Does a low AI Overview rate mean AEO does not matter?

No. Consumer Staples had a low AI Overview rate (6.82%) but the second-highest AI referral share (1.91%), so assistants such as ChatGPT can matter even where Google shows few AI Overviews. Exposure on Google does not predict traffic from assistants, so measure both.

Why are some industries blank in the charts?

The source did not publish a figure for them. We show a gap instead of guessing.

What should I do first?

Measure your own AI referral traffic and test your buyers’ questions in the main assistants. Then focus on being the clearest, best-sourced answer to those questions: Google says nothing special is needed beyond helpful content that is indexable, and research suggests citations, quotations and statistics can raise visibility.

Does AEO replace SEO?

No. Ahrefs found 37.9% of AI Overview citations came from pages ranking in the top 10, so ranking still helps, but many cited pages rank elsewhere. AEO builds on SEO by making answers clearer, better sourced and easier for machines to read.

How do I measure AEO progress?

Track AI referral sessions in analytics, test a fixed list of questions on several assistants each month and record whether you are named, cited or absent, and watch branded search growth. No single metric captures it yet.

How long does AEO take to show results?

The studies we cite do not measure time to results, so we do not give a number. Content changes can be picked up within weeks in some assistants, and platform behaviour can shift just as fast, which is why monthly testing matters.

Is AEO worth it for a local business?

Local, transactional searches show the fewest AI Overviews, so exposure there is lower. But assistants are used for research before choosing a provider, and AI referrals to travel, banking and retail grew sharply in Adobe’s data, so the early groundwork is cheap compared with the upside.

The Open Index · AEO

Which industries win with answer engine optimization?

“Success with AEO” has three measurable sides: exposure (do AI answers appear), traffic (do assistants send visits) and conversion (do those visits become customers). Public data covers the first two well and the third poorly. Here is what ten studies say, industry by industry.

Headline number

48.75% vs 4.48%

AI Overview rate: Health Care against Real Estate

Conductor, 2025

Preferred sourceSee more of our research on Google.Add Webtec as a preferred source in one click.

Written byKris GjorgjioskiKeyword research and industry benchmarks, Webtec Research
Checked byHristijan NajcheskiHead of SEO and AEO (technical and AI SEO), data verification

Updated October 15, 2026 · Edition 1Refreshed quarterly · next January 2027

Built from research on

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THE SHORT ANSWER

Three findings that change how you think about it.

Exposure leader

Health Care

AI Overviews appeared on 48.75% of Health Care searches, nearly twice the 25.11% average across industries.^[1]

Traffic leader

Information Technology

AI assistants sent 2.80% of IT website visits, the highest of ten industries and over twice the 1.08% average. Semiconductors reached 4.09% and software 3.37%.^[1],[2]

The surprise

Exposure is not traffic

Consumer Staples shows few AI Overviews (6.82%) yet the second-highest AI referral share (1.91%). Utilities is the reverse: 25.4% and 0.35%.^[1]

EXPLORE

Both measures, industry by industry.

Switch the measure. Gaps are industries the source did not publish a figure for.

How often Google shows an AI Overview

Share of searches that trigger an AI Overview. Higher means more answers shown before the links.

Health Care48.75%
Financials25.79%
Utilities25.4%
Information Technology11.4%
Consumer Staples6.82%
Real Estate4.48%
Communication ServicesNot stated in the source
Consumer DiscretionaryNot stated in the source
IndustrialsNot stated in the source
MaterialsNot stated in the source

All industries combined: 25.11%

SourceConductor · 2025 Conductor · 2025

How much traffic AI assistants send

Share of all website visits that arrive from AI chatbots and answer engines. Small everywhere, highest in technology.

Information Technology2.8%
Consumer Staples1.91%
Utilities0.35%
Communication Services0.25%
Health CareNot stated in the source
FinancialsNot stated in the source
Real EstateNot stated in the source
IndustrialsNot stated in the source

All industries combined: 1.08%

SourceConductor · 2025

THE EXPOSURE MAP

Five measures in one table, with the gaps left visible.

Everything the public studies publish by industry. n/s means not stated by the source.

Industry	AI Overviews	AI referral share	Who gets cited	AI referral growth
Health Care	48.75%	Not stated	Clinics and health publishers lead	n/s
Financials	25.79%	Not stated	NerdWallet 6.73% of citations	Banking: +1,200%
Information Technology	11.4%	2.80%	Google 5.34% of citations	n/s
Consumer Staples (retail)	6.82%	1.91%	Amazon 17.99% of citations	US retail: +1,300%
Utilities	25.4%	0.35%	Brand mentions concentrated in a few firms	n/s
Real Estate	4.48%	Not stated	Hines 11.62% of citations	n/s
Communication Services	Not stated	0.25%	YouTube and Reddit lead	n/s
Travel and hospitality	Not stated	Not stated	Not published	Travel: +1,700%

Sources: Conductor for AI Overviews, referral share and citations;^[1],[2] Adobe for growth, which covers travel, retail and banking only.^[3]

GROWTH AND DEMAND

Where AI traffic is growing fastest, and who is using it.

Growth in AI referral traffic by sector

Adobe Analytics, growth over the periods shown, from a small base.

Travel, leisure and hospitality (Feb 2025 vs Jul 2024)+1,700%
US retail (Nov to Dec 2024 vs a year earlier)+1,300%
US retail (Feb 2025 vs Jul 2024)+1,200%
Banking (Feb 2025 vs Jul 2024)+1,200%

SourceAdobe · 2025

Technology sub-industries: AI referral share

Within the leading industry, semiconductors and software get far more AI traffic than hardware.

Semiconductors4.09%
Software and services3.37%
Technology hardware0.99%

SourceConductor · 2025

DEMAND SIDE

The audience is younger and more educated.

Pew found 34% of US adults had used ChatGPT by spring 2025: 58% of under-30s, 41% of 30 to 49, 25% of 50 to 64 and 10% of those 65 and over, and about half of adults with a degree against 18% with a high school education or less.^[6] Industries whose buyers skew younger or professional feel AI traffic first.

CLICKS

The click loss is real and uneven.

Pew saw regular result clicks fall from 15% to 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared.^[5] Seer saw organic CTR on informational queries fall from 1.76% to 0.61%, with cited brands doing better than uncited ones.^[8] Industries with many informational queries are most exposed.

THE INDUSTRIES WE SERVE

What the public data says about yours.

Mappings are approximate: public studies use their own industry categories. Where no figure exists, we leave it out.

Industry	Closest public measure	Figure	Source
Financial advisors, wealth and investment firms	Financials: searches showing an AI Overview	25.79%	Conductor · 2025
	Financials: most-cited domain (NerdWallet) share of AI citations	6.73%	Conductor · 2025
	Banking: growth in AI referral traffic, Feb 2025 vs Jul 2024	+1,200%	Adobe · 2025
Dental and orthodontics	Health Care: searches showing an AI Overview	48.75%	Conductor · 2025
	Health Care: most-cited domains	Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Healthline	Conductor · 2025
Medical practices and clinics	Health Care: searches showing an AI Overview	48.75%	Conductor · 2025
	Health Care: most-cited domains	Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Healthline	Conductor · 2025
SaaS and software	IT: AI referral share of website traffic	2.80%	Conductor · 2025
	Software and services: AI referral share	3.37%	Conductor · 2025
	Software and services: searches showing an AI Overview	10.8%	Conductor · 2025
E-commerce	Consumer Staples: searches showing an AI Overview	6.82%	Conductor · 2025
	Consumer Staples: AI referral share of traffic	1.91%	Conductor · 2025
	US retail: AI referral traffic growth, Nov to Dec 2024	+1,300%	Adobe · 2025
	US retail: AI-referred visits convert vs other traffic	9% lower	Adobe · 2025
	Shopping keywords showing an AI Overview	Under 3%	Semrush · 2025
Law firms	Law and government: AI Overview coverage	Rising, no exact figure	Semrush · 2025
Construction and remodeling	Industrials: most-cited domains	Deloitte, Indeed, McKinsey, Wolters Kluwer, Siemens	Conductor · 2025
Engineering and architecture	Industrials: most-cited domains	Deloitte, Indeed, McKinsey, Wolters Kluwer, Siemens	Conductor · 2025

WHAT TO DO

Where to start, whatever your industry.

1
Measure your AI traffic
Segment analytics by AI referrers and track it monthly. Our referral page shows how.
2
Test your buyers’ questions
Ask the main assistants what your customers ask. See whether you are named, and who is.
3
Be the clearest source
Research found citations, quotations and statistics can raise visibility by up to 40%, varying by domain.^[9]
4
Do the basics
Be indexable with helpful, people-first content. Google says nothing special is required for AI Overviews.^[10]

Ahrefs found only 38% of AI Overview citations come from top-10 pages, so even sites that do not rank first can be cited for the related questions they answer well.^[7]

Measure AI traffic See our AEO service Book a call

OUR INTERPRETATION

What we make of the numbers.

The figures above are the studies’. This part is our reading of them, kept separate so you can disagree.

Webtec Research

Our interpretation

Kris GjorgjioskiKeyword research and benchmarks
Hristijan NajcheskiTechnical SEO, data checks

Figures: the cited studies
Reading: ours

The figures on this page come from the cited studies. This reading of them is ours, and you may weigh it differently.

The table on this page is an exposure map, not a promise of results. It combines what public studies say about how often AI answers appear, how much traffic assistants send and how concentrated citations are in each industry.

Where all three are high, as in Health Care and technology, AEO is already a core channel. Where exposure is low but referral growth is high, as in travel and retail, it is an early-mover opportunity. Where all three are low, the fundamentals of local search and reviews still carry the work.

No industry here is safe to ignore. The question is timing and priority.

Use the exposure map to decide priority, not to promise results
Start with answer pages for your five most valuable questions
Review the exposure map every quarter as new data lands

Cite this page.

Please link back and credit Webtec Research.

CITE THIS PAGE

Webtec Research. (2026, October 15). Which industries win with AEO? The numbers, by industry. The Open Index by Webtec. https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/aeo-by-industry/

Webtec Research. “Which industries win with AEO? The numbers, by industry.” The Open Index by Webtec, 15 Oct. 2026, https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/aeo-by-industry/.

@misc{webtec_open_index,
  author = {{Webtec Research}},
  title = {Which industries win with AEO? The numbers, by industry},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  howpublished = {The Open Index by Webtec},
  url = {https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/aeo-by-industry/}
}

<a href="https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/aeo-by-industry/">Which industries win with AEO? The numbers, by industry</a> (The Open Index by Webtec)

Questions about AEO by industry.

Question 1 of 9

Which industry benefits most from AEO?

It depends how you measure benefit. By exposure, Health Care leads: Conductor found AI Overviews on 48.75% of its searches (Sept 15 to Oct 12, 2025). By traffic from AI assistants, Information Technology leads at 2.80% of website visits, with semiconductors at 4.09%. By growth, Adobe measured AI referrals to travel up 1,700% and to US retail up 1,300% over the periods it reported. Public data on conversion by industry is thin, so we do not rank on it.

Question 3 of 9

Is there data on how well AI traffic converts by industry?

Only in pieces. Adobe found that AI-referred US retail visits were 9% less likely to convert than other traffic (down from a 43% gap in July 2024), with the highest AI conversion in electronics and jewelry and the lowest in apparel, home goods and grocery. Figures for other industries come from single-site case studies or vendor claims we could not verify, so we leave them out.

SOURCES

Sources and notes

10 sources on this page: 4 independent or official (grade A) and 6 vendor or agency studies with a disclosed method (grade B). Numbers in brackets in the text match the numbers below. We read every figure on the source’s own page. How we grade sources.

1
Conductor
The 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report
Vendor studyGrade BPublished 2025-11-13
Read the source
What we use:
AI Overview prevalence and AI referral share by industry; ChatGPT’s share of AI referrals; most-cited domains by industry.
Period:
May to Sept 2025 (AI Overviews: Sept 15 to Oct 12, 2025)
Sample:
13,770 enterprise domains in 10 industries; 17M AI responses and 100M+ citations; AI referral data from 1,215 domains (3.3B sessions, 35.7M AI sessions); 21.9M US Google searches for AI Overviews.
Read with care:
US data. AI Mode traffic is excluded because Google Analytics groups it with organic Google traffic. Some figures appear twice with different rounding; we use the more precise one.
2
Conductor
Information Technology AEO / GEO Benchmarks (2026)
Vendor studyGrade BPublished 2025-11-13
Read the source
What we use:
Sub-industry AI referral share and AI Overview prevalence for technology.
Period:
May to Sept 2025
Sample:
The IT industry and three sub-industries, from the same dataset as the main report.
3
Adobe
Adobe Analytics: Traffic to U.S. retail websites from Generative AI sources jumps 1,200 percent
Platform dataGrade BPublished 2025-03-17
Read the source
What we use:
Growth of AI referral traffic by sector, and how AI-referred visits behave.
Period:
Nov 2024 to Feb 2025
Sample:
More than 1 trillion visits to US retail sites; a survey of 5,000+ US respondents.
Read with care:
Measures clicks on AI links only. Engagement and bounce are not defined on the page.
4
Semrush
Semrush AI Overviews Study: What 2025 SEO Data Tells Us About Google’s Search Shift
Vendor studyGrade BPublished 2025-12-15
Read the source
What we use:
AI Overview prevalence over time and by category.
Period:
January to November 2025
Sample:
10M+ keywords for prevalence over time; industry figures are the share of each industry’s keywords that show an AI Overview.
Read with care:
The page gives exact figures for only some categories and contradicts itself on Health.
5
Pew Research Center
Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results
Independent researchGrade APublished 2025-07-22
Read the source
What we use:
Click and session behaviour with and without AI summaries; share of searches with a summary; which sources summaries cite.
Period:
March 2025
Sample:
900 US adults tracked in KnowledgePanel Digital; 68,879 Google searches.
Read with care:
A US panel; does not measure publisher revenue.
6
Pew Research Center
34% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, about double the share in 2023
Independent researchGrade APublished 2025-06-25
Read the source
What we use:
How many people use ChatGPT, by age and education.
Period:
Feb 24 to March 2, 2025
Sample:
5,123 US adults, American Trends Panel, weighted to the adult population.
7
Ahrefs
Update: 38% of AI Overview Citations Pull From The Top 10
Vendor studyGrade BPublished 2026-03-02
Read the source
What we use:
How many AI Overview citations come from pages ranking in the top 10.
Period:
AI Overviews as of January 2026
Sample:
863,000 keyword SERPs and 4M AI Overview URLs (Ahrefs Brand Radar).
Read with care:
Parsing method changed since the 2025 study, so the comparison is not like-for-like.
8
Seer Interactive
AIO Impact on Google CTR: September 2025 Update
Agency studyGrade BPublished 2025-11-04
Read the source
What we use:
Organic and paid CTR with and without AI Overviews, and the effect of being cited.
Period:
June 2024 to September 2025
Sample:
3,119 informational and educational search terms across 42 organizations; 25.1M organic and 1.1M paid impressions.
Read with care:
Retrospective cohort; paid sample is small; the page has small internal inconsistencies, so we use the Q3 2025 averages and endpoint values.
9
Aggarwal et al., arXiv (accepted to KDD 2024)
GEO: Generative Engine Optimization
Academic paperGrade APublished 2023-11-16
Read the source
What we use:
The first formal study of optimizing for generative engines; reports visibility gains of up to 40%.
Period:
v3 revised June 28, 2024
Sample:
GEO-bench, a benchmark of diverse queries across domains.
Read with care:
The authors note efficacy varies across domains.
10
Google Search Central
AI Features and Your Website
Platform documentationGrade APublished 2025-12-10
Read the source
What we use:
What Google says is and is not required to appear in AI features.
Period:
Documentation, last updated Dec 10, 2025
Sample:
Google’s own guidance for AI Overviews and AI Mode.

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A LIVING REFERENCE

Refreshed every quarter.

We re-check every source in January, April, July and October, add new studies and retire old ones. This is Edition 1 (October 15, 2026); the next is due January 2027. Changes are logged on the methodology page.