AI Overviews now appear on most branded searches, Ahrefs data shows
A search for a brand's own name used to be the one query where the brand's site sat on top. That is changing. In a study published on October 2, Ahrefs reports that AI Overviews appeared in 82.91% of US desktop results for branded keywords on September 29, 2026. The data covers 232.8 million result crawls from July to September: 92.5 million branded and 140.2 million non-branded.
Branded searches caught up
| Month (average) | Branded keywords with an AI Overview | Non-branded |
|---|---|---|
| July 2026 | 61.3% | 73.5% |
| August 2026 | 65.1% | 74.7% |
| September 2026 | 73.3% | 78.3% |
Branded searches gained 12 percentage points in a quarter, non-branded ones 4.8. The gap between the two groups shrank from 12.2 points in July to 5 in September. In Ahrefs' study from November 2025, AI Overviews were far more common on non-branded queries.
Top of the page, not the brand's site
Ahrefs also checked bare brand names, such as "bluehost", for 100 companies from Interbrand's Best Global Brands list, every week from July to September. On July 1, five of 98 usable results had an AI Overview. By September 30, 63 of 100 did, with most of the jump at the start of September. In 48 of those 63 (76.2%) the AI Overview held position one, above the brand's own site, with an average position of 1.49.
Who gets cited
Most citations to sites other than the brand's own went to three places:
- Wikipedia, cited in 41 AI Overviews (71.9%)
- YouTube, in 22 (38.6%)
- LinkedIn, in 13 (22.8%)
Yahoo Finance, Facebook and Walmart followed. Competitors barely appeared: two of 58 readable answers mentioned one, and one competitor-owned site showed up across 57 source lists. The risk Ahrefs points to is different. The answer for a brand's name is now written partly from pages the brand doesn't control, such as a video review on someone else's channel that may describe an old version of the product.
What to check
Start with the list of your branded queries that show an AI Overview, then read what each one says. Fix what you can at the sources it cites: the facts on your Wikipedia article (through its talk page, since editing your own article is a conflict of interest), your official YouTube channel and your LinkedIn company page. A page on your own site that answers the questions people search with your name, such as pricing, login and alternatives, gives Google something of yours to cite. Ahrefs notes that Google changes AI Overview triggers often and that these numbers may not hold.
To watch how AI answers describe your brand over time, see our lists of AI visibility tools and AEO tools.