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# AI Overviews on your brand name: now on 83% of searches. What to do > Since September 2026 AI Overviews appear on 83% of US branded searches, almost always in first position. Sources cited, effect on clicks and what to check. URL: https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/ai-overviews-ricerche-nome-brand-83-per-cento-cosa-fare Language: English Version IT: https://geosnap.ai/blog/ai-overviews-ricerche-nome-brand-83-per-cento-cosa-fare Author: Rinald Sefa, CMO Geosnap · Category: Research and data Publisher: Geosnap (Maind Group S.r.l.), https://geosnap.ai ## In short At the end of September 2026 Ahrefs found an AI Overview on 83% of US desktop searches containing a brand name, up from 13% a year earlier; in a panel of 100 big brands the box sits in first position 76% of the time, above the company's own site. The most cited sources are Wikipedia, YouTube and LinkedIn, not the brand's website. You can check your own case with the Search Console Branded filter and manual searches, and work on the external pages Google draws your description from. - On 29 September 2026, 82.91% of US desktop branded searches showed an AI Overview; the September average is 73.3%, against 13.1% in the November 2025 study. - Of 100 big brands, 63 had an AI Overview on their exact name at the end of September, and in 76.2% of cases the box is in position one, above the home page. - The cited sources are external: Wikipedia in 71.9% of boxes, YouTube in 38.6%, LinkedIn in 22.8%. Competitors appear in only 3.4% of answers. - Check your case with the Branded filter in the Search Console Performance report and with repeated manual searches; in Google Analytics, clicks from AI Overviews land in Organic Search. - Take care of the sources Google draws your description from: an accurate Wikipedia entry, up-to-date LinkedIn and YouTube pages, an explicit About page, reviews and third-party listings. Written by the Geosnap AI agent, reviewed and approved by Rinald Sefa. Translated from the Italian original. [Read the original](https://geosnap.ai/blog/ai-overviews-ricerche-nome-brand-83-per-cento-cosa-fare) Until recently, anyone who searched Google for a company's name found its website at the top. Since September 2026 that is no longer a given: in the United States, AI Overviews now appear on searches that contain nothing but a brand name, and in most cases they take the first position. The figures come from two independent measurements published in early October. Here are the numbers, what changes for your site, and what you can check today. ## How many brand-name searches show an AI Overview? More than four in five, at least on US desktop. On 29 September 2026 Ahrefs found an AI Overview in [82.91% of results for branded keywords](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-on-branded-searches/), from a sample of 232.8 million search-result crawls collected between July and September (92.5 million on branded keywords, 140.2 million on non-branded ones). The daily figure is the peak of a fast climb, which reads more clearly in the monthly averages. | Month (2026, US desktop) | Branded searches with an AI Overview | Non-branded searches with an AI Overview | | --- | --- | --- | | July | 61.3% | 73.5% | | August | 65.1% | 74.7% | | September | 73.3% | 78.3% | In three months branded searches with an AI Overview grew by 12 points, and the gap with non-branded searches narrowed from 12.2 to 5 points. In the November 2025 study, on different samples, the same shares were 13.1% and 24.9%: within a year, brand-name searches went from almost never having an AI Overview to almost always having one. A second measurement confirms the jump. DemandSphere tracked, every day, the branded keywords its customers monitor, across all markets and devices: the share with an AI Overview went from [26.12% on 1 September to 90.48% on 27 September](https://scalevise.com/resources/google-ai-overviews-branded-queries-september-2026/), and 82.06% on the 29th. Neither vendor explains how it classifies a query as "branded", as [Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-overviews-big-brand-searches/592280/) points out: the numbers cannot be compared with each other, but they all point the same way. ## The AI Overview takes first place, above the brand's own site In 76% of cases the box sits in position one. To see this, Ahrefs also followed a panel of 100 brands picked from Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2025, searching only the exact name (for example "bluehost") at 14 weekly checkpoints. On 1 July, 5 of 98 usable searches had an AI Overview; on 30 September, [63 of 100](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-on-branded-searches/) did. The jump is concentrated in early September: 16 before 9 September, 42 right after. Of those 63 boxes, 48 (76.2%) are in position one, with an average position of 1.49. In practice the AI Overview tends to occupy the spot that used to belong to the brand's home page. The site is still in the results, but lower, and the user reads a summary written by Google before the message the company chose. Two limits to keep in mind. The panel covers US searches and does not say how many clicks reach the site, nor how often the brand's site is cited inside the box. And Google can change course: Ahrefs itself writes that there is no guarantee the situation will stay as it is. ## Who does Google cite when it summarises your brand? Wikipedia, above all. In the 57 panel AI Overviews with a full source list, [Wikipedia appears in 71.9% of cases](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-on-branded-searches/), YouTube in 38.6%, LinkedIn in 22.8%, Yahoo Finance in 15.8%, Facebook in 10.5%. These are sources outside the brand, and they are what Google uses to describe who you are. The good news is that competitors barely show up: only 2 of 58 answers (3.4%) explicitly discuss a competitor, and only one competitor-owned website was found among the sources. When someone searches for your name, the AI Overview talks about you. The question is *what* it says and *where* it gets it from. For a brand the question is simple: if someone searches for your company's name, which external pages describe what you do? If there is no Wikipedia entry, no well-kept LinkedIn page, no YouTube channel with recent content, Google summarises with whatever it finds: reviews, articles, third-party pages. The mechanism is the same one we described for [the sources of Google AI Mode](https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/google-ai-mode-fonti-come-farsi-citare). ## What changes for clicks and for your reports? Fewer clicks to your site from the searches that used to be the safest. In its February 2026 study Ahrefs measured a [58% lower click-through rate for the top organic page](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-on-branded-searches/) when an AI Overview is present. That figure came from generic keywords; on branded searches, where the user often wants to reach the site itself, the effect may differ. Nobody has measured it yet, and [AI Overviews and clicks](https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/ai-overviews-clic-cosa-dicono-studi-2026) collects every study so far. To check your own case you have two free tools. The first is the "Branded" and "Non-branded" filter in the Search Console Performance report: it [separates queries that contain your brand name, domain or a brand-specific product](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/17010961), including variations and misspellings, from all the others. The filter has been available to all eligible sites [since March 2026](https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-branded-queries-filter-expands-471387); it does not work for sub-properties or for sites with few impressions, and Google warns that some queries may be misclassified. Look at branded impressions and clicks month by month: if impressions hold and clicks fall, you have the same pattern the studies describe. The second is a manual check: search for your company's name, your product lines and your services on Google, on phone and desktop, ideally in a private window. Note whether an AI Overview appears, in which position, what it says and which sources it lists. Repeat every two weeks: September's data shows the picture can change within days. Mind Google Analytics: visits that arrive from a link inside an AI Overview land in the Organic Search channel, together with classic search. The Search Console generative AI report, as [Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-overviews-big-brand-searches/592280/) notes, has no query dimension. A drop in branded clicks alone does not tell you whether demand fell or whether an AI box got in the way. ## What a brand can do Take care of the sources Google uses to tell your story, even before your own site. In the order they weigh in the data: 1. **Wikipedia and Wikidata.** If an entry about your company exists, check that facts, dates, headquarters and the description of what you do are correct and current, and flag errors on the talk page with sources. If none exists, do not write it yourself: Wikipedia's rules forbid it and promotional entries get deleted. Work instead on the press coverage an entry requires. 2. **YouTube and LinkedIn.** A channel with videos that explain what you do and a company page with a complete description and regular updates are sources Google cites in almost four AI Overviews out of ten and in more than one out of five respectively. Write the description for someone who has to sum up your company in two sentences. 3. **The "About" page and product pages.** They must state explicitly what you do, for whom, since when and where, using the same names used off-site. If your content is rendered in JavaScript or blocked to crawlers, no external source makes up for it. 4. **Reviews and third-party listings.** Google Business Profile, marketplaces, review portals: these are the pages Google draws from when a brand is small and has no encyclopedic entry. 5. **Monitoring.** Brand searches on Google and questions that include your name on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode deserve a periodic check: Geosnap tracks how these engines describe a brand and which sources they cite, so you see at once when a summary changes or points to the wrong page. Which questions are worth following is covered in [which prompts to monitor](https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/quali-prompt-monitorare-risposte-ai-come-scegliere). An AI Overview on your name is not a competitor that overtook you: it is Google introducing you in its own words. You can let it decide what to say, or make sure the sources it draws from tell the right version. ## Sources - [AI Overviews Currently Appear for 83% of Branded Searches](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-on-branded-searches/) (Ahrefs, 2026-10-02) - [AI Overviews Have Spread To Most Big-Brand Searches](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-overviews-big-brand-searches/592280/) (Search Engine Journal, 2026-10-09) - [Google AI Overviews Reached More Branded Queries in September, DemandSphere Data Shows](https://scalevise.com/resources/google-ai-overviews-branded-queries-september-2026/) (Scalevise, 2026-10-03) - [Performance report (Search results): Common tasks and use cases](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/17010961) (Google Search Console Help, 2026-10-20) - [Google expands Search Console branded queries filter to all eligible sites](https://searchengineland.com/google-search-console-branded-queries-filter-expands-471387) (Search Engine Land, 2026-03-11) ## Frequently asked questions ### Do AI Overviews on branded searches appear outside the United States too? Ahrefs' data covers US desktop searches; DemandSphere measures all markets together but does not publish a country split. Google tends to roll out the same choices across markets, but there is no country-specific measurement yet. The most reliable way to know is to search for your company's and products' names on Google and note whether and where the box appears. ### If the AI Overview is in first position, does my site lose clicks? Probably, but nobody has measured it on branded searches yet. The 58% drop in click-through rate for the top organic page, measured by Ahrefs in February 2026, comes from generic keywords. People who search for a name often want to reach that very site, so the effect may be smaller. Check in Search Console whether, with branded impressions unchanged, clicks have fallen since September. ### How do I see branded searches in Search Console? In the Performance report, open the Query filter and choose Branded or Non-branded. Google classifies on its own the queries that contain your brand name, domain or a brand-specific product, including variations and misspellings. The filter has been available to all eligible sites since March 2026, does not work for sub-properties or for sites with few impressions, and some queries may be misclassified. ### Can I write my company's Wikipedia entry myself to get cited? No. Wikipedia forbids writing entries about your own company and deletes promotional ones or those without independent sources. You can flag errors on the talk page, with sources, and work on the press coverage an entry requires. Meanwhile, take care of LinkedIn, YouTube, your About page and third-party listings: they are the other sources Google cites most often. ### Does Geosnap show Google AI Overviews? Geosnap analyses ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode: for every monitored question it shows how the brand is described, whether it is cited and which sources are used. For AI Overviews in classic search, the check today goes through Search Console and manual searches. The sources to take care of are the same in both cases.
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The information in the page header, which crawlers and engines read before the content.