The short version: Google now puts an AI Overview on 93% of the small business social media and marketing questions I checked, 280 of 300 live searches. The AI answer cites YouTube on 57% of those searches and Reddit on 20%, and it cites the average page-one website almost never. On my own site, a page ranking in positions 7 to 10 under an AI Overview gets a 1.7% click-through rate. The topic in this dataset with the fewest AI Overviews, free games, clicks through at 4.2%; Instagram questions, where every single search has one, click through at 0.44%.
Why I ran this
I have published on social media and marketing since 2005, and this year the search traffic to those pages stopped behaving the way it did for eighteen years. Pages sat on page one and earned almost nothing. I wanted to know how much of that is the AI Overview at the top of the results, and who Google's AI is choosing to cite instead. So I checked the live Google results page for 300 real searches, one by one, and joined them to what those searches do on my own site.
Key findings
- 93% of searches show an AI Overview. 280 of the 300 queries had one on the live US desktop results page on 10 September 2026.
- YouTube is the most cited source, by a distance. It is referenced in 57% of AI Overviews in this set. Reddit is second at 20%, then the SEO tool vendors Semrush and Ahrefs, then Instagram's own pages and Quora.
- The AI Overview cites 5.4 sources on average, and the same 25 domains account for most of them. Independent blogs, including mine, appear in about 1% of overviews.
- People Also Ask appears on 91% of these searches, video results on 38%, and the forums box on 10%. A page-one organic result on a typical Instagram question sits below an AI Overview, a video carousel, a People Also Ask box and a Reddit thread before a reader reaches it.
- Click-through on page one has collapsed where the overview appears. On my site, positions 4 to 6 under an AI Overview earn 0.7% click-through and positions 7 to 10 earn 1.7%. Ten years ago position 5 was worth roughly 5 to 7% on almost any query.
- The topic decides the damage. Every Instagram question in the set (100%) has an AI Overview and the cluster clicks through at 0.44%. Free games questions have one only 77% of the time and click through at 4.2%, more than nine times higher.
AI Overview coverage by topic
| Topic | Queries checked | Searches with an AI Overview | Click-through on my ranking pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everything else | 129 | 91% | 0.40% |
| Guest posts and backlinks | 59 | 98% | 1.34% |
| 55 | 100% | 0.44% | |
| Marketing and business | 20 | 85% | 0.00% |
| Free games | 13 | 77% | 4.18% |
| Facebook and Messenger | 7 | 86% | 0.50% |
| Twitter and X | 7 | 100% | 0.16% |
| ChatGPT and AI tools | 6 | 100% | 1.81% |
Click-through is measured on my own Search Console data for the same queries over the 28 days to 7 September 2026, on pages that rank for them. It is one site's experience, not a market average, but it is real and it is consistent across topics.
Who Google's AI cites
| Domain | AI Overviews citing it | Share of the 280 overviews |
|---|---|---|
| youtube.com | 161 | 57% |
| reddit.com | 57 | 20% |
| semrush.com | 37 | 13% |
| instagram.com | 35 | 12% |
| quora.com | 33 | 12% |
| ahrefs.com | 32 | 11% |
| zapier.com | 28 | 10% |
| support.google.com | 21 | 8% |
| socialmediatoday.com | 19 | 7% |
| premium.chat | 18 | 6% |
| rankmath.com | 18 | 6% |
| linkedin.com | 15 | 5% |
| seranking.com | 15 | 5% |
| linkbuildinghq.com | 15 | 5% |
| squareup.com | 15 | 5% |
Two things stand out. Video is not a nice-to-have on how-to questions any more; it is the primary source Google's AI trusts. And on anything with a commercial angle (backlinks, scheduling, booking, live chat), the sources are the software vendors' own help centres and blogs, not the reviewers who compare them.
How the results page is stacked
Across the 300 searches, the features that appeared were: organic results on 297, an AI Overview on 280, People Also Ask on 272, related searches on 271, a video block on 115, a forums and discussions box on 30, image packs on 27 and short videos on 18. For a reader on a phone that means the first organic link is often three or four screens down.
What this means if you run a small business
First, stop measuring your content by rankings alone. A number 7 ranking in 2026 is worth a fraction of what it was, and the fraction depends on whether an AI answer sits above you. Second, if you want to be the source the AI quotes, the evidence says: publish the video version of your best how-to guides on YouTube, answer the question in the first paragraph of the page so it can be lifted verbatim, and get into the conversations on Reddit and the forums Google now pulls into the results. Third, the queries where the AI stays away, or where the answer needs a tool rather than a paragraph, are where clicks still live. That is why I have been building free tools this year rather than more articles on questions an AI can answer in two lines.
All of my studies and free tools are listed on the research and tools page.
Method
I took the 300 queries with the most impressions on lilachbullock.com in Google Search Console for the 28 days to 7 September 2026, excluding branded searches and anything that was not plain English. For each query I fetched the live Google results page for the United States on desktop on 10 September 2026 through a SERP data provider, recorded every result feature on the page, whether an AI Overview was present, and every domain the overview referenced. I then joined each query to its impressions, clicks and average position on my site for the same 28 days. Percentages above are shares of the 300 queries or of the 280 AI Overviews. The topic groups were assigned by keyword rules and a few queries fit more than one; I assigned each to the first matching group. This is a single-site, single-day snapshot of one country; AI Overview coverage varies by country and changes weekly.
I tested the indexing side of this on my own site: what Google does with 1,995 pages that get zero impressions.
Use this data
Journalists, researchers and anyone writing about AI search can quote any figure on this page with a link to it. If you want the query-level dataset (query, topic, AI Overview yes or no, cited domains, result features), email [email protected] and I will send the file.
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For the same effect measured on a single platform, see the study of what people ask about Instagram in 2026.
Related research: I Checked 5,000 Guest Post Websites Live: 18% Were Dead, Half Have 1,000+ Referring Domains.
If this study made you wonder where your own business stands, my answer engine optimization services start with exactly this kind of check.
Frequently asked questions
How often does Google show an AI Overview in 2026?
On this set of 300 small business social media and marketing searches, 93% showed one on the live US results page on 10 September 2026. Coverage varies by topic: 100% of Instagram questions, 77% of free games questions.
Which websites do Google AI Overviews cite most?
In this dataset YouTube (57% of overviews), Reddit (20%), Semrush, Instagram, Quora and Ahrefs. Independent blogs appear in roughly 1% of overviews.
Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?
On my site, pages ranking in positions 7 to 10 under an AI Overview get 1.7% click-through, and positions 4 to 6 get 0.7%. The topic cluster with the fewest AI Overviews clicks through at 4.2%.
How do you get cited in an AI Overview?
The sources Google's AI trusts in this data are video, forums and official help centres. Practically: a YouTube version of your best guides, a direct answer in the first paragraph of each page, and presence in the Reddit and forum threads on your topic.
