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first published 2026-11-04
Second Opinion, episode 2: AI Overviews on 80% of Google searches? Half right
Do AI Overviews show on over 80% of Google searches? On questions and buying searches it's about that, in the UK too. Across all UK searches Ofcom counts about 30%. This is the written version of Second Opinion, episode 2, with every number from the video, where it came from and when, and all 40 questions I checked.
2,246 words · 10 min read · ai search
Transcript1,334 words
So there's a number going round at the moment, and if you run a business it's a frightening one. Over eighty per cent of Google searches now have an AI Overview on top. That was the headline on Search Engine Roundtable last week, it went round Reddit the day after, and by the time it reaches your inbox it's turned into: Google answers eight searches out of ten itself now, nobody clicks any more, so why are you still paying for SEO. This is Second Opinion. Every week I take whatever the big claim is, and I'll tell you what's actually true in it, what's rubbish, and then what I'd actually do about it on Monday.
So, where does eighty come from. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable put three lots of data next to each other, Semrush, SE Ranking and seoClarity, and two of them are proper studies, so let's look at those rather than at the headline.
Semrush tracked four hundred commercial searches in America for a year. The buying kind. Best such-and-such for, this versus that, pricing, reviews, alternatives. In September last year forty-six per cent of them had an AI Overview. By August this year, eighty-eight per cent. It nearly doubled in twelve months. And if you weight it by how often people actually type those phrases, it's ninety-seven. So on the searches where somebody's about to spend money, in America, it's basically all of them.
SE Ranking did brand names. A thousand of them, each one checked three times in October. Eighty-two and a half per cent had an AI Overview. So someone types the name of a company, and Google writes them a paragraph about the company before they get to the company's own website.
And then the part that actually matters, which is what it does to the click. Ahrefs took three hundred thousand keywords, desktop, and compared December twenty twenty-three with December twenty twenty-five. Where there's an AI Overview, the page in position one gets fifty-eight per cent fewer clicks than it would have done without it. Pew Research got to the same place a different way. They followed nine hundred Americans' real searches for a month. With an AI summary on the page, people clicked a normal result eight per cent of the time. Without one, fifteen. So about half.
So, to be fair, that's a lot of true. On the searches that make money it's about eighty, it's still going up, and when it's there the click roughly halves. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. And before anyone says, yeah, but that's America. I did a count.
Ahrefs keeps a copy of the results page for every keyword it tracks, UK and US separately, so I gave it forty questions that people who run a business actually type. How much does a new boiler cost. Do I need a will. How to register as self-employed. How much does a website cost. What is SEO. That sort of thing. Ordinary ones.
Thirty-four of the forty had an AI Overview on the UK page. Eighty-five per cent. And on the thirty-two questions that make sense on both sides of the Atlantic, so no VAT thresholds, no limited companies, it was twenty-six out of thirty-two here and twenty-six out of thirty-two over there. Identical. So on questions, it's here already, same as there. That bit of the claim I'll give them, and then some.
Right. So what's wrong with it. Two words in the headline. "Of searches."
Every one of those studies is a list of keywords somebody chose. Semrush chose buying phrases, SE Ranking chose brand names, I chose forty questions. And of course the AI Overview turns up on questions, that's what it's for. But most searches aren't questions. People type "facebook", or the name of the shop they were going to anyway. Ofcom, the regulator, counted across the whole lot for the UK last December, and they make it about thirty per cent of searches showing an AI Overview. Thirty. And seoClarity, who track everything their clients rank for, told Barry it's just over sixty-two across their entire set, anywhere from fifty-five to eighty-four depending on the industry. So "eighty per cent of searches" is really "eighty per cent of the searches SEO tools track", and that's a different sentence.
And it moves by country, which nobody mentions. SE Ranking ran the exact same brand-name test in Germany. Forty per cent, against eighty-two in America. Same company, same month, half the rate. So you can't lift a number off a US desktop tracker and read it as yours. Mine came out high for questions here, fine, but that's the point. You have to look.
Then there's the jump from "the AI Overview is there" to "the click is gone". The click's got smaller. Pew's eight per cent is still eight per cent of an awful lot of searches. Google's own line, from the head of Search in August last year, is that total organic clicks to websites have been "relatively stable year over year", and that the clicks they do send are better quality. Now, that's Google marking its own homework, and they didn't publish the number, so weigh it accordingly. But even the people measuring the drop are measuring a drop, and the AI Overview cites pages. I showed you last week, Semrush found three quarters of what it cites was already in the top ten. If you're the page it quotes, you're in the answer.
Here's the thing I would worry about, and it isn't the eighty. Last Thursday Brodie Clark spotted Google testing AI Overviews with the little card of sources taken off. Barry couldn't make it happen on his own searches, and Google hasn't said anything. But if that card goes, being quoted stops being worth a click, and that changes the maths a lot more than the headline number does. Keep an eye on that one.
So. They're right that on anything that looks like a question or a purchase, the AI Overview's there, here as well as there, and it's growing. They're wrong on "of searches", and the click's smaller, it hasn't gone.
Okay, Monday. First thing, stop reading other people's keyword lists and read your own. Since the end of August Google's put a Generative AI report in Search Console for every site. It's in the Performance section. It shows how often your pages were shown inside an AI Overview or AI Mode. No clicks in it yet, no queries, just impressions, but put that against your total impressions and you've got your own eighty per cent, for your site, for free.
Second, your top twenty money queries from Search Console. Open a private window on your phone, signed out, and search each one. Is there an AI Overview. Are you in the cards under it. Write it down. Do it again in a month. Twenty searches, half an hour, and you'll know more about your own market than any study does. And third, the pages that rank but aren't in the answer. Put a plain answer to the question at the top, two sentences, with a date and a name on it. Same thing I said last week, and I'll keep saying it, because that's what gets quoted.
The one number I'd watch this time isn't a public one. It's the share of your own impressions that are coming through AI Overviews and AI Mode, in that Search Console report. If it's around thirty, you're about where Ofcom says the country is. If it's around eighty, you're in the world those studies describe, and the plain-answer work goes to the top of your list.
That's Second Opinion, every Wednesday. Tomorrow's the free course, AI Search for Beginners, episode two, which is GEO, AEO, LLM SEO, what the words actually mean. Every number I've used today is in the description with where it came from and when, including all forty questions. I'm Jamie McKaye, see you Thursday.
word for word from the captions on YouTube
Half right. On questions and buying searches, AI Overviews really are on about eight in ten results pages, and it holds in the UK too: 34 of the 40 UK questions I checked had one. Across all UK searches, Ofcom counts about 30%. And where an AI Overview shows, the click roughly halves. It hasn't gone.
This page goes with Second Opinion, episode 2 on YouTube, out on 4 November 2026. Every number from the video is at the bottom with where it came from and when, and so are all 40 questions.
The claim
"Over 80% Of Google Searches Have AI Overviews & Growing." That was the headline on Search Engine Roundtable on 26 October 2026, from Barry Schwartz, and it went round Reddit the day after. If you run a business it's a frightening one, and by the time it reaches your inbox it's turned into this. Google answers eight searches out of ten itself now, nobody clicks any more, so why are you still paying for SEO?
What's right about it
Barry put three lots of data next to each other. Two of them are proper studies, from Semrush and SE Ranking, so they're worth a look in their own right. The third is a figure seoClarity gave him, and I'll come back to it.
Semrush tracked 400 commercial searches in the US for a year, on desktop. These are the buying kind, like best such-and-such for, this versus that, pricing, reviews and alternatives. In September 2025, 45.75% of them had an AI Overview. By August 2026 it was 88%, so it nearly doubled in twelve months, and weighted by how often people actually type those phrases it's 97.08%. On the searches where somebody's about to spend money, in America, it's basically all of them.
SE Ranking did brand names, 1,000 of them in the US, each one checked three times in October 2026, and 82.5% had an AI Overview. So someone types the name of a company, and Google writes them a paragraph about the company before they get to the company's own website.
Then there's the part that actually matters, which is what it does to the click. Ahrefs took 300,000 keywords on desktop and compared December 2023 with December 2025. Where there's an AI Overview, the page in position one gets 58% fewer clicks than it would have done without one. Pew Research Center got to the same place a different way. They followed 900 Americans' real searches for a month, in March 2025. With an AI summary on the page, people clicked a normal result in 8% of visits, and without one it was 15%, so about half.
So, to be fair, a lot of it is true. On the searches that make money it's about 80% and still going up. When it's there, the click roughly halves. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
The UK count
Before anyone says that's America, I did a count. Ahrefs keeps a copy of the results page for every keyword it tracks, the UK and the US separately, so I gave it 40 questions that people who run a business actually type. How much does a new boiler cost, do I need a will, how to register as self-employed, how much does a website cost, what is SEO, that sort of thing.
On the UK pages, 34 of the 40 had an AI Overview, which is 85%. Eight of the questions only make sense here, the VAT threshold and limited companies and so on. On the other 32 it was 26 of 32 in the UK and 26 of 32 in the US, the same score in both. So on questions it's here already, same as there. That bit of the claim I'll give them, and then some.
All 40 are listed at the bottom of the page, with the answer for each country.
What's wrong with it
The problem is two words in the headline, "of searches". Every one of those studies is a list of keywords somebody chose. Semrush chose buying phrases and SE Ranking chose brand names. I picked my 40 questions myself. Of course the AI Overview turns up on questions, that's what it's for. But most searches aren't questions. People type "facebook", or the name of the shop they were going to anyway.
Ofcom, the regulator, counted across the whole lot for the UK in December 2025, and they make it about 30% of searches showing an AI Overview. And seoClarity, who track everything their clients rank for, told Barry it's just over 62% across their entire set, anywhere from 55% to 84% depending on the industry. So "80% of searches" really means 80% of the searches SEO tools track, and that's a different sentence.
It moves by country as well, which nobody mentions. SE Ranking ran the exact same brand-name test in Germany and got 40.4%, against 82.5% in America. That's the same company in the same month at about half the rate. So you can't lift a number off a US desktop tracker and read it as yours. Mine came out high for questions here, fine, but that's the point. You have to look.
Then there's the jump from "the AI Overview is there" to "the click is gone". The click's got smaller. Pew's 8% is still 8% of an awful lot of searches. Google's own line, from Liz Reid, the head of Search, in August 2025, is that total organic clicks to websites have been "relatively stable year-over-year", and that the clicks Google does send are better quality. That's Google marking its own homework, and they didn't publish the number, so weigh it accordingly. Even the studies measuring the fall are measuring a smaller click, though, and the AI Overview cites pages. Semrush found three quarters of what it cites (76%) was already in the top ten, the same figure I used in Second Opinion, episode 1. If you're the page it quotes, you're in the answer.
Here's the thing I'd actually worry about. At the end of October, Brodie Clark spotted Google testing AI Overviews with the little card of sources taken off. Barry couldn't make it happen on his own searches, and Google hadn't said anything when Search Engine Roundtable reported it on 29 October 2026. If that card goes, being quoted stops being worth a click, and that changes the maths a lot more than the headline number does. Keep an eye on that one.
What I'd do on Monday
- Stop reading other people's keyword lists and read your own. Since 31 August 2026 every site has had a Generative AI report in Search Console, in the Performance section. It shows how often your pages were shown inside an AI Overview or AI Mode. There are no clicks in it yet and no queries, just impressions, but put those against your total impressions and you've got your own 80%, for your site, for free.
- Take your top twenty money queries from Search Console. Open a private window on your phone, signed out, and search each one. Is there an AI Overview? Are you in the cards under it? Write it down, and do it again in a month. It's twenty searches and half an hour, and you'll know more about your own market than any study does.
- Find the pages that rank but aren't in the answer, and put a plain answer to the question at the top, two sentences long, with a date and a name on it. It's the same thing I said in Second Opinion, episode 1, and I'll keep saying it, because that's what gets quoted.
The number to watch
This time the number to watch is your own. It's the share of your impressions that are coming through AI Overviews and AI Mode, so the impressions in Search Console's Generative AI report divided by the impressions in the main Performance report. If it's around 30%, you're about where Ofcom says the country is. If it's around 80%, you're in the world those studies describe, and the plain-answer work goes to the top of your list.
Every number in the video
| Number | What it is | Where it came from, and when |
|---|---|---|
| Over 80% | Google searches with an AI Overview, in the headline | Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable, 26 Oct 2026, on Semrush, SE Ranking and seoClarity data |
| 400 | US commercial searches tracked on desktop for a year | Semrush, 21 Oct 2026 |
| 45.75% → 88% | Share of them with an AI Overview, September 2025 and August 2026 (forty-six and eighty-eight in the video) | Semrush, 21 Oct 2026 |
| 97.08% | The same, weighted by search volume (ninety-seven in the video) | Semrush, 21 Oct 2026 |
| 1,000; 82.5% | US brand-name searches, each checked three times on desktop in October 2026; the share with an AI Overview | SE Ranking, 22 Oct 2026 |
| 40.4% | The same test on 1,000 German brand-name searches (forty in the video) | SE Ranking, 22 Oct 2026 |
| 300,000; 58% | Keywords, desktop, December 2023 against December 2025; fewer clicks to the page in position one where an AI Overview shows, against a forecast without one | Ahrefs, 4 Feb 2026 |
| 900; 8% and 15% | US adults whose searches were followed through March 2025 (68,879 searches); visits where they clicked a normal result, with an AI summary and without | Pew Research Center, 22 Jul 2025 |
| 34 of 40 (85%) | UK questions with an AI Overview on the stored desktop results page | Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, pulled 31 Oct 2026; Ahrefs last checked the UK pages between 19 Sep and 31 Oct 2026 |
| 26 of 32, UK and US | Questions worded the same in both countries with an AI Overview, in each country | Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, pulled 31 Oct 2026; Ahrefs last checked the US pages between 25 Sep and 31 Oct 2026 |
| About 30% | UK searches showing an AI Overview | Ofcom, Online Nation 2025, 10 Dec 2025 |
| Just over 62%; 55% to 84% | Queries with an AI Overview across seoClarity's whole set; the range by industry | seoClarity (Mark Traphagen), as told to Search Engine Roundtable, 26 Oct 2026 |
| "Relatively stable year-over-year" | Total organic clicks from Google Search to websites, in Google's words; no figure published | Liz Reid, Google, 6 Aug 2025 |
| 76% | AI Overview citations already in the organic top ten | Semrush, 2026 |
| 29 Oct 2026 | Google seen testing AI Overviews without the citation card; no comment from Google at the time | Brodie Clark, reported by Search Engine Roundtable, 29 Oct 2026 |
| 31 Aug 2026 | Search Console's Generative AI performance report (Search) rolled out to every site: impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, no clicks or queries yet | Google Search Console Help; Search Engine Roundtable, 1 Sep 2026 |
All 40 questions
Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, stored desktop results pages, UK and US, pulled 31 October 2026. "Yes" means there was an AI Overview on the page. The eight marked "UK wording" only read right in the UK, so they count in the 40 and stay out of the 32. The other 32 are worded the same in both countries.
| # | Question, as typed | UK | US |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | how much does a new boiler cost | yes | yes |
| 2 | how much does a loft conversion cost (UK wording) | yes | no |
| 3 | do i need planning permission for an extension (UK wording) | yes | no US page |
| 4 | how much does it cost to rewire a house | yes | yes |
| 5 | how long does a kitchen take to fit (UK wording) | yes | no US page |
| 6 | how much does a new roof cost | no | yes |
| 7 | how much does a driveway cost | no | yes |
| 8 | how much does a bathroom cost | yes | no |
| 9 | best running shoes for flat feet | yes | yes |
| 10 | what size tv for living room | yes | yes |
| 11 | are air fryers worth it | yes | yes |
| 12 | best mattress for back pain | yes | yes |
| 13 | what size bike do i need | yes | yes |
| 14 | how to choose a sofa | yes | yes |
| 15 | best coffee machine for home | yes | yes |
| 16 | what laptop should i buy | yes | yes |
| 17 | how much does conveyancing cost (UK wording) | yes | no |
| 18 | how much does an accountant cost for a small business | no | no |
| 19 | do i need a will | yes | yes |
| 20 | how much does a wedding photographer cost | yes | yes |
| 21 | how often should you service a car | yes | yes |
| 22 | how much does a dentist cost | no | no |
| 23 | how much does a personal trainer cost | yes | no |
| 24 | how much does a cleaner cost | yes | no |
| 25 | how to register as self employed (UK wording) | yes | no |
| 26 | how to set up a limited company (UK wording) | yes | no |
| 27 | what is the vat threshold (UK wording) | yes | yes |
| 28 | how to get a business loan | yes | yes |
| 29 | how much does a website cost | yes | yes |
| 30 | how to write a business plan | yes | yes |
| 31 | how to find a good accountant | yes | no |
| 32 | how to pay yourself from a limited company (UK wording) | yes | no |
| 33 | what is seo | yes | yes |
| 34 | how long does seo take | yes | yes |
| 35 | how to get my business on google | yes | yes |
| 36 | what is a good conversion rate | no | yes |
| 37 | how to get more customers | no | yes |
| 38 | how much does seo cost | yes | yes |
| 39 | how to get reviews on google | yes | yes |
| 40 | what is a google business profile | yes | yes |
Jamie runs Sequentis, an SEO and AI-search agency.
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Technical SEO consultant and full-stack developer in Hersham, Surrey, in practice since 2007. One person, no handoffs: the audits, the code and the writing come from the same pair of hands. This site is the working proof — it grades itself on the same instrument it runs for clients.