Search data study
Google's AI summaries appear on most buying-intent searches in a large keyword study — and the sites those summaries quote are seen before anyone else. UK businesses should find out whether their own pages are among them.
What Semrush reported
PPC Land reports that Semrush found Google AI Overviews on 88% of the commercial keywords it tracks. For review keywords, 89.04% triggered an AI Overview. The report also notes that comparison pages share the answer space with sites such as Zapier, YouTube and review sites.
These figures come from Semrush's own keyword set, which is largely tracked in the US. They describe that set of searches and should not be read as a measure of what UK searchers see.
The figures still matter for UK businesses. Commercial searches are the ones people type when they are close to buying. When an overview answers the question at the top of the page, the sites it quotes are seen first. The click may go to one of them, or the searcher may not click at all.
How UK searches compare
UK data on this is more limited. In Sayu's study, Google showed an AI Overview on 69.4% of the 360 everyday UK searches checked in October 2026 (250 searches). That figure is a single month's snapshot of a small, mixed set of searches. It was not limited to commercial keywords, so it should not be lined up against Semrush's figure as a like-for-like comparison.
In the same check, AI Overviews appeared on 97.1% of how-to and question searches (135 of 139) but on 9.5% of "near me" searches (7 of 74). In that sample, searches phrased as a question were the most likely to get an overview, while local searches rarely did.
Many buying searches are questions: which product is best, how much a service costs, how two options compare. Those are the searches where a business is most likely to find an AI summary sitting above its listing.
What this means for UK businesses
If your sales depend on clicks from Google, find out whether AI Overviews appear on the searches that bring you customers. Then check which sites those overviews quote. These may be competitors, review sites, video pages or, ideally, your own pages.
The sites an overview quotes tend to be the ones that answer the question clearly. So make sure each of your key pages answers the searcher's question near the top, in plain words, before going into detail. Also check that your site is not blocking Google from crawling those pages.
Because the published data is a snapshot, repeat the check from time to time instead of treating one look as the final answer.
Analysis compiled by Sayu (sayu.co.uk)
