Google’s AI may answer your brand search.

What happened

• Four in five. Ahrefs reported on October 2 that, as of September 29, AI Overviews appeared on 82.91% of US desktop results for keywords that include a brand name. The monthly averages were 61.3% in July, 65.1% in August and 73.3% in September. The study covers 232.8 million result pages.
• Exact brand names too. In a panel of 100 global brand names, 63 showed an AI Overview by September 30. On July 1, five of 98 usable results did.
• External sources. For those brand-name searches, the most-cited external domains were Wikipedia (71.9% of 57 available source lists), YouTube (38.6%) and LinkedIn (22.8%).
• The caveats. Google has not announced a change, and Ahrefs notes that Google adjusts when AI Overviews appear all the time. The data is US desktop only. Ahrefs sells software that tracks this.

Our take

Your brand search used to be yours. Someone typed your name and got your site, your links and your description.

Now a summary sits on top, and it is assembled from other people’s pages. For a global brand that mostly means Wikipedia. A small brand usually has no Wikipedia page, so the summary has to draw on whatever else describes you: a LinkedIn page, a directory listing, a review from three years ago.

Check the summary for errors in your price or product description. Someone searching for your brand may read it before reaching your site.

What to do this week

1. Search your brand name on Google and read the summary. Take a screenshot with the date.
2. Open the sources it lists. Fix the ones you control: your LinkedIn page, your YouTube descriptions, your business profiles.
3. If something is wrong, trace it. AI is getting facts about my brand wrong has the steps.