AI Overviews (Google's AI-generated answer summaries shown above traditional results) are expanding across searches with commercial intent, according to a new Semrush study — a shift that puts Google's automated summaries directly in front of queries that once reliably produced clicks for retailers, affiliates and service businesses.

The finding matters because AI Overviews had, since their wide rollout in mid-2024, clustered heavily around informational questions — definitional, how-to and research phrasing where publishers expected low click-through anyway. Semrush now reports the feature is appearing on queries that signal purchase consideration, the territory where organic listings have historically converted best.

This is tool-signal data, not a Google statement. Semrush tracks AI Overview presence across its keyword-corpus and query datasets; its numbers describe what the tool observes in results, and Google does not publish its own coverage figures for the feature. Treat the directional trend as solid and the precise pace as an estimate that will vary by dataset.

What does the expansion mean for commercial sites?

The mechanics are simple and the consequences aren't. When an AI Overview renders on a query, it occupies the top of the results page, pushing the first organic listing further down the screen and, on mobile, often below the fold.

For commercial-intent queries — product comparisons, "best X for Y" phrasing, pricing and review searches — that displacement cuts into the listing positions that carried most of the clicks. Site types most exposed:

• E-commerce category and comparison pages that rank for "best" and "vs" queries
• Affiliate and review sites whose entire model depends on ranking for mid-funnel research terms
• Local service providers whose conversion pages target solution-seeking phrasing

Semrush's study frames the pattern as expansion: commercial queries are no longer a category AI Overviews largely avoid.

Is this confirmed or speculative?

Two things should be kept separate.

Confirmed: Google has said AI Overviews continue to roll out to more query types, and Google has framed the feature as reducing clicks for some results while maintaining that they "send valuable traffic" to the broader web. That is the company's stated position.

Tool-based: the specific claim that commercial intent coverage is growing comes from Semrush's dataset. It is consistent with what other rank-tracking vendors have observed in recent months, but each tool samples a different keyword universe, so percentages differ across studies. No third-party number is a Google number.

What should sites do about it now?

The practical response for commercial publishers is structural rather than tactical.

• Track AI Overview presence on your highest-value commercial keywords, by query, over time — aggregate tools can miss vertical-specific patterns.
• Watch which source domains the AI Overviews cite on those queries; cited pages tend to retain some visibility even when traditional clicks compress.
• Diversify intent coverage: transactional brand terms and long-tail configuration queries have so far seen less AI Overview pressure than broad research phrasing.
• Keep measurement honest: separate AI Overview–triggering queries from the rest before drawing conclusions about ranking or traffic drops, since the two can move independently.

The strategic question — whether Google keeps expanding AI Overviews into harder commercial categories like pricing and transactional terms — is the one to watch. Semrush's data says the boundary is already moving; the next few months of coverage tracking will show how far it goes.