New analysis from BrightEdge reveals that whereas AI Overviews (AIO) has expanded its protection since launch, it surprisingly doesn’t signify a whole shift away from conventional natural search outcomes, as simply over half of queries proceed to set off traditional search outcomes.
AIO Grows 52% In One 12 months
A twelve-month comparability from February 2025 to February 2026 reveals that AI Overviews (AIO) protection grew by a whopping 58%. The training sector skilled the strongest enlargement within the variety of queries triggering AI search outcomes, from 18% of queries in Might 2025 to 83% of queries triggering AI search outcomes by December 2025.
Equally, B2B know-how queries skilled a large enlargement of queries that triggered AI search outcomes, rising from 36% to 82%. One of many strongest rising sectors for AI search outcomes is eating places, rising from 10% of queries to 78% of queries triggering AI search outcomes.
In the meantime, healthcare queries have been already triggering AIO outcomes by a big margin since 2024, at a fee of 72% of the time. By December 2025, nonetheless, the speed at which healthcare queries triggered AIO edged as much as 88%, which is a rare quantity of AI search outcomes. On condition that AIO is claimed to be pushed by person satisfaction metrics, this will likely imply that customers are appreciating having an AI clarify healthcare-related subjects in a conversational format.
These outcomes observe with a report revealed by OpenAI in January 2026 that confirmed over 5% of all chats are healthcare-related and that 25% of weekly energetic customers globally search ChatGPT with health-related questions.
It’s not simply sufferers who’re utilizing AI for well being associated questions. In keeping with a current Brookings Establishment survey, 53% of healthcare professionals use AI.
The 9 industries experiencing essentially the most enlargement are:
- Healthcare
- B2B Tech
- Schooling
- Insurance coverage
- Leisure
- Journey
- eCommerce
- Finance
- Eating places
Natural Search Holds A Slim Majority
But regardless of these excessive development numbers, traditional search outcomes are nonetheless showing at a fee of 52% of all queries, which means that AI and traditional search are virtually at an excellent quantity. But clearly, lots of the high-value queries in sectors akin to B2B are shifting away from traditional search and exhibiting up extra incessantly in AI search.
In a manner, that’s possibly not so stunning as a result of know-how is in a relentless state of change, and there’s all the time one thing new to be understood, one thing that’s arguably extra satisfactorily served in a conversational method fairly than ten blue hyperlinks, like with healthcare.
But the expansion outcomes for eating places, what explains that? Is it research-driven? In that case, then which will point out a content material hole that reviewers or eating places might have to fill.
Nonetheless, somewhat greater than half of search queries nonetheless return a normal outcomes web page composed solely of ten blue hyperlinks. AI Overviews now set off on practically half of all tracked queries, however that development has not eradicated the normal SERP.
Search Is Multifactor
Search may be mentioned to function in two distinct modes relying on the question. Some outcomes pages start with an AI-generated abstract. Many others current solely ranked hyperlinks. The takeaway is evident: AI Overviews are widespread, however search stays divided fairly than totally remodeled.
This splitting of search is a part of an extended, extra established development of the previous twenty years since Google launched native search, Google Maps, and product search. For the reason that early 2000s, the traditional ten blue hyperlinks have been extra nostalgia than actuality, but it surely solely hit house for the search engine optimization group with the introduction of Featured Snippets in 2014, which made it clear that solutions have been a precedence at Google and that the ten blue hyperlinks have been now definitively a factor of the previous.
The truth that AI search and traditional search are virtually evenly divided amongst key phrases utilized by Google’s customers is a part of that ongoing development of a relentless evolution to solutions.
AI Overviews Reshapes The Search Expertise
AI Overviews doesn’t seem on each question. However when it does seem, it adjustments the construction of the outcomes web page in a measurable manner that’s arduous to not discover as a result of it’s usually within the type of a giant content material block positioned above conventional listings.
The report finds that the common AI Overviews exceeds 1,200 pixels in top. A normal desktop viewport measures roughly 900 pixels. The primary natural outcome sits utterly beneath the fold. AI Overviews can dominate the format visually, occupying greater than your complete seen display earlier than a person scrolls.
AI Overviews doesn’t seem on each question, however when it does, it occupies a big portion of the display and pushes conventional search outcomes additional down the web page. The takeaway is that customers have gotten conditioned to conversational data discovery, and the paradigm of search is changing into extra about solutions and discovery.
AI Overviews Does Not Mirror Web page One Rankings
A key measured distinction seems in how AI Overviews selects sources. Conventional search outcomes are ordered by rating place. AI Overviews synthesize data and cite sources that usually differ from the highest natural listings.
That is as a result of impact of Google’s FastSearch, a technique of retrieving the highest 3 natural search outcomes for a number of queries in response to at least one conversational question after which utilizing these FastSearch natural outcomes to create a solution.
The report unveils this phenomenon, exhibiting that solely about 17 % of sources cited in AI Overviews additionally rank within the natural prime 10. The report explains,
“Rating primary organically doesn’t mechanically get you cited within the AIO. And never rating on web page one doesn’t imply you’re excluded from AIO citations both. The 2 experiences are linked, however they aren’t the identical factor.”
AI Overviews’ citations are anchored in listed content material, however they don’t mirror page-one search outcomes. This circles again to FastSearch and Question-Fanout, the place one primarily long-tail conversational question will set off a number of queries, with every question leading to three natural search outcomes.
Overlap, nonetheless, will increase when trying throughout the highest 100 outcomes fairly than simply the highest 10. That broader alignment has grown modestly over time. AI Overviews attracts from the natural ecosystem, however they cite content material that incessantly differs from conventional natural search winners. What this implies is that AIO visibility pertains to natural efficiency with out being interchangeable with page-one rating.
That is one thing that must be investigated extra carefully when it comes to what it means for content material creation and rating.
Development Continues Alongside Ongoing Reliance On Natural
BrightEdge’s report reveals continued enlargement of AIO fairly than stabilization. AI Overviews presence has risen 58 % 12 months over 12 months and is now approaching half of all tracked queries.
Broader quotation overlap throughout the highest 100 outcomes has elevated modestly, whereas prime 10 overlap has remained largely flat.
The findings don’t describe a binary shift from natural search to AI search, however they do present development. Conventional natural outcomes signify a slim majority of queries. What I’d wish to see sooner or later is what sorts of queries are nonetheless triggering traditional search? Are they native or navigational queries?
Whereas AI Overviews expands in frequency and visually dominates the person interface the place deployed, traditional search is now dramatically diminished.
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