Of the thousands of queries we tracked before May 30, 2024, 17.4% resulted in an AI Overview response. 

On May 30, 2024, however, Google released an AIO pullback announcement stating that they made over a dozen technical system improvements to address concerns over "odd, inaccurate, or unhelpful AI Overviews." 

Since this announcement, diverse types of client sites that all had over 20% AIO for their keywords before May 30 saw an overall drop of 20% of those keywords showing AIO.

Top 10 Web Results Feature in AIO Sources 99.5% of the Time

This marks a substantial change from what we saw in SGE and the early days of AIO where there was very little correlation between ranking sites and what appeared in AIO results.

Some additional background on these results:

1. These are early results for 36K keywords. As AIOs keep expanding we may see a decline in the percentage of sources from top 10 results. Nevertheless, even this early glimpse indicates a significant change from Google.
2. The keywords analyzed are those tracked by our clients, so they tend to be "money" keywords (the informational and transactional keywords these clients care about most). As such, results may vary for more obscure, long-tail searches.
3. These results also highlight a substantial advantage that Google has over standard LLMs — its understanding of relevant and authoritative sites — which it is leveraging to improve the AI results. Google understands website authority and has a lot more signals than any standard LLM like ChatGPT or Perplexity would have.
   

77% of AIOs Include Referenced Links Exclusively From the Top 10 Web Results

Looking at the data a bit differently, we also sought to uncover how many AI Overviews had ALL the referenced links from the Top 10 web results. 

Incredibly, 77% of all keywords triggered AI Overviews only included references from the Top 10 results. 

This further solidifies our hypothesis that Google is confident in its existing rankings system's ability to generate high-quality AI Overview summaries. 

AIO Impact by Industry

The presence of AI Overviews varies significantly across different industries. Based on our analysis, here's a breakdown of the impact by industry:

Prior to Google's system updates on May 30, our data showed that Automotive, Technology, and Healthcare had been impacted the most by AIO so far.

Since then, however, AIO now appears to impact the Home Warranty, Technology, and Social Media industries most significantly.

Note: Many more industries were represented in our sample, but we focused on those with the most keywords. This data will be updated in the coming weeks. 

Impact By Intent: AIO Primarily Appear for Informational Queries

Transactional: AI Overviews do not currently appear for most transactional head terms but may show when there's a mix of commercial and informational intent.

Informational: Although informational queries produce AI Overviews, the frequency is lower than what we observed in SGE (Search Generative Experience) – the experimental version of AI overviews available only to users who opted into it in Google Labs since May 2023.

Recommended Reading: What’s Next for Google's Search Generative Experience?

Compared to SGE, informational queries deserving summaries (QDS) have decreased, but AI Overviews still appear primarily for keywords with strong informational intent, especially where users seek to perform a task or obtain detailed steps (as of May 30, 2024).

AI Overviews Impact 44% of YMYL Keywords

YMYL (Your Money/Your Life) queries are those that could affect a person’s physical or financial well-being.

Based on our analysis of 50 YMYL keywords tested on June 3, 2024, AI Overviews appear in 44% of these queries. Specifically, 58% of "Life" keywords (15 out of 26) and 24% of "Money" keywords (7 out of 24) now show AI Overview results.

This analysis was conducted just four days after Google announced significant changes to enhance the accuracy and reliability of AI Overview results. 

Notably, all source links in these AI Overviews now come from reputable sources such as the Mayo Clinic and CDC, and most are from pages already ranking in the top 10 organic search results.

AI Overviews Don’t Appear for Local Keywords

Previously, Search Generative Experience (SGE) appeared for local results. But, based on our sample, AI Overviews are no longer shown for these queries. 

Recommended Reading: 5 Research-Backed SGE Insights All SEOs Should Know

We tested numerous searches that typically trigger Local Map results and the Three-Pack, but none displayed AI Overviews (as of May 30, 2024).

AI Overviews Appear Inconsistently For Buying Guide Keywords

SGE results also used to appear for short queries like "child’s bike buying guide," but AIO for such queries are now less common. 

AI Overviews may still show for longer queries like "guide to choosing the right bike for a child," though not consistently (as of May 30, 2024).

Research Methodology

These insights are based on the analysis of 2,700 keywords from diverse clients, each submitting their  most important keywords through June 2024.  

As of August 15, 2024, Google rolled out AI Overviews to non-logged in users. Within seoClarity's Research Grid of 500+ million keywords in the United States, it's reporting that AIOs triggered for nearly 1 million keywords in the last ~10 days.  

The newest insights that analyzed 36,000 of these keywords are from August 15, 2024 to August 22, 2024. 

More data and insights to come as this continues to rollout. 

Note: The figures in this study may be skewed slightly high due to the complex informational nature of the queries these clients value, which tend to produce AI Overviews more frequently.

Next Steps

To monitor the impact of AI overviews on your rankings and traffic, we’ve outlined several ways to do so using the seoClarity platform – including using our new AI Overviews filter in SERP Features which tracks AIO summaries generated as a "Top Insights" panel.

In addition, clients now have the ability to:

• See which keywords trigger AI Overviews
• Check whether they or their competitors are linked/referenced
• Review the AIO content itself (through SERP Previews)

Not currently an seoClarity client? Learn more about how our platform can help you monitor and strategize for AIO by scheduling a quick demo.