Tl;dr Google has been showing AI overviews for more branded searches
- Google increased branded AI overviews in late September 2026 as found by DemandSphere data, who tracked branded queries through September. AI overviews on branded searches rose from around 27-35% earlier in the month, up to 69.21-90.48% on two days late in the month (26th and 27th Sept).
- AI overviews appearing on searches has continued to increase through 2026, causing continued concern over the impacts it will have on web traffic and the new era of ‘Zero Click’ marketing.
- An AI overview showing for the search results on your brand name could have a significant impact on your brand and is a clear signal of why your business should take its AI search visibility seriously and ensure good brand hygiene across online sources.
- It doesn’t have to be a problem for small businesses, but you should take action to monitor it regularly, review the sources being cited and clean up any messaging that isn’t positive for your brand and is on a platform you control.
Google AI Overviews continue to increase
Noticed more AI overviews than usual recently? You’re probably not imagining it. AI overviews are increasingly being served by Google in the SERPs, even including branded searches.
Previously, if you searched a brand name, it probably wouldn’t trigger an AI overview. Especially an SMB business that isn’t a household name. But that has changed recently, with DemandSphere data showing branded AI Overviews rapidly increased in late September, rising from around 27-35% earlier in the month, up to 69.21-90.48% on two days late in the month (26th and 27th Sept).
While Google didn’t announce anything about this, it has led to speculation in the SEO and marketing communities that Google wants to move this way. In the absence of clear information from Google, it’s important to note that things could return to the levels as they were before – and this was simply a test.
What should I do if Google provides an AI overview when I search my business’s name?
If an AI overview is appearing when you search for the name of your business, there are a few changes you’ll need to make:
Monitor your business’s AI overview regularly
You’ll need to start monitoring your brand’s AI overview regularly if you don’t already. Google is essentially taking away a large degree of the control you used to have over your brand narrative from you, so you need to regain what control you can. Because AI is inherently unpredictable in how it curates and presents information, you have to expect it to change each time. Even if the broad messages stay the same.
Review the accuracy of the information and how it aligns with your preferred brand narrative
You’ll need to evaluate whether the AI overview presents your business favourably and if it aligns with your ideal brand story and messaging. If you’ve put a lot of work into brand hygiene, which is a big part of AEO/GEO, then you might be pleasantly surprised. If not, and you’re in an industry where there are lots of public reviews or subreddits etc. discussing your brand, you might realise how much of a challenge these AI overviews could cause to your brand.
When the company I work for started receiving AI overviews, I was pleased to see that the work I’d put into AI search optimisation for the business was really paying off – with Google describing us in almost the exact words I’d tried to feed to AI. But I’d already put in months of effort to clean up our brand presence across the web, which is what I’ll cover next.
Review the sources of information cited in the AI overview
The first thing you need to do to take action on AI overviews, is just to note down the sources that are being cited when it describes your brand.
If it’s citing your LinkedIn company page, an industry business directory and your website, that’s useful knowledge. It’s telling you exactly what sources Google’s AI values and trusts.
If it’s citing opinions of people on YouTube and citing comments about your business in one of their videos, that’s really important to be aware of. Content created by other people, largely out of your control, could now be influencing how your brand is presented and perceived to the people searching exactly for your business in Google.
Regularly make notes of the sources being cited, with their exact URLs, and note what information on that pages or posts was being cited. If it’s a source you control, you can easily amend it if needed to fit your preferred messaging.
Editing the sources cited in AI overviews and brand hygiene
If you want to rectify any of the inconsistencies in the AI overview, or if anything being cited is just wrong or being out of context, you’ll want to take action. The way to remedy this will be similar to the techniques people are already discussing for AEO/GEO. You find the sources, correct them if possible, get clear messaging and put out new content that corrects the information across your digital presence. Not just on your website.
Changes can appear very quickly, as soon as your fresh content is indexed in Google. Because Google isn’t signed up to the IndexNow protocol unlike Bing, you could manually submit the URL in Search Console for faster crawling and indexing if you need to rectify the information as quickly as possible.
If there is key info missing in the AI overview, but you don’t have a logical place to publish the information naturally on your site, creating a dedicated AI information page is an option. This is a page you add to your website footer which is designed specifically to be read by large language models (LLMs), not humans, and it can sometimes be cited in AI responses. I haven’t seen ours cited in branded AI overviews, but if you ask follow up questions (which uses Google AI mode), it has cited our AI information page before and proved very useful.
In my opinion, a lot of AI search optimisation is overcomplicated by SEO/AEO/GEO experts trying to sell a snakeoil service. I think most of it really boils down to basic data hygiene, or what I call brand hygiene, which is where you monitor mentions of your brand across the web, clean up out of date information by deleting it or updating it with your latest positioning and messaging, and try to ensure they are as positive as possible, while remaining truthful and accurate.
AI loves to repeat information it can find in multiple places and certain high-authority sources like LinkedIn or YouTube. If you are already taking SEO and AEO/GEO seriously, you should be using consistent messaging across the whole of the web anyway, on all the platforms you control. That could be website, online directories, social platforms, PR pieces, video content, podcasts, award win bios, guest blogs etc.
Make AEO/GEO part of your ongoing SEO strategy
At the end of the day, AI search is just another evolution of SEO. Every business that values organic search as a channel, needs to take the time to invest in AEO/GEO. AI is increasingly shaping how people discover and learn about our brands. It shouldn’t intimidate you and doesn’t need to take up a lot of time. In my experience, most small to medium sized businesses can do well with AI search, just by investing some time each month into brand hygiene and having a clear USP and ‘about us’ messaging that you can paste everywhere across the web as part of your ongoing content and marketing strategy.
One of the highest value activities I’ve done to improve our AI search performance was updating online business directories. We had over 70 profiles, accumulated over more than two decades. By using consistent up to date messaging, on these platforms (that AI loves to trust and cite), that same messaging quickly found its way into AI answers when asking questions about our brand. It helped us really shape our brand narrative in AI.
Summary
Overall, AI overviews on branded searches isn’t likely to make marketers lives any easier. It removes some of the control we used to have when our websites would appear top and would often be seen as the single source of truth about our brand. It also has the potential to surface negative information about our brands or present inaccurate information.
But in my opinion, it’s useful in many ways as it forces us to be better marketers. It forces us to keep on top of that data hygiene and to constantly make sure the content we’ve put out across the web is accurate and relevant to today. If it’s not, it doesn’t serve brands or their audience well, which isn’t good for anyone.
So it’s really case of just having to invest more time into AI search optimisation and doing all the good stuff we already know we should be doing. Positive reviews, testimonials, fresh content, easy to read structured information and clear points of view and USP.