AI Overviews doubled on commercial searches in September. Where they sit decides the click.

For a long time the working assumption about Google's AI Overviews was that they were an information feature. Ask how to remove a coffee stain and you got a summary. Search for "best stain remover for coffee" and you mostly got shopping ads, product grids and blue links.

New data from the rank-tracking company AccuRanker, published today, says that assumption broke in September. Drawing on 674 million matched observations from its own tracker and Google Search Console between January and September 2026, it found AI Overviews spreading quickly into commercial and transactional searches, the ones where people compare and buy.

The second finding in the report is the one we would put in front of a CPG team. Whether an Overview appears matters less than you might think. Where it appears on the page matters a lot.

The jump in one month

AccuRanker groups searches by intent. For desktop searches where a tracked domain ranks first, it compared September 1 with September 30, 2026.

Show the data

Search type and date	Value
Commercial, Sep 1	26%
Commercial, Sep 30	51%
Transactional, Sep 1	27%
Transactional, Sep 30	51%

Source: AccuRanker, What Our Latest Data Reveal about AI Overviews (Nov 5, 2026). Based on 674 million matched AccuRanker and Google Search Console observations, January to September 2026. Informational and navigational figures were shown only as a chart in the report and are not reproduced here.

"In just one month, the share of commercial searches showing an AIO almost doubled, jumping from 26% to 51%," AccuRanker's Sille Christensen writes. Transactional searches followed the same path, from 27% to 51%.

The overall picture moved too. On September 30, AI Overviews appeared in 66% of tracked desktop results and 59% of tracked mobile results. Two months earlier, the figures were 48% and 38%.

Other trackers point the same way with different methods. A Semrush study we covered in October followed 400 US desktop keywords with commercial modifiers and found AI Overviews on 88% of them by August, up from 45.75% a year earlier. We wrote up the details in our post on the Semrush numbers. The two studies use different keyword sets, so the levels don't line up, but both describe the same shift: shopping searches are no longer Overview-free.

What the Overview does to the top result

AccuRanker's click data comes from real Search Console numbers for July 2026. For the first organic result, it compared searches with and without an Overview.

Situation	Desktop CTR	Mobile CTR
No AI Overview	13.0%	13.6%
AI Overview present (any position)	5.2%	8.3%
AI Overview above the first result	4.0%	6.8%
AI Overview below the first result	9.8%	13.5%

Source: AccuRanker, real Google Search Console CTR for rank-1 results.

The headline effect matches what other research has found. In a 2025 browsing study, Pew Research Center found people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when one didn't. AccuRanker's desktop figures for the top spot point the same way, with an even larger drop.

The split by placement is the new part. An Overview at the top of the page cut desktop CTR for the first result by roughly two-thirds in July. The same feature placed under the first result cut it by about a quarter on desktop, and on mobile it made almost no difference.

Show the data

Situation	Value
No AI Overview	13%
Overview below result	9.8%
Overview above result	4%

Source: AccuRanker, What Our Latest Data Reveal about AI Overviews (Nov 5, 2026). Google Search Console data for position-1 results matched to AccuRanker SERP tracking.

The Overview moves around, and shopping searches push it down

AccuRanker also tracked where the box sits. On September 1, 2026, the Overview appeared below the position-1 result in 28% of cases. A week later, that share was 37%.

Placement also differs by intent. For transactional searches, more than a third of Overviews appeared as the fourth element on the results page or lower. For informational searches, that happened in about one in eight cases. Informational queries tend to get the Overview at the top. Transactional ones more often push it further down, below product listings, ads or the first results.

So the September jump looks less dramatic once you add placement. More shopping searches now carry an Overview, but on many of them it is not the first thing a shopper sees.

AccuRanker puts it neatly: "AIO presence tells you that Google has invited AI to the party. But AIO placement tells you whether AI gets to speak before you do."

What we would take from this as a CPG brand

Clicks are the smaller part of the story

For most packaged goods brands, the search that matters is rarely "brand name." It is a need: "low sugar protein bar," "fragrance free laundry detergent for babies," "reef safe sunscreen for kids." Those are exactly the commercial searches that just doubled their Overview coverage in AccuRanker's data.

When an Overview answers that kind of question, it usually names products or brands and explains why. A brand that is named and described correctly has gained something, even if nobody clicks through to its site. A brand that is missing, or described with last year's formula, has lost something that won't show up in a traffic report. The click data above is useful, but it measures only the visit, not the recommendation.

Track placement, not just presence

Most rank reports have a column for "AI Overview: yes or no." This data says that column is not enough. Two keywords with the same rank and the same yes can produce very different traffic depending on whether the box sits above or below your result.

If you have a rank tracker that records SERP features, check whether it records the Overview's position. If you track by hand, a monthly screenshot of your top 20 commercial searches on desktop and on a phone will do. Note three things for each: whether an Overview appears, whether it sits above your first result, and whether it names your product.

Look at desktop and mobile separately

The mobile and desktop numbers behave differently. On mobile, an Overview below the first result barely changed CTR in July. On desktop, it still took a few points. Blending the two into one average hides that. AccuRanker makes the same recommendation in its list of next steps.

Don't panic-edit title tags

If clicks fall on a page whose rankings haven't moved, the results page probably changed around it. Before you rewrite a title or a meta description, look at the page as a shopper would. An Overview may have appeared above you, or ads may have multiplied. Search Engine Roundtable reported on November 4 that AI Mode answers have been seen with up to four ads, where one or two used to be typical. That is a separate surface, but it is the same pattern: more things between the question and your link.

Make the cited pages easy to quote

An Overview on a shopping search is built from pages Google can read and trust. For CPG, that usually means retailer listings, review sites and the brand's own product pages. The facts that get pulled into answers are the plain ones: what the product is for, what is in it, size and count, certifications, who it suits and who it doesn't. We have a short list of the content that tends to get cited in tip 6, and our guide to how Google writes your snippet covers the same ground for search results.

Checking your own searches

Here is a simple monthly routine that fits the data:

1. List 20 commercial searches for your category. Use the words shoppers use, not your internal product names.
2. Run each on desktop and on a phone, logged out, in a private window.
3. Record whether an Overview appears, where it sits relative to the first organic result, and whether your brand or product is named.
4. Note which sources the Overview links to. If retailer pages dominate, check that your listings there carry the same facts as your own pages.
5. Compare with Search Console clicks for the same queries. A drop with stable rank and a new Overview above you is a page change, not an SEO failure.

The same answer check is worth running in other assistants, since a brand that appears in one Overview may be missing from ChatGPT or Gemini for the same question. Some teams use tools such as SearchPanel from XENA Intelligence to run shopper-style questions across assistants on a schedule; a spreadsheet works for a small range.

If you are wondering whether to block Google from showing your content in Overviews at all, we looked at that trade-off in tip 34 and in our post on what opting out costs. Short version: for most brands, the visibility is worth more than the clicks you would protect.

Caveats

• AccuRanker's data covers its own customers' tracked keywords and the sites connected to Search Console. That is a large sample, but not a random one, and it is not broken out for CPG or grocery categories.
• The commercial and transactional figures cover desktop searches where a tracked domain ranks first. The report did not give the equivalent mobile figures in text.
• The CTR figures are from July, while the coverage jump happened in September. CTR at today's coverage may differ.
• Placement changed within a single week in September, which suggests Google is still testing. Any snapshot, including this one, can age quickly.

The direction is still clear. Google now shows its own answer on about half of the shopping searches AccuRanker tracks, up from about a quarter at the start of September. For brands, the job is to be named correctly in that answer and to know where it sits on the page.