AI Overviews on branded searches: what Google shows before your site
Partner · Web development, SEO and GEO
In the United States, Google showed an AI Overview (the AI-generated summary at the top of the results) on 82.91% of branded searches on September 29, 2026, according to an Ahrefs analysis. For the large brands studied, these summaries cite Wikipedia, YouTube and LinkedIn first. When a customer types your company's name, the first thing they read may come from a page other than yours.
A fast rise in three months
Ahrefs analyzed 232.8 million Google result pages in the United States, on desktop, from July 1 to September 30, 2026. Of those, 92.5 million were for branded searches: searches that contain the name of a company or one of its products.
On a monthly average, the share of those searches showing an AI Overview went from 61.3% in July to 65.1% in August, then to 73.3% in September. On September 29, it reached 82.91%. Searches without a brand name follow the same slope: 78.3% in September.
The overview does not sit lower on the page for all that. On a panel of 100 major brands tracked every week (those in Interbrand's Best Global Brands ranking), it held the first position in the results 76.2% of the time.
The sources Google cites under a brand name
For those major brands, Ahrefs recorded the external sites cited in 57 overviews. Wikipedia appears in 41 of them (71.9%), YouTube in 22 (38.6%) and LinkedIn in 13 (22.8%). Next come Yahoo Finance (15.8%) and Facebook (10.5%). Competitors are rare: only 2 overviews out of 58 named one.
The study does not say what share of citations goes to the brand's own site. It shows that the portrait displayed above your site is built largely from third-party pages: an encyclopedia, videos and company profiles.
What the study does not say
The figures cover the United States, on desktop. They say nothing about Canada or about searches in French. The sources cited also come from very large global brands. A Quebec SMB rarely has a Wikipedia page: its overview may then draw on other pages, such as its LinkedIn page, its videos or directories.
Ahrefs also points out that Google often changes the conditions under which these overviews appear. The September rise may not last.
Three checks under your own name
- Search your name. Type your company's name into Google, then that name followed by "reviews" or "price." Read the overview and note the pages it cites.
- Update the pages Google cites. Your LinkedIn page, your YouTube channel and your Google Business Profile should say the same thing as your site: what you offer, where and for whom.
- Do not write your own Wikipedia page. Wikipedia asks organizations not to edit the article about them. A correction is proposed on the article's talk page, disclosing your connection to the company.
An overview that repeats outdated information often gets it from a third-party page. Fix that page before concluding that Google made a mistake.
This review of your branded searches, source by source, is part of what we cover in a paid audit.
What to do when an overview gets you wrong is in correcting false information from an AI. What a citation in these overviews is worth, in clicks, is covered in being cited in Google's AI Overviews.
- Ahrefs, AI Overviews Currently Appear for 83% of Branded Searches, Ryan Law, October 2, 2026, accessed October 5, 2026. Source of all the study data: volume analyzed, share of branded searches with an overview, position, cited sources and limits.
- Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, accessed October 5, 2026. Source of the rule on organizations editing the article about them.
Geneviève puts the strategy for your engagement into action. She leads all our web development projects: Shopify, WordPress and the new ways of building a site with AI. She manages our team of developers and translates your business needs into technical language. She runs your organic search (SEO), your visibility in AI answers (GEO) and your site's conversion rate optimization (CRO). Her work is at the heart of three goals: Attract customers with SEO and AI, Improve your site's conversion, and Strengthen your visibility in AI answers. With Gabriel, she also builds the landing pages for your advertising campaigns. She writes mainly about SEO, AI visibility and web design.
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