, which is why traditional SEO alone does not guarantee AI visibility.
What this means for your AEO program
The statistics above converge on three practical conclusions:
- AI Overviews are standard, not exceptional. At 48% of all monitored queries (BrightEdge) and 86.7% of commercial queries (Peec AI), AI Overviews are now the default experience for anyone searching with buying intent, not an edge case.
- Zero-click is the baseline condition. With 83% zero-click on AI Overview-triggered queries and 92-94% in AI Mode, the question is not whether zero-click affects you: it is whether you are cited and therefore visible in the answer itself.
- Being cited is the new ranking. Seer Interactive’s +120% click premium for cited pages versus uncited peers on the same SERP is the clearest evidence that AI Overview citation is the metric that replaces keyword rank as the unit of presence.
Tracking which answer boxes you are losing and building the content and schema to win them back is the core AEO loop.
Tools that track these metrics
Temso ($89/mo) is the easiest starting point for teams that want to close this loop end-to-end: it monitors AI Overview citations across eight engines, shows you which answer boxes competitors are winning that you are losing, and delivers the FAQ schema, content fixes, and citation-building steps to win them back, all in one flat subscription. No separate tools needed for monitoring versus execution.
Peec AI (from EUR 85/mo) is the tool whose commercial-query dataset produced the 86.7% figure cited in this article. It offers daily tracking across nine-plus engines with strong commercial-intent depth and is built for agencies managing multiple client accounts.
SE Visible (part of SE Ranking, from $129/mo) tracks daily AI visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity, with cached AI answer copies and competitor benchmarking.
Profound ($399/mo, Growth plan) provides enterprise citation intelligence including Prompt Volumes (real demand data on what millions of users ask AI), citation maps, and autonomous content agents for teams with dedicated AEO headcount.
Knowatoa and Otto SEO are additional tools in the AEO monitoring space. Knowatoa focuses on brand mention tracking in AI answers. Otto SEO addresses on-page technical optimization for AI retrieval. Neither has a full tool profile on this site yet; check /rankings/aeo-tools for the current full ranked list.
Source summary
Every figure in this piece traces to one of the following primary sources:
| Source | What it measured | Published |
|---|---|---|
| BrightEdge, “AI Overviews at the One-Year Mark” | AI Overview prevalence across BrightEdge keyword panel | February 2026 |
| Peec AI, “AI Overviews is the most undertracked AI search: 500,000 prompts” | AI Overview prevalence on 500k commercial-intent prompts | May 2026 |
| Similarweb, “Zero-Click Searches and How They Impact Traffic” | Zero-click rates with and without AI Overviews | May 2025 |
| Semrush, “Google AI Mode”s Early Adoption and SEO Impact” | Zero-click rates in Google AI Mode (~69M US desktop sessions) | 2025 |
| SparkToro / Rand Fishkin, “In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click” | Overall zero-click rate across all US Google searches | June 2026 |
| Seer Interactive, “AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update” | Click delta for cited vs. uncited pages (53 brands, 2.43B impressions) | 2026 |
| Seer Interactive, September 2025 study | Organic CTR decline when AI Overviews appear | 2025 |
| G2, “The Answer Economy” | B2B buyer behavior, AI chatbot research share | April 2026 |
| Ahrefs, “Are AI Mode and AI Overviews Just Different Versions of the Same Answer?” | Citation overlap between AI Overviews and AI Mode (540k query pairs) | December 2025 |
| Ahrefs, “Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google”s Top 10” | Citation-to-rank overlap across four AI engines (15k queries) | August 2025 |
This stat bank will be updated as new primary-source data becomes available. For the full AEO tool rankings, methodology, and glossary, visit /rankings/aeo-tools, /methodology, and /glossary.
Ready to track your AI Overview citations? Start with Temso at $89/mo: five-minute setup, eight engines, the full AEO loop from monitoring through publishing the fix.