What share of Google searches show an AI Overview?

It depends on the study. Conductor found 25.11% of about 21.9M US searches between Sept 15 and Oct 12, 2025. Pew found 18% of the searches made by 900 US adults in March 2025. Semrush found 15.69% of 10M+ tracked keywords in November 2025, after a 24.61% peak in July. The differences come from the keyword sets, the dates and what is counted.

Which industry sees the most AI Overviews?

In Conductor’s data, Health Care leads at 48.75%, then Financials at 25.79% and Utilities at 25.4%. Real Estate is lowest at 4.48% and Consumer Staples at 6.82%. In Semrush’s November 2025 categories, Science leads at 25.96%, followed by Computers and electronics at 17.92%.

Why does industry matter so much?

Because AI Overviews mostly answer informational questions. Ahrefs notes that 99.2% of the keywords that trigger an AI Overview are informational, and Pew found 60% of searches that began with a question word produced a summary, against 8% of one- or two-word searches. Industries where people ask more questions see more of them.

Will these numbers stay the same?

No. Semrush’s data show prevalence rising from 6.49% in January 2025 to 24.61% in July, then settling at 15.69% in November, so treat any single figure as a snapshot and check the date.

Do I need to optimize differently for AI Overviews?

Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special schema or files are needed. The page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet, and Google recommends helpful, people-first content.

Why do three studies give three different numbers?

Conductor found AI Overviews on 25.11% of searches across all industries, Pew counted 18% of its panel’s searches in March 2025, and Semrush counted 15.69% of more than 10 million keywords in November. They use different keyword sets, different dates and different measures, so the spread reflects method, not error.

Which industries see the fewest AI Overviews?

Conductor found Real Estate at 4.48% and Consumer Staples at 6.82%, both far below the all-industry figure. Semrush also found real estate, shopping and arts under 3% of its tracked keywords.

Do question-style searches trigger more AI Overviews?

Yes. Pew found 60% of searches that begin with a question word produced an AI summary, against 8% of one- or two-word searches. The phrasing of the search matters as much as the topic.

Has the share been rising steadily?

No. Semrush’s tracked share moved from 6.49% to 24.61% and then to 15.69% across 2025 snapshots, so it rose sharply and then fell back. Google changes when it shows AI Overviews, so any single reading is a snapshot.

Does my industry’s rate decide my strategy?

It should inform it, not decide it. A low rate means fewer searches are answered in place, but assistants such as ChatGPT can still shape how buyers research you. Use the rate for exposure and the referral data for opportunity.

The Open Index · AI Overviews

How often does Google show an AI Overview in your industry?

Three studies, three overall numbers, and a clear pattern underneath: industry and question type decide exposure. Here is what each study found and why they differ.

Headline number

48.75%

of Health Care searches show an AI Overview, against 25.11% overall

Conductor, 2025

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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

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Semrush

THREE STUDIES, THREE NUMBERS

One question, answered three ways.

Share of searches (or keywords) that show an AI Overview, by who measured it.

Overall prevalence, by study

The studies bracket the truth between about 16% and 25%, depending on method.

Conductor: share of US searches (Sept to Oct 2025)25.11%
Pew: share of searches by 900 US adults (March 2025)18%
Semrush: share of 10M+ keywords (Nov 2025)15.69%

SourceConductor · 2025 Pew Research Center · 2025 Semrush · 2025

WHY THEY DIFFER

Different haystacks.

Conductor counts searches in its index (21.9M US searches, four weeks).^[1] Pew counts what 900 real people searched in a month, including everyday queries.^[2] Semrush counts the share of 10M+ tracked keywords, which skew to keywords marketers care about.^[3]

Within each study, comparisons between industries and over time are reliable. Across studies, compare direction, not decimals.

BY INDUSTRY

Health Care is in a class of its own.

Conductor, US searches, Sept 15 to Oct 12, 2025. All industries: 25.11%. Industries without a published figure show as gaps.

Share of searches showing an AI Overview

Health Care is about twice the average and eleven times Real Estate.

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

SourceConductor · 2025 Conductor · 2025

Inside Information Technology

Hardware queries trigger AI Overviews almost twice as often as software queries.

Technology hardware19.4%
Software and services10.8%

Overall IT: 11.4% of queries.^[4]

11.4%

of IT queries show an AI Overview

25.11%

across all industries

SourceConductor · 2025

BY TOPIC AND OVER TIME

Semrush sees the same shape, with its own categories.

The share of each category’s keywords showing an AI Overview, January to November 2025.

By category, November 2025

Only categories with exact figures are shown. Real estate, shopping and arts each sit under 3%.

Science25.96%
Computers and electronics17.92%
People and society17.29%
Food and drink11%
Real estate, shopping, arts and entertainmentNot stated in the source

SourceSemrush · 2025

All keywords through 2025

A fast rise to a July peak, then a settle. Snapshots, not a trend line.

SourceSemrush · 2025

THE REAL DRIVER

It is not the industry. It is the question.

Pew measured what share of searches produced an AI summary, by the kind of query.

AI summaries by query type

Long, question-style searches trigger summaries far more often than short ones.

Starts with a question word (who, what, when, why)60%
Searches of 10 or more words53%
Full sentences (a noun and a verb)36%
One- or two-word searches8%

SourcePew Research Center · 2025

WHAT IT MEANS

Industries with more questions see more AI.

Ahrefs reports that 99.2% of keywords that trigger an AI Overview are informational.^[5] Seer’s click studies are limited to informational and educational queries for the same reason.^[6]

Health, finance and technology are question-heavy, so they top the industry list. Real estate searches are mostly transactional or local, so they sit near the bottom. Your own mix of questions matters more than your industry label.

THE STUDIES SIDE BY SIDE

Compare the methods before you compare the numbers.

	Conductor	Pew Research	Semrush
What is counted	Share of US searches in its index	Share of searches by a panel of US adults	Share of tracked keywords
Period	Sept 15 to Oct 12, 2025	March 2025	Jan to Nov 2025
Sample	~21.9M searches; 13,770 domains	900 adults; 68,879 searches	10M+ keywords
Overall result	25.11%	18%	15.69% (Nov); 24.61% (Jul)
Industry view	Ten GICS-style industries	By query type and length	By topic category
Independence	Vendor study	Independent research	Vendor study

What to do with it: Google says nothing special is needed to appear in AI Overviews beyond being indexed and publishing helpful content.^[7] Use the industry numbers to judge how exposed your searches are, then measure your own. See what AI answers do to clicks and AEO by industry.

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 spread between industries is wider than the spread between studies, which is the point worth taking away. Health Care sits near half of all searches, while real estate sits in single digits. A strategy built on the all-industry average would be wrong for both.

Exposure follows the shape of the question. Industries where people ask what, why and how, such as health, finance and utilities, are answered in place most often. Industries where people search for a place, a product or a provider are answered least. That is also why local and shopping businesses see AI Overviews mostly on their research-stage searches.

Because the readings move from quarter to quarter, this page is refreshed every quarter and shows the date next to each figure.

Look up your industry’s exposure before choosing where to invest
Expect informational pages to lose clicks first
Re-check the figures each quarter, they move

Cite this page.

Charts have CSV downloads. Please link back and credit Webtec Research.

CITE THIS PAGE

Webtec Research. (2026, October 15). AI Overviews by industry: how often Google shows them. The Open Index by Webtec. https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/ai-overviews-by-industry/

Webtec Research. “AI Overviews by industry: how often Google shows them.” The Open Index by Webtec, 15 Oct. 2026, https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/ai-overviews-by-industry/.

@misc{webtec_open_index,
  author = {{Webtec Research}},
  title = {AI Overviews by industry: how often Google shows them},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  howpublished = {The Open Index by Webtec},
  url = {https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/ai-overviews-by-industry/}
}

<a href="https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/ai-overviews-by-industry/">AI Overviews by industry: how often Google shows them</a> (The Open Index by Webtec)

Questions about AI Overviews.

SOURCES

Sources and notes

7 sources on this page: 2 independent or official (grade A) and 5 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
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.
3
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.
4
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.
5
Ahrefs
AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%
Vendor studyGrade BPublished 2025-04-17
Read the source
What we use:
The first measurement of click loss for the top result when an AI Overview appears.
Period:
March 2024 vs March 2025
Sample:
300,000 keywords: 150,000 with an AI Overview and 150,000 informational keywords without one.
Read with care:
Desktop CTR, informational keywords, from Google Search Console data. Correlation, not proven cause.
6
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.
7
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.