Google’s AI Overviews now show a much stronger connection with organic search rankings than they did at launch. Research from BrightEdge tracking[1] data over 16 months shows that more than half of AI Overview citations, 54.5 percent, now come from pages that also appear in organic results. At the start of the rollout in May 2024, the overlap was only 32.3 percent. The increase of 22.3 percentage points suggests that Google’s systems are leaning more on established rankings when generating AI summaries.
Sector Differences
The overlap is not the same in every industry. Healthcare sits at 75.3 percent, education at 72.6 percent, insurance at 68.6 percent, and B2B technology at 71 percent. These sectors fall into areas where trust and authority are especially important, which helps explain why AI pulls more from content already ranking. Education showed the sharpest rise, climbing by more than 53 percentage points over the study period.
On the other end, e-commerce remains low. Only 22.9 percent of AI Overview citations match organic results, and coverage has even declined slightly by 7.6 percent. Travel, entertainment, finance, and restaurants also stay below 33 percent, showing little sign of catching up with the high-overlap categories.
The Timeline of Change
The shift has played out in three distinct phases. Between May and August 2024, overlap remained flat around 32 to 34 percent as Google tested sources and in some cases kept AI Overviews switched off. With the public rollout in September 2024, overlap jumped to 39.1 percent, including a 5.4 point rise in only two months. From September 2024 through January 2025, the pace accelerated. The overlap reached 45.2 percent by the start of that year. Growth then slowed, but by May 2025 the figure had passed 50 percent and has since settled in the mid-fifties. BrightEdge suggests this may be close to Google’s target balance.
Why Some Industries Move Faster
Healthcare, insurance, and education overlap heavily with organic search because the pool of trusted sources is relatively narrow. These areas fall under Google’s “Your Money or Your Life” classification, where quality and reliability are weighted heavily. E-commerce has remained an outlier. AI Overviews may be useful for product research, but they are less suited to transactions where users expect direct product listings.
Implications for SEO
BrightEdge recommends that publishers first measure how often their own pages appear in both AI Overviews and organic results. A site with high overlap, above 60 percent, should continue to focus on traditional SEO. Those with low overlap, under 30 percent, need to adapt content strategies for both organic search and AI citations. The study also notes that most AI Overview citations come from pages ranked between positions 21 and 100 rather than the top 10, with only 16.7 percent pulled from first-page results. This shows that Google is spreading citations across a broader range of ranked content.
The Current Outlook
The growth in overlap has slowed since May 2025, holding steady around 54 percent. For publishers, the next challenge lies in monitoring smaller shifts and tailoring content to meet user intent more closely. The evidence shows that while AI Overviews are changing how results appear, the same principles still apply: produce content that is clear, relevant, and aligned with what users expect to find.
Notes: This post was edited/created using GenAI tools.
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References
- ^ BrightEdge tracking (www.brightedge.com)
- ^ Security Flaws in Gemini Let Hackers Steal User Data, Google Rushes to Patch (www.digitalinformationworld.com)