In line with Google, AI Overviews (AIOs) had over 1.5 billion customers a month in Q1 2025. That may be 18.3% of all of the individuals on the planet or 26.6% of all web customers. That’s a large attain.
In conventional Ahrefs vogue, I needed to do the most important information research ever carried out on AIOs to see what we may be taught and share with the advertising and marketing group. For a twist on most research, I’ve proven how they examine to look queries general.
As a bonus, I’ll present you how one can pull the numbers your self any time you need up to date information.
Let’s dig into the information.
Right here’s a fast take a look at among the largest takeaways:
- AIOs present for 9.46% of all key phrases on Desktop, 16% within the US
- AIOs present for 54.61% or extra of all Google searches by quantity
- The high 50 domains have 28.90% of all mentions
- AIOs present greater than regular for informational queries, longer search queries, and queries with increased search volumes
- AIOs present up lower than regular for branded queries, native queries, and shorter search queries
- AIOs largely present on non-monetized searches
AIOs are exhibiting greater than ever. They’re decreasing clicks by 34.5%. And but, many of the queries they’re exhibiting for are informational queries that folks weren’t bidding on.
On the very least, AIOs aren’t prone to impression Google’s backside line. I’m wondering how a lot they may impression firms? Corporations investing of their content material are additionally the probably to point out for AIOs. Some might even profit from them, however the overwhelming majority, I feel, will lose site visitors. We’ll must see the way it performs out.
You are able to do a clean search in Model Radar to see what number of AIOs we’ve seen for the SERPs Ahrefs makes use of to construct our site visitors estimates. The road chart reveals the pattern over time, together with the massive improve of their presence in March 2025.
AIOs present for 9.46% of all key phrases, however they haven’t totally rolled out
On the time of writing, we’ve got ~55.8 million AIOs from Desktop search outcomes. That is out of 590M whole key phrases used to construct our natural search site visitors index, ~9.46% of the full. You may check with our Massive Information web page at any time to get the present variety of key phrases in our index and the quantity for every nation.
AIOs present for 54.61% or extra of all searches by quantity
You may swap the tab to Impressions to see the full search quantity for all of the phrases exhibiting AIOs, or their whole visibility. As of writing, it’s ~98.3 billion whole quantity out of ~180 billion whole month-to-month searches in our index. 54.61% of all Google searches are exhibiting AIOs.
Sidenote.
Our information undercounts the full variety of search phrases and impressions for AIOs. We don’t pull SERPs for one-off or low quantity queries to construct our site visitors index, however AIOs do present on many of those queries. We additionally pull AIO information from logged-out customers, once they’re extra prone to present to logged-in customers. Many nations nonetheless don’t present them to logged-out customers but. It wouldn’t shock me if AIOs are exhibiting for greater than 75% of all Google searches by quantity.
Ahrefs and Google by the numbers
As a result of I don’t need anybody instantly evaluating our numbers to Google’s quantity the place they are saying there are over 5 trillion searches yearly, I really feel like I have to shortly clarify some variations.
Some fast math on our numbers. 180 million month-to-month searches * 12 months = 2.16 trillion searches a 12 months in our information. That’s lower than the 5 trillion Google says.
To attempt to clarify the distinction, there are various low-volume searches that Google classifies as nameless queries. In line with Google, 15% of searches have by no means been searched earlier than. After we checked out GSC information just a few years in the past, 46.08% of queries have been nameless.
2.16 trillion (our yearly search numbers) / 0.54 (non-anonymous question %) = 4 trillion searches. That’s within the ballpark. Any additional variations might be as a result of nameless queries elevated, we’ve got some gaps in our key phrase database, or our quantity estimates are a bit low.
Sidenote.
I do suspect the variety of nameless queries has elevated and can improve additional. Folks’s search behaviour has modified they usually’re looking with for much longer queries than they used to.
Google now not has a max phrase depend when looking. It was 32 phrases max, however now you may have as many as you need till the max URL restrict is reached.
AIOs had a staggered rollout. You may see country-level information by altering the nation within the dropdown in Model Radar.
AIOs present for 16% of all US key phrases on Desktop
AIOs present for ~24.9 million out of 156 million search phrases in our US natural search site visitors index, ~16% of the full searches.
You may simply calculate this quantity for every nation with the mentions information above and divide that by the full variety of the Massive Information web page. India 16.5%, Brazil 15.5%, UK 12.5%, and so forth.
Sidenote.
Should you see many nations with out AIOs, it’s as a result of they don’t have AIOs but or don’t have them for logged-out customers.
You should use the domains tab in Model Radar to see what domains are talked about in AIOs over time. We’ll have a filter for this shortly, however proper now you may see the domains which have the best share of AIOs.
The highest 50 domains have 28.9% of all AIO mentions
AIOs are dominated by high websites. Whereas many individuals report shedding clicks to AIOs, I wouldn’t be shocked if many of those websites have been really benefiting from them.
| Area | Mentions | Impressions |
|---|---|---|
| reddit.com | 2,971,746 | 1,881,884,930 |
| en.wikipedia.org | 2,920,525 | 13,910,509,832 |
| quora.com | 2,276,494 | 618,988,629 |
| youtube.com | 2,063,355 | 3,577,707,498 |
| nih.gov | 1,288,730 | 3,124,783,852 |
| mayoclinic.org | 1,316,872 | 6,159,726,120 |
| clevelandclinic.org | 1,109,623 | 5,098,852,777 |
| translate.google.com | 857,892 | 4,465,811,843 |
| healthline.com | 979,908 | 2,236,792,358 |
| webmd.com | 917,464 | 2,190,526,123 |
| apple.com | 441,986 | 680,920,972 |
| es.wikipedia.org | 597,865 | 5,223,350,730 |
| microsoft.com | 464,330 | 986,660,551 |
| medicalnewstoday.com | 573,680 | 1,188,183,953 |
| www.nhs.uk | 493,760 | 2,507,074,568 |
| medlineplus.gov | 473,850 | 2,721,231,563 |
| fb.com | 438,867 | 446,833,096 |
| instagram.com | 441,136 | 746,231,176 |
| certainly.com | 359,963 | 553,924,993 |
| help.google.com | 297,335 | 522,568,488 |
| brainly.com | 264,347 | 23,764,810 |
| britannica.com | 297,924 | 2,497,564,834 |
| testbook.com | 229,035 | 84,720,146 |
| amazon.com | 238,838 | 523,926,930 |
| alodokter.com | 199,193 | 278,035,342 |
| merriam-webster.com | 256,994 | 3,170,311,903 |
| research.com | 248,252 | 558,343,910 |
| msdmanuals.com | 242,777 | 651,464,581 |
| sciencedirect.com | 242,799 | 662,899,861 |
| uol.com.br | 199,395 | 284,636,935 |
| kumparan.com | 184,165 | 116,489,768 |
| justanswer.com | 183,094 | 17,821,281 |
| byjus.com | 196,500 | 377,110,507 |
| cambridge.org | 192,555 | 3,041,651,028 |
| verywellhealth.com | 195,389 | 167,090,643 |
| detik.com | 166,645 | 127,771,207 |
| indiatimes.com | 161,599 | 264,059,019 |
| investopedia.com | 161,975 | 660,434,615 |
| pt.wikipedia.org | 163,875 | 1,069,981,476 |
| kidshealth.org | 161,776 | 441,933,241 |
| fandom.com | 145,761 | 519,074,759 |
| wiktionary.org | 159,394 | 820,932,071 |
| tuasaude.com | 146,483 | 175,433,902 |
| imdb.com | 138,758 | 345,263,254 |
| stackexchange.com | 140,760 | 45,714,814 |
| rae.es | 127,392 | 1,166,423,287 |
| cdc.gov | 130,112 | 621,061,238 |
| linkedin.com | 130,896 | 308,787,699 |
| hopkinsmedicine.org | 136,577 | 645,290,307 |
| petmd.com | 129,065 | 108,308,035 |
For these 50 websites, listed below are the classes and their share of general mentions:
- Data & Reference – 4.4%
- Well being & Medical – 5.8%
- Q&A & Group Dialogue – 5.9%
- Video & Social Media – 3.4%
- Search & Translation Instruments – 1.2%
- Schooling & Studying – 1.3%
- Information & Media – 0.6%
- E-Commerce & Tech – 1.1%
- Job & Profession – 0.4%
- Regional & Localized Well being – 0.4%
You may filter the dataset to be extra particular to your business. Verify the area tabs to see how competing websites are performing. For instance, right here I’ve filtered to search for key phrases or AI Overviews containing “web site builder”.
One other method of doing that is to make use of the complete dataset, however use the “Discover mentions of manufacturers, merchandise, or companies” filter. Enter 1 or 2 and use “Recommend extra” to make use of AI to get among the competing firms or merchandise.
The share and attain studies provides you with Share of Voice (SoV) for mentions and impressions.
In Key phrases Explorer, you are able to do a clean search and get all the information for a rustic. Should you filter by “SERP options” to “On SERP” > “AI Overview”, then you may see the full variety of AIOs in our information. 24.8M for the US on the time of writing.
You may additional filter by totally different information factors like Intent to see extra details about the kind of phrases the place AIOs are exhibiting.
For instance, for the above search I bought 24.3M key phrases for Informational intent out of 24.8M whole for the US. That’s 97.70% of the whole.
Keep in mind that searches can have greater than 1 intent. Right here’s a breakdown with the present numbers:
- Informational: 97.70%
- Navigational: 1.23%
- Industrial: 12.86%
- Transactional: 2.85%
You may filter Key phrases Explorer as described above to AIOs on the SERP + Branded or Non-Branded intents. On the time of writing I bought the next percentages:
- Branded: 19.97%
- Non-branded: 80.03%
AIOs are much less prone to present up for branded searches.
You may filter Key phrases Explorer as described above to AIOs on the SERP and Native or Non-Native intents. On the time of writing, I bought the next percentages:
- Native: 6.85%
- Non-Native: 93.15%
AIOs are much less prone to present up for native searches.
Filtering Key phrases Explorer to SERPs with AIOs and filtering by phrase depend tells an fascinating story. AIOs have a better illustration when taking a look at longer search queries.
I filtered Key phrases Explorer to SERPs with AIOs and filtered by Key phrase Issue (KD). It appears to be like like AIOs are probably to point out on decrease KD phrases, however that’s fairly regular within the dataset.
I filtered Key phrases Explorer to SERPs with AIOs and filtered by Search Quantity. This one shocked me. I used to be anticipating AIOs to be over-represented in decrease quantity queries.
I see AIOs typically after I’m looking long-tail queries, particularly ones that I feel are fairly distinctive queries. This wasn’t mirrored within the information, nevertheless it might be biased as we don’t embrace lots of the queries like I described in our search site visitors index.
Filtering Key phrases Explorer to SERPs with AIOs and filtering by Value-Per-Click on (CPC), or the price of an advert click on, reveals a slight bias for decrease CPC phrases.
What’s extra fascinating is that 71.67% of the searches with AIOs had no CPC information. This means a majority of the AIO searches weren’t monetized in any respect. It’s no surprise nobody has seen advertisements in AIOs but. They aren’t exhibiting for almost all of the phrases that make Google cash.
One of many distinctive issues about Ahrefs Model Radar is that we even have internet pages as a knowledge supply. With this, you may see which manufacturers are talked about probably the most on-line and which have probably the most visibility. This can assist you clarify why a competitor would possibly present up greater than you do for AIOs or different LLMs.
LLMs work as subsequent phrase predictors with a little bit of variability inbuilt. Should you’re talked about extra within the coaching information reminiscent of internet pages, you’re going to be talked about extra within the outputs of LLMs.
Remaining ideas
Don’t look ahead to the following large research if you have to report what is going on with AIOs. You may run the information your self with Ahrefs at any time with Model Radar and Key phrases Explorer.
When you’ve got questions, message me on X or LinkedIn.
