Google AI Overviews went from showing on 26% of branded queries at the start of September 2026 to more than 80% by the end of the month, according to DemandSphere. Google has not announced any change. If someone searches for your brand, they will likely read what the AI says first.
What we know
- Who measured it: DemandSphere, with its DemandMetrics platform. Ray Grieselhuber published it on October 1, 2026.
- The figures: 26.12% on September 1 and close to 27% for most of the month. On September 27 it rose to a peak of 90.48%, and on September 29, the last day tracked, it stood at 82.06%.
- How it was measured: branded keywords checked once a day, across all markets and devices. An AI Overview counts as present whether or not it cites the brand.
- What it leaves out: the number of keywords and the split by country or device. DemandSphere says it is working on those.
- A second test: Chris Long of Nectiv searched for 100 large brands and found an AI Overview for 93 of them, Search Engine Land reports.
- Google: has not announced anything about this change.
What changes and what doesn't
What changes is who speaks first when someone searches for your name. It used to be your page; now it is often a summary written by the AI, with the sources it picks.
The effect on clicks is still unknown: neither test measured them. It is also unknown whether the change will stay. This is a few days of data from a single tool.
How to tell if it affects you
- Search for your brand name the way people type it: with and without spaces, and next to your industry.
- Note whether an AI Overview shows, what it says and which pages it cites.
- Compare every fact with reality: address, services and prices.
- If something is wrong, fix it on your own website first.
- In Search Console, look at the CTR of queries that include your brand and compare it with the previous month.
How we apply it at DomHostSeo
We ran the test on our brand on October 1, on Google Peru in Spanish. We tried three searches and an AI Overview showed for all three. In two it described us well and cited our homepage. In the third, "Dom Host SEO" typed with spaces, the AI answered about domains and hosting in general and only named us at the end: our name is made of common words and it read them separately.
That is why checking what the AI says about the brand is now a fixed task for us, the same as checking Search Console.
It is part of what we covered in It's No Longer Just SEO: AEO Arrives in Force.
Sources
Updates: we will add the split by country and device here when DemandSphere publishes it, and any announcement from Google.