AI Overviews’ Impact on Search in 2025

Google’s rollout of AI Overviews is arguably the most disruptive change to the search landscape since the introduction of featured snippets. 

Our deep-dive analysis, based on tens of thousands of keywords, SERP feature overlaps, and industry-specific visibility shifts, reveals how and where Google is changing the rules—and what SEOs, publishers, and marketers need to do about it.

We analyzed 10M+ keywords, including the clickstream data from Datos, a Semrush company, that trigger AI Overviews in the US on desktop to find the answers to these questions:

• How many queries trigger AI Overviews overall?
• What kind of queries are triggering AI Overviews?
• Which industries have been impacted the most by AI Overviews so far?
• Are AI Overviews driving more zero-click searches?

Here’s what we found…

​​Key Takeaways & Stats

• AI Overviews are on the rise: 13.14% of all queries triggered AI Overviews in March 2025. That’s up from 6.49% in January 2025.
• Informational content is most likely to trigger AI Overviews: 88.1% of queries that trigger an AI Overview are informational. 
• The number of navigational queries that trigger AI Overviews has doubled since January — from 0.74% to 1.43%.
• In the AI Overview crosshairs—Science, Health, and Society:
  Science (+22.27%), Health (+20.33%), People & Society (+18.83%), and Law & Government (+15.18%) are the industries experiencing the largest share growth of AI Overviews—indicating a rapid shift in how users get answers in these high-trust, information-dense categories.
• Zero-clicks: On average, keywords that trigger AI Overviews show higher zero-click behavior—likely due to their informational nature. But our same-keyword analysis shows zero-click rates actually declined slightly after AI Overviews were introduced.

The continuing rise of AI Overviews across all types of keywords suggests a shift towards more direct interaction within search results. The implications for digital marketers are increasingly prevalent: ensuring visibility now means optimizing for AI Overviews, a challenge that Semrush is uniquely equipped to address.

 Eugene Levin, President at Semrush

Why Should You Care about AI Overviews?

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear directly within Google Search results. Built on Google’s generative AI models, they aim to deliver an instant synthesis of relevant content pulled from the web. Unlike featured snippets, which extract a sentence or two from a single source, AI Overviews attempt to consolidate knowledge from multiple sources to present users with a unified answer.

In short: they’re turning Google into both a search engine and an answer engine.

Why it matters:

• These summaries appear above organic results
• They reduce the need for users to click through to websites
• They may cannibalize traffic from publishers, ecommerce platforms, affiliates, and content marketers

Methodology of the Study

To understand the impact and scope of AI Overviews, we analyzed:

• 10M+ keywords to define the share of queries triggering AI Overview
• Monthly changes in AI Overview share by intent type
• Keywords that trigger AI Overviews 
• 10K keywords to define keyword length, keywords difficulty levels and search volume levels
• SERP feature co-occurrence with AI Overviews
• Domain visibility by industry
• 200K+ keywords to define zero-click rate trends from Jan 2024 to Mar 2025

This allowed us to observe what kinds of content AI Overviews target, how that’s changing over time, and what SEO strategies are still effective.

Zero-Click Behavior: The Biggest SEO KPI Shift [Datos + Semrush data]

Are AI Overviews stealing clicks from the organic search results?

To find out, Semrush partnered with Datos, a Semrush company, to analyze over 200,000 keywords (each with a search volume over 100) that either triggered or did not trigger an AI Overview between January and March 2025. To understand causality, we also tracked a set of keywords that did not trigger AI Overviews in January but did in March. This allowed us to directly compare zero-click behavior before and after an AI Overview was introduced for the same keyword.

Keywords that trigger AI Overviews do tend to have higher zero-click rates on average, but this may reflect their informational intent, not causation.

Although keywords with AI Overviews have higher-than-average zero-click rates, the trend is not consistently rising. Between January and March 2025, zero-click behavior among these queries actually declined slightly—challenging the assumption that AI Overviews always reduce clicks. This points to a more complex interaction between query type, user intent, and how AI answers are delivered.

When we analyzed the same keywords before and after they started showing AI Overviews, we found: zero-click rate slightly decreased (from 38.1% to 36.2%).

That suggests AI Overviews do not automatically increase zero-click behavior

AI Overviews are reshaping the search landscape in real time and marketers can no longer rely on rankings alone. Visibility now means earning a spot in the answer itself. To succeed, marketers will need to create content that works within the evolving complexities of AI search, and that gives users real value, no clicks required.

Eli Goodman, CEO of Datos, a Semrush Company

What Percentage of Queries Are Triggering AI Overviews?

We looked at 10M+ keywords and defined the percentage of all queries that are currently triggering an AI Overview.

And the data shows they’re rapidly increasing in 2025: 

• AI Overviews were triggered for 6.49% of queries in January…
• That climbed to 7.64% in February (an 18% increase)…
• And then up to 13.14% by March (72% growth from the previous month)

This suggests AI Overviews are more than a passing feature. They’re changing how information is found online. Most notably, informational content—the kind that provides answers and insights—has been most affected by AI Overviews.

Google’s AI Overviews now appear in over 13% of all searches—and that number continues to climb. We know that inclusion isn’t random; it’s a trust signal. Brands that create consistent and expert-level content power AI answers. In this new SEO landscape, authority doesn’t just rank—you become the answer.

Andrew Warden, Chief Marketing Officer at Semrush

What Kind of Queries Are Triggering AI Overviews?

We analyzed 10,000 terms that trigger AI Overviews. Here’s what we found:

Typical Features of Keywords That Trigger an AI Overview

These values show that AI Overviews currently tend to appear for long-tail, low-difficulty informational queries—not high-volume transactional keywords. 

This is consistent with Google’s previous rollout strategies for features like Featured Snippets and People Also Ask (PAA). Those began with fact-based queries before expanding into ambiguous or controversial topics.

For example, the Informational query ‘What is BMR’ currently triggers an AI Overview: 

While the Commercial query ‘Best protein powder’ does not:

Our data shows that AI Overviews are starting with the safest bets—low-competition, fact-based informational queries with low CPC and difficulty. This mirrors the early days of Featured Snippets. But make no mistake: this is the testing phase. For businesses, this means that top-of-funnel content—like definitions, comparisons, and FAQs—is where we’re seeing the most change so far. While this shift may alter how users interact with search results, it also opens up new opportunities for visibility and brand authority.

Eugene Levin, President at Semrush

So, the question is: is Google just testing AI Overviews in low-risk areas before expanding them to more queries?

We analyzed 10M+ keywords to define how the search intent of queries that trigger an AI Overview has changed over time for clues…

The Search Intent of Queries That Trigger an AI Overview

This breakdown confirms a clear insight: AI Overviews are not targeting conversion-heavy content—yet.

But the percentage of keywords triggering an AI Overview with commercial, transactional, and navigational intent has all slightly grown since January:

• Commercial queries: up from 6.28% in January to 8.69% in March
• Transactional queries: up from 1.69% to 1.76%
• Navigational queries: up from 0.74% to 1.43%

What It Means:

• Top-of-the-funnel, informational content is the most at-risk from AI Overviews.
• Only a small share of keywords that trigger an AI Overview are commercial, transactional, or navigational. But there has been an increase in the number of middle-of-the-funnel and bottom-of-the-funnel terms that trigger AI Overviews since January.
• Navigational AI Overviews are doubling—a major signal that even branded traffic is at risk.

High-Opportunity Keywords (For Now)

The vast majority of AI Overviews are focused on low-CPC, informational queries. That means commercially valuable keywords—especially those with CPC above $2 and Keyword Difficulty below 30%—are still largely untouched.

We filtered these using Semrush’s CPC and KD data, to identify queries that are:

• High-value
• Not yet triggering AI Overviews
• Still relatively easy to rank for

These are your low-competition, high-reward keywords—and ideal for targeting while AI disruption is still limited to the top of the funnel.

Examples include:

These keywords are commercially valuable and not yet too competitive. And they don’t trigger AI Overviews—for now, at least.

Is it still worth targeting a keyword that’s triggering an AI Overview in Google? You’ve got to take it on a case-by-case basis. 
Is your brand referenced in the AI Overview? Are your competitors? If you’re ranking in the organic results for a term: what impact has the AI Overview had on your traffic and conversions? 
That will all influence whether it’s worth re-structuring your content—and earning more third-party citations—to optimize for appearing in the AI Overview. Or whether your efforts would be better spent targeting more commercially focused queries that have a more direct impact on revenue.

Aleyda Solis, Founder in Orainti & International SEO Consultant

Keyword Shape: What Do AI Overviews Queries Look Like?

We analyzed the structure and length of AI Overviews-triggering keywords and those that do not trigger an AI Overview.

Keywords that trigger AI Overviews tend to be slightly longer in word count, and more likely to include clarifications, comparisons, or definitions—classic informational query shapes.

These queries are longer than navigational keywords but shorter than conversational searches. They’re often structured as:

• Definitions: “what is intermittent fasting”
• Comparisons: “difference between debit and credit”
• Clarifications: “can dogs eat grapes”

These kinds of queries have been the cornerstone of most SEO content strategies for years. Now brands will have to compete against AI Overviews to earn attention—and clicks—in these SERPs.

Takeaway: Google prefers predictable, fact-based questions where it can confidently summarize a consensus answer.

AI Overviews are showing up most often on low-CPC, low-volume queries—with nearly 60% of keywords having under 100 monthly searches. A significant share—over 65%—fall into the 21–60 Keyword Difficulty range, indicating that Google is targeting queries that are moderately competitive in organic search, but still offer little ad revenue potential.

But here’s the deeper insight:

95% of keywords with AI Overviews either have no ads or extremely low CPC.

That means Google is deploying AI Overviews primarily on queries that are difficult to monetize—deliberately avoiding disruption to its ad revenue model.

Key takeaway: AI Overviews are spreading across the entire customer journey—but Google is starting with the safest, least profitable queries. So while user experience is changing, the business model behind search remains intact—for now.

Where AI Overviews Are Showing Up: SERP Feature Overlap

Are AI Overviews replacing existing SERP features, or appearing alongside them?

We examined which features most often sit next to AI Overviews in the SERPs to find out.

What This Tells Us:

• AI Overviews are being layered on top of existing formats rather than replacing them—at least for now
• Visual-rich and structured content types—videos, reviews, FAQs—look more likely to survive
• Classic monetization features (Ads, Shopping, News) are rarely paired with AI Overviews (under 1%)

Some of the sites being included the most are Reddit, Quora, and YouTube, with video seeing the largest increase of mentions and inclusions in AI Overviews (at least in recent months). As AI tech gets better at parsing videos for text, I only expect this to continue.

Nick Eubanks, VP of Owned Media at Semrush

Category Trends: Which Verticals Are Being Disrupted First?

Which industries have been most affected by AI Overviews so far?

To find out, we looked at the percentage growth from September 2024 to March 2025 in the number of SERPs featuring AI Overviews across different verticals, comparing early and current rollout periods.

Key Observations:

1. Science Is the AI Overview Frontline (+22.27%)

Science content is rich in structured, well-documented, consensus answers—making it easy to synthesize.

And that’s put it on the AI Overview frontline.

2. Health, People & Society, Law & Government: Google Is Weighing In On Sensitive Subjects

On one hand, it’s not surprising that Health, People & Society, and Law & Government have seen a huge rise in AI Overview coverage. All three industries are dominated by informational queries.

On the other hand, it’s surprising to see Google roll out AI Overviews so aggressively in three industries that so often lack consensus answers and come with more than their fair share of regulatory pressure and misinformation risks.

Key takeaway: This suggests Google believes its models have become more reliable and fact-anchored.

3. News and Sports: Google Is Shying Away From Real-Time Information

News and Sports are two categories that are almost entirely made up of searches for up-to-date informational content.

The fact these categories are lagging behind the average growth in AI Overviews suggests Google is still wary of covering recent events with AI-generated content.

Key takeaway: Google is treading lightly around searches for breaking news and real-time information, where there isn’t enough information to present a consensus answer to a query.

4. Food & Drink and Home & Garden: Surprisingly Slow Growth

Intuitively, you’d expect Food & Drink and Home & Garden to have seen a similar growth in AI Overviews as industries like Pets & Animals and Autos & Vehicles. All four categories have a similar mix of Transactional/Informational keywords, after all. 

However, Food & Drink and Home & Garden queries are triggering significantly fewer AI Overviews than industries with a similar search intent distribution.

These are two categories to keep an eye on over time.

5. Real Estate & Shopping: Noticeable Laggards

Real Estate & Shopping have seen the slowest growth in AI Overviews. 

Which makes sense, given these two industries are made up of a much higher percentage of Commercial and Transactional queries than others.

Real Estate’s lack of growth also suggests that location-based content is safe (for now).

I think of AI Overviews like a less visual Local Pack. If I were searching for ‘pizza NYC’ and I saw Joe’s Pizza in the Local Pack, there is a good chance I would not go to that website. I would look at the location, some pictures, maybe some reviews, and just go to buy a slice. In the case of Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode, I may not have all of that context (pictures, reviews, etc.), so I might have to search for the site. 
Being listed in the AI output can and should trigger navigational searches. The only difference here (well, not the only difference) is that to get into the “AI” you don’t need to optimize your Google Business Profile; you need to “optimize” your entire web profile. And that’s a much broader, comprehensive, complicated, and holistic process than “optimizing” for something.

Mordy Oberstein, Founder of Unified Brand Marketing

Strategic Takeaways for Marketers & SEOs:

AI Overview Expansion by Industry (Keyword Trigger Growth)

Which sites have been most affected by AI Overviews?

To find out, we looked at how the average number of a domain’s keywords triggering AI Overviews has changed from January to March 2025, revealing which industries are accelerating—and how rapidly.

Across nearly all industries, February showed a dip or mild decline, but March exploded—with most sectors more than doubling their AI Overview-triggering keywords compared to February.

 Key Highlights

Which Industries Receive the Most Links From AI Overviews?

Not every AI Overview links out to a domain.

So, we also looked at the average number of keywords for which a domain is actively included within an AI Overview summary. In other words, sites that don’t just show in the traditional organic links when AI Overviews appear, but as part of the AI-generated answer. This is a critical distinction: while many SERPs may display an AI Overview, not all domains earn visibility inside it.

By comparing February to January and March to both months, we can observe how Google’s model evolved in terms of trusting domains to power its summaries. A dip in February suggests a recalibration phase—likely related to quality signals, data testing, or policy refinement.

What we have to remember is that LLMs and their search utilities don’t have sophisticated crawlers with rendering and they don’t own the most popular browser in the world – like Google does. This will change optimization strategies; LLMs and new AI search utilities will likely have to lean on feeds, databases and APIs more than we are used to. You can already see that with the addition of Product Feed ingestion for Chat GPT. Different methods of discovery could offer SEOs a whole new list of potential things to optimize. 

Cindy Krum, Founder & CEO of MobileMoxie

How Semrush Can Help You Thrive in the AI Overview Era 

Our suite of SEO tools make it easy to optimize for AI Overviews—and see how you’re performing in them.

Here’s how:

• Keyword Overview helps you find low-KD, mid-volume informational terms that are commercially valuable, not yet too competitive.
• Our Keyword Magic Tool helps you create content that mirrors the way people (and AI) ask questions—boosting your chances of inclusion in summaries.
• Organic Research helps you understand which competitors are appearing in AI results—and what content format or structure helps them appear there.
• Position Tracking helps you keep a pulse on your AI Overview presence and related visibility. It will also alert you to shifts so you can act quickly.
• AI Toolkit helps small and mid-sized businesses monitor overall visibility and uncover market share opportunities. 

For complex needs, Semrush Enterprise offers advanced solutions tailored to the new AI search landscape:

• AI Overview Analysis: Included within Semrush Enterprise to monitor how your pages appear in Google’s AI Overviews, so you can optimize content and structure to increase visibility in these summaries.
• AI Optimization (AIO): Analyze how your brand is represented across AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. AIO enables precision tracking of brand mentions, sentiment, sources, and competitors in real time, so brands can understand and grow their presence.

Are We Heading Towards a Post-Click World?

AI Overviews represent a shift not just in ranking—but in how Google answers questions. As the SERP becomes more generative, SEO becomes more about presence than position.

Brands that adapt fast will build trust, earn SERP visibility, and thrive in the post-click world.