In line with Google, AI Overviews (AIOs) had over 1.5 billion customers a month in Q1 2025. That will be 18.3% of all of the folks on the planet or 26.6% of all web customers. That’s an enormous attain.
In conventional Ahrefs style, I wished to do the biggest information research ever achieved on AIOs to see what we might study and share with the advertising and marketing group. For a twist on most research, I’ve proven how they evaluate 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 have 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 principally present on non-monetized searches
AIOs are exhibiting greater than ever. They’re decreasing clicks by 34.5%. And but, a lot of the queries they’re exhibiting for are informational queries that folks weren’t bidding on.
On the very least, AIOs aren’t more likely to affect Google’s backside line. I ponder how a lot they’ll affect corporations? Firms investing of their content material are additionally the most certainly to point out for AIOs. Some could even profit from them, however the overwhelming majority, I believe, will lose 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 visitors estimates. The road chart exhibits the development over time, together with the massive enhance of their presence in March 2025.
AIOs present for 9.46% of all key phrases, however they haven’t absolutely rolled out
On the time of writing, we’ve ~55.8 million AIOs from Desktop search outcomes. That is out of 590M whole key phrases used to construct our natural search visitors index, ~9.46% of the full. You may consult with our Massive Knowledge 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 change 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 visitors index, however AIOs do present on many of those queries. We additionally pull AIO information from logged-out customers, after they’re extra more likely to present to logged-in customers. Many international locations 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 rapidly clarify some variations.
Some fast math on our numbers. 180 million month-to-month searches * 12 months = 2.16 trillion searches a yr in our information. That’s lower than the 5 trillion Google says.
To attempt to clarify the distinction, there are lots of 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 a couple of 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 may very well be as a result of nameless queries elevated, we’ve 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 enhance additional. Folks’s search behaviour has modified and so they’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 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 Knowledge web page. India 16.5%, Brazil 15.5%, UK 12.5%, and so forth.
Sidenote.
In the event you see many international locations 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 utilize 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 stunned if many of those websites have been truly 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 |
| assist.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 here are the classes and their proportion of general mentions:
- Data & Reference – 4.4%
- Well being & Medical – 5.8%
- Q&A & Neighborhood Dialogue – 5.9%
- Video & Social Media – 3.4%
- Search & Translation Instruments – 1.2%
- Training & 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 approach of doing that is to make use of the total dataset, however use the “Discover mentions of manufacturers, merchandise, or providers” filter. Enter 1 or 2 and use “Recommend extra” to make use of AI to get among the competing corporations or merchandise.
The share and attain reviews gives you 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. In the event 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 completely 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 received 24.3M key phrases for Informational intent out of 24.8M whole for the US. That’s 97.70% of the whole.
Do not forget 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 received the next percentages:
- Branded: 19.97%
- Non-branded: 80.03%
AIOs are much less more likely 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 received the next percentages:
- Native: 6.85%
- Non-Native: 93.15%
AIOs are much less more likely to present up for native searches.
Filtering Key phrases Explorer to SERPs with AIOs and filtering by phrase depend tells an attention-grabbing 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 Problem (KD). It appears to be like like AIOs are most certainly 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 once I’m looking long-tail queries, particularly ones that I believe are fairly distinctive queries. This wasn’t mirrored within the information, nonetheless it could be biased as we don’t embrace lots of the queries like I described in our search visitors index.
Filtering Key phrases Explorer to SERPs with AIOs and filtering by Price-Per-Click on (CPC), or the price of an advert click on, exhibits a slight bias for decrease CPC phrases.
What’s extra attention-grabbing 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 marvel 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 net 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 may also help you clarify why a competitor may present up greater than you do for AIOs or different LLMs.
LLMs work as subsequent phrase predictors with a little bit of variability inbuilt. In the event you’re talked about extra within the coaching information corresponding to net pages, you’re going to be talked about extra within the outputs of LLMs.
Ultimate ideas
Don’t look forward to the subsequent large research if it is advisable report what is occurring with AIOs. You may run the information your self with Ahrefs at any time with Model Radar and Key phrases Explorer.
If in case you have questions, message me on X or LinkedIn.
