On 2 October 2026, Ahrefs published a study I wish more owners would read slowly. Across 232.8 million US desktop results from July to September, AI Overviews showed up on 82.91 percent of branded searches by 29 September. The monthly averages climbed from 61.3 percent of branded keywords in July, to 65.1 percent in August, to 73.3 percent in September. Non-branded searches were already high and rose more slowly, from 73.5 percent to 78.3 percent. The write-up is here: AI Overviews currently appear for 83 percent of branded searches.
They also watched 100 well-known brand names. By 30 September, 63 of them had an AI Overview, and 48 of those sat in position one. When the answer cited a site that wasn't the brand, Wikipedia, YouTube, and LinkedIn were the usual suspects. Wikipedia alone was behind about 72 percent of those outside citations in their sample.
That's American desktop data, not a Cape Town mobile study. I still think the direction applies here. Google doesn't maintain a separate personality for brand searches in South Africa. If someone types your company name, an answer may appear before your site does, written from whatever pages Google trusts.
What this looks like from our own site
The AI Marketer's Search Console is a small, slightly embarrassing picture, and I'll just say it. Most of the clicks are people who already know the name. The non-brand queries, things like AI automation agency and AI operating system, show impressions and very few visits. We also see the site picked up inside AI Overviews. Being mentioned there feels like progress until you notice the ordinary clicks didn't arrive with it.
So the game has two halves. Show up for the job someone is actually trying to solve. On this site that has meant a first integration, a confidentiality line for law firms, the Sunday seller update, and advisor email that doesn't invent advice. The other half is the brand search. When someone types your name, the sentence Google writes should be one you'd sign.
The pages an answer can actually use
Models quote sentences. They struggle with mood boards. A page earns a citation when a stranger could copy one paragraph and still be telling the truth.
| On the page | Why an answer can use it |
|---|---|
| A question in the heading, close to how a person asks | It matches the query without a riddle |
| The answer in the first two sentences under that heading | There's something to lift before the anecdote |
| A number, a date, a place, or a named limit | Specifics are harder to confuse with a competitor's page |
| A person, with a name, who will own the claim | Anonymous "we" pages are easy to outrank with a LinkedIn post |
| A straight FAQ, visible, matching the marked-up questions | The question and the answer are already a pair |
Schema, the little machine-readable block in the page code, doesn't magic you into the box. It tells Google what the page claims to be: an article, a list of questions, a business. I've been putting that on these posts, and on the service pages that already had the questions visible. Markup without the sentence is decoration.
Brand searches are the ones that sting
If you rank first for your own name and an AI Overview sits above you, the click you used to get may not come. Ahrefs has written before about click rates dropping hard when that box is present. The sharper risk, in their October piece, is someone else's YouTube video describing your offer, slightly out of date, in the paragraph people read.
Check it yourself. Search your company name in a private window. Read the answer, if there is one. Then open your About page and see whether it states, in one or two plain sentences, what you do, where you are, and what you don't do. Ours is about Naeem Dollie and The AI Marketer. If your About page is a timeline of awards and no sentence a stranger could quote, you've left the job to Wikipedia, or to a directory you forgot you listed on.
Write the sentence you'd want read out loud if you weren't in the room. Put it high on a page you control. That's the whole "AEO" trick, stripped of the acronym.
What I would not do
Don't publish ten thin posts to "feed the model." A vague page is how you train the answer to be vague about you. Don't stuff the brand name into every heading. People searching "The AI Marketer" should find a page that sounds like us. People searching "how do I bring AI into a small firm" should find a page that answers that, with the brand as the author, not the keyword.
If the offer itself is being misunderstood, that's a writing problem before it's a technical one. The ads-versus-operations mix-up is in the agency buying guide. The operations menu is still the services page. And if you'd rather spend the half hour on the work inside the business than on how Google describes it, the discovery call is that conversation. The search box will still be there on Monday.
Questions people ask
What is an AI Overview?
It's the answer box Google sometimes writes at the top of search results, with links out to pages it used. You can be cited in it, ignored by it, or summarised from someone else's page.
Does a citation send as many visitors as a normal blue link?
Usually no. Ahrefs has previously reported a large drop in clicks when an AI Overview is present. The remaining reason to care is that the paragraph above your site may describe you, correctly or not.
How do I get quoted?
Publish a specific answer a stranger could lift without inventing the missing half. A named author, a date, a concrete example, and a question written the way a person would ask it. Vague service pages give the model nothing to hold.
Should I panic if my brand search shows an AI answer?
Panic is useless. Read the answer. If it's wrong, fix the page that should have been the source, and make sure that page actually says the fact in a sentence. If a YouTube video is telling your story for you, you at least know whose version Google preferred.