AI Overviews and shopping queries: the real numbers, not the scary ones
Last reviewed
Short answer
The verified numbers: Visibility Labs measured AI Overviews on 14% of 20.9 million shopping keywords by March 2026, up 5.6x from 2.1% in November 2025. BrightEdge documented Google pulling AI Overviews back 57% from their peak on ecommerce keywords before the 2025 holidays. Growing and volatile is the honest summary. The stat claiming they dropped to 3% of shopping queries conflates three studies and is wrong.
First, the myth we came here to kill
A sentence circulates in merchant forums: AI Overviews show on about half of all searches but only 3% of shopping queries, because Google cut them back from 29% when they hurt conversions. We went looking for the study. There is none. The sentence welds together a Semrush all-queries tracker figure, one category from a BrightEdge holiday test where furniture retained 3%, and an unsourced rollout number nobody can trace.
This matters beyond pedantry, because the fake stat tells merchants AI Overviews are retreating from commerce, and the verified data says the opposite.
What the studies actually found
Visibility Labs analysed 20.9 million shopping keywords and published in March 2026: about 2.92 million triggered AI Overviews, 14%, up from 2.1% the previous November. A 5.6x expansion in four months is not a retreat. Semrush's mid-2026 study adds direction: commercial-intent AI Overviews grew 71% in six months while purely transactional ones fell slightly, meaning Google aims them at research moments, best, versus, is-it-worth-it, rather than at the final buy click.
The pullback that did happen is instructive. BrightEdge tracked ecommerce keywords through autumn 2025: coverage spiked to 26%, then Google cut it back 57% before the holidays, landing near its 9% baseline, with retention varying wildly by category, grocery high, furniture nearly gone. Google experiments on commercial queries in both directions, aggressively.
| Finding | Number | Source and date |
|---|---|---|
| Shopping keywords with AI Overviews | 14%, up from 2.1% in four months | Visibility Labs, Mar 2026, 20.9M keywords |
| Commercial-intent AIO growth | +71% in six months | Semrush, Jul 2026, 600K+ keywords |
| Holiday pullback on ecommerce keywords | -57% from the 26% peak | BrightEdge, Nov 2025 |
| All-queries AIO presence | Roughly 48%, tracker-dependent | Semrush Sensor, 2026 |
What Google itself says, with the grain of salt attached
Google's official line, from its August 2025 post, is that total organic click volume is relatively stable year over year and that AI in Search sends slightly more quality clicks, with third-party reports of collapse dismissed as flawed methodology. The post offers no data, and it predates the 2026 shopping expansion, both worth knowing when someone quotes it at you.
The claim and the third-party numbers can be simultaneously true: stable clicks in aggregate, redistributed away from informational pages and toward fewer, later-funnel visits. That redistribution is exactly what the zero-click discussion looks like from the store side.
What a store does with volatile numbers
Not panic, and not build a strategy on any single month's coverage figure. The coverage number Google controls and changes weekly. What you control is whether, when an AI Overview or AI Mode answer does form on your category's research queries, your products and pages are usable material for it: Merchant Center feed quality, and the conversational attributes Google added in 2026, question-and-answer fields, related products, popularity rank, submitted through a supplemental feed.
And measure your own reality rather than the aggregate: Google began piloting AI performance insights in Merchant Center in 2026, showing how your products surface in AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini. When that report reaches your account, it beats every industry study in this table, because it is about you.
Frequently asked questions
Are AI Overviews stealing my product page clicks?
For transactional queries, the evidence says less than feared: Semrush found purely transactional AI Overviews slightly declining, and buying still requires a checkout. The squeeze is on research-stage content, where answers form in place. Judge your own pages by query intent, not by aggregate coverage stats.
Can I opt my store out of AI Overviews?
Not separately from Google Search. AI features draw on the normal index, and Google-Extended controls Gemini training, not AI Overviews. The realistic choices are participate well or leave Google entirely, which is no choice for a store.
Why did Google pull AI Overviews back before the 2025 holidays?
Google did not say. BrightEdge documented the 57% reduction and the category pattern, and inference beyond that is speculation. The useful lesson is the volatility itself: coverage on commercial queries is an experiment Google reruns constantly.
Do conversational attributes actually do anything yet?
They are new, optional and Google-documented for helping AI systems understand product nuances, with AI Mode the named surface. Cheap to submit through a supplemental feed, plausibly early-adopter leverage, and unproven in third-party studies so far. We label that honestly and submit them anyway.
Sources
- Visibility Labs: AI Overviews on shopping queries, 20.9M keywords (18 Mar 2026, third-party research)
- BrightEdge: the AI Overview holiday shopping pullback (Nov 2025, third-party research)
- Google: AI in Search driving more queries and higher quality clicks (Aug 2025)
- Google Merchant Center Help: conversational attributes
- Semrush: AI Overviews and commercial search study (2 Jul 2026, third-party research)
Keep reading
Score your own catalog
Entitled grades every product against the rules on this page, explains each failure, and fixes them with AI you approve. The score is free forever.