Google AI Overviews reach 88% of commercial searches as AI clicks stay thin

Google's AI summaries now sit above almost every commercial search that marketers track. The traffic those summaries send onward remains tiny. And the tools that measure both trends say Google has started feeding them altered results. Thursday, October 22, produced evidence for all three at once.

Taken together, the findings describe a search market in which the answer page keeps growing, the referral keeps shrinking and the measurement keeps getting harder to trust. None of the studies is large, and each comes with caveats its authors acknowledge. But they point the same way.

Most of the rest of the day ran along a related seam: who carries the cost when automated systems act on someone else's behalf. Walmart published rules for AI shopping agents and the money they may spend. Google adjusted how its bidding systems value customers, while a podcast postmortem showed what an earlier bidding change cost advertisers. Publishers took their fight against unidentified scrapers to lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic. And television companies reported what a single football tournament is worth.

What AI search is worth

Google's AI summaries now appear on almost every commercial query that marketers track. PPC Land reported that Google AI Overviews now hit 88% of tracked commercial keywords, Semrush finds. Semrush followed 400 US commercial keywords in banking, software and ecommerce from September 2025 to August 2026. Coverage rose from 45.75% to 88% of keywords, and to 97.08% when weighted by search volume. Queries containing "reviews" went from 30.14% to 89.04%. Ecommerce rose from 32.62% to 85.11%.

"A year ago, the searches we tracked that included 'reviews' saw an AI Overview just 30% of the time," Semrush wrote, adding that "ranking number one likely won't lead to as much traffic as it did this time last year." The study measures appearance only, with no click or traffic data, on US desktop. PPC Land estimates fewer than 27 keywords per industry and modifier cell, and notes that Semrush sells the tools its recommendations call for.

If AI Overviews are everywhere, AI referrals are not. Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz gathered three new studies suggesting AI visibility and search are not worth investing in, published at 11:21 UTC. Marie Haynes, using 12 months of GA4 data from 100 sites, found ChatGPT sessions were "just 0.62% of the volume driven by Google organic." ChatGPT visitors converted at a higher rate, but Google drove 96.5% of conversions. SEO Works found organic search delivered 39 times the traffic of AI assistants. Kevin Indig, studying 12 sites, said: "We also can't yet find a reliable relationship between AI Visibility and branded search or direct traffic." The samples are small, and Indig's finding is an absence of evidence rather than proof of no effect.

The tools that produce such studies have their own problem. PPC Land reported that Ahrefs says Google poisons 5% to 20% of results served to SEO data tools. Ahrefs says Google serves altered results to suspected scrapers, and that it now filters abnormal results, requests replacements and cleans historical data. "This is an industry-wide issue impacting many companies in our space," Ahrefs wrote. Other vendors report similar effects: DemandSphere put wrong daily rank checks at about 11% on October 13, Nozzle saw a peak of 27.0% on September 29, and AccuRanker found under 1% in mid-October. Ahrefs gave no methodology, and has not said whether corrected historical rankings will be flagged.

PPC News Feed also published a reference guide to Google Ads in AI Overviews on October 22, covering placements in 12 countries, the exclusion of exact match and the absence of an opt-out or reporting column.

The three findings fit together uncomfortably. If AI Overviews answer nearly nine in ten commercial queries, and AI assistants send a fraction of a percent of the traffic that organic results do, the value of ranking falls even for sites that rank well. Semrush says as much. And if the rank trackers themselves are receiving altered data, the decline becomes harder to measure precisely, which is the position Ahrefs now describes for its own customers.

Publishers turn to lawmakers

Publishers that once relied on technical blocks against AI scrapers are now asking for laws. Digiday's Sara Guaglione and Jessica Davies reported, in a briefing published at 04:01 UTC on October 22, that the transatlantic push to rein in stealth bots is gathering pace. In the US, the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act would require AI scrapers to identify themselves and their purpose. In the UK, a coalition including The Times, the FT and Condé Nast has urged the government to back a similar bill. "Robots.txt does nothing," said Jon Roberts of People Inc. Reuters' Phil Andraos described a stricter posture: "We do our best to block crawlers and bots unless they identify themselves and we authorize them."

The numbers in the briefing come mostly from vendors. DataDome says scraping accounts for 70.9% of malicious bot traffic, up 185.2% in a year. The FT saw one account try to reach about one million articles in eight hours from roughly 700,000 IP addresses. Reach counted more than 100 million successful scrapes in six months. Centinel says 84% of requests claiming to come from GPTBot are fake. Piano and Cloudflare say 70% of bot traffic is unverified, and People Inc. lets 38 bots through each day. No bill has passed in either country, and the US proposal has not been scheduled for a vote. The News/Media Alliance says more than 300 executives lobbied Congress in September.

Google retunes its retail machinery

For retailers, the most consequential Google change of the day was about how much a new customer is worth. PPC Land reported that Google Ads lets retailers multiply new customer values up to 5x. Percentage multipliers from 1.1x to 5x leave beta alongside the old flat-amount option. In Google's example, at 1.2x a $100 purchase counts as $120 and a $500 purchase as $600. PPC Land ran the comparison: on a $1,000 basket, a flat $20 bonus produces $1,020, while 1.2x produces $1,200. Segments need at least 1,000 active members.

Search Engine Roundtable covered the wider package as customer lifecycle goals gaining value mode, retention goals and percentage multipliers, all rolling out in October. High value mode extends to Shopping, and three retention modes (Re-engagement, Loyalty and Retention-only) come to Performance Max, Search and Shopping. Google said the multiplier "makes it simple to bid dynamically for big cart purchases as they would for a smaller cart purchase." One response on X, from a user called Shaoxiao, put the doubt neatly: "That assumes the acquisition premium scales with basket size." PPC Land notes Google's wording switches between "predicted cart size" and "purchase value", and does not say whether the multiplier applies at auction, to reported value, or both.

A podcast postmortem showed what happens when Google changes bidding rules without much warning. PPC Land reported that budget-limited campaigns lost their 20% ROAS surplus in 3 weeks, smec finds. Before Google's August change, budget-limited campaigns using target ROAS beat their targets about 55% of the time, with a median overachievement of about 20%. The median fell to about 11% in the week of August 17, about 6% a week later and roughly zero by August 31. "So they throttle the bids on purpose," said smec's Mike Ryan. His colleague Christian Scharmüller added: "It was not smooth. It was not communicated correctly." In one unnamed UK homeware account, cost per click rose from about 17p to about 27p in a week. The sample size and markets were not disclosed.

Google is also widening the reach of its bidding experiments. PPC News Feed reported, at 07:00 UTC, that Smart Bidding Exploration expands to Performance Max and Shopping. The feature, previously limited to Search, "aims to maximize performance on the search channel by bidding on additional searches among existing eligible terms." Campaigns must use target ROAS and should not be limited by budget, which brings the smec findings straight back into view.

The interface changes kept coming. Search Engine Roundtable reported a new Google Ads translation tool under Tools that translates headlines, descriptions, sitelinks, callouts and keywords, replaces on-image text with AI, and handles landing pages through uploads or a JavaScript snippet. Schwartz also spotted Sponsored Products ads expanding to include product attributes in a grey band, a test first noted by Sachin Patel. PPC News Feed reported that Demand Gen now accepts HTML5 ads for the Display Network, serving only on the Google Display Network and not on YouTube, Discover, Maps or Gmail. And Google added icons to conversion tracking statuses, so an hourglass now sits beside "Awaiting conversions."

Two data changes have dates attached. PPC News Feed reported early on October 23 that Google Ads updates its Data Manager policy on hashed customer data: from November 16, 2026, Data Manager will no longer require customer data hashed with SHA-256, processing it in a trusted execution environment instead and supporting encrypted data by default. The change touches Customer Match and enhanced conversions. The only source is a notification spotted by Anthony Higman. PPC News Feed also added detail on the previously reported image extraction default in Performance Max: from December 4, new campaigns opt in even when account-level dynamic image extensions are off, existing campaigns keep their settings, and API users must set OPTED_OUT in the asset automation settings to avoid it.

Local listings and old sanctions

Google is rebuilding a management portal it once dismantled. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google Business Home is a new home for Business Profiles, a closed beta that combines Business Profile, Merchant Center, YouTube and Ads accounts with content tools, multi-location management and a brand kit. Google's help document says Business Home "is currently a closed beta experience, available only to select business categories in the US and the UK." Schwartz noted that it reverses Google's earlier move of profile management into Search itself. Separately, Google is testing a layout change for the local knowledge panel that moves the business name, ratings and buttons above the photos, closer to mobile. "It is super possible that this new layout goes live in the near future," Schwartz wrote, though he could not reproduce the test himself.

Some policy news was older than it looked. Search Engine Roundtable reported at 11:05 UTC that Google pauses ads for Russian advertisers and serving ads to Russians, after new banners appeared in help documents. "I thought these were all paused and not running but maybe I confused this," Schwartz wrote. PPC Land checked and reported that Google still blocks Russia-based advertisers, a pause dating to March 2022. The wording matches Google's statements from March 3 and March 10, 2022, more than four and a half years ago. The notices carry no timestamp and Google offered no explanation. Google's Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in June 2022, and Russian AdSense accounts were deactivated in August 2024.

In Nigeria, the direction was the opposite. PPC News Feed reported that online gambling ads are allowed in two more Nigerian states, Enugu and Imo, for advertisers licensed by the relevant state authorities. The policy took effect on October 14 and was reported on October 22. Six states now qualify, with Cross River, Ekiti, Lagos and Oyo.

Agents at the checkout

Walmart set out what an automated agent may do with a customer's money. PPC Land reported that Walmart lets AI agents buy within customer-set limits such as $50 or $100, adding detail to the plan first reported on October 21. Agent Profiles give each agent its own entry in a customer's account; the customer either approves each purchase or sets a spending limit. A Walmart Agent Gateway, built on the Model Context Protocol, opens as an invitation-only beta. New terms bar agents from receiving payment card data and require them to stay within the shopper's intent.

"Shopping with an agent won't be for everyone, and it doesn't have to be," Walmart wrote. It also made a pricing promise: "We price products, not people, so the prices that an AI agent sees are the same prices." PPC Land notes that the $50, $100 and $200 figures are examples rather than tiers, that Walmart does not say whether limits apply per order, day or month, and that the post refers to a "model text protocol", probably a drafting error. Advertising and sponsored listings for agents go unmentioned.

Publishers are preparing for agents on the selling side too. Digiday's Seb Joseph reported on why CNN International is building for an agentic ad market that barely exists yet. Faisal Karmali, its vice president of digital operations, is building in-house systems so that buying agents can read CNN's inventory and business rules. "I gave a Q1 timeline to have the first dollars flowing, which I would still be hopeful for," he said, referring to the first quarter of 2027. Two competing agentic standards overlap on 13 functions, and Karmali puts the eventual share of agent-led deals anywhere from 5% to 50%. Ravi Patel of SWYM offered the case for: "Seller agents are a genuine efficiency gain for direct sales."

Target, meanwhile, is putting an assistant in front of shoppers. Julia Waldow reported, in a Modern Retail piece Digiday published on October 22, that Target's holiday push stresses affordability, exclusives and an AI assistant. Ask Target is in beta on the website and app. Target has more than 8,000 new gifts, over half of them exclusive, and a Deal of the Day running from November 1 to December 24. "Consumers are used to using conversational AI at this point, and so we're excited about it," the company said. The NRF forecasts November and December sales up 4.2% to a record $1.013 trillion, a figure that partly reflects higher prices.

Retail media sells around the agency

Walmart's ad business is pitching harder for the same holiday money. Digiday's Kimeko McCoy reported that Walmart Connect pitches brands directly as it pushes lift studies ahead of holiday ad deals. Its sales team is approaching brands without their agencies, offering on-site brand lift studies to win budgets from Amazon. Walmart's global ad business grew 38% in the second quarter, and eMarketer puts US retail media spend this year at $69.33 billion.

The studies come with conditions. They are offered based on spend, results can take up to nine weeks after a campaign ends, and advertisers cannot run them independently. Anthony Costanzo of Mile Marker called it Walmart "grading its own homework" and said: "We're still not able to execute the kinds of incrementality tests we'd like to." Lacie Edgeman of PrograMetrix explained the timing: "Q4 is when advertisers are least willing to fund spend they cannot defend." Walmart did not respond to Digiday's request for comment.

Television follows the money

Comcast's results showed how much a single tournament can move a television business. AdExchanger's Victoria McNally reported that newly profitable Peacock is the feather in the cap of NBCU's planned spinoff. Peacock posted a second straight profitable quarter, with $261 million that AdExchanger labelled pre-tax revenue, a swing of $478 million from a loss a year earlier. Paid subscribers rose 17% to 48 million. Media revenue grew 13% to $5.4 billion. The spinoff of NBCUniversal's networks with Sky is expected by mid-2027.

Adweek's Bill Bradley reported that the 2026 FIFA World Cup provided a big kick to NBCU ad sales: the Spanish-language coverage on Telemundo and Peacock "generated incremental advertising of $224 million in the third quarter, reaching $664 million in total." AdExchanger's figures show what that means underneath. Domestic advertising revenue rose 14.6% to $1.8 billion; without the World Cup money it would have been flat at about $1.6 billion.

Business-to-business advertisers gained a new route into streaming. PPC Land reported that LinkedIn job-title targeting reaches Google DV360 CTV buys in the US, with targeting by job title, industry and seniority, bought through account representatives rather than self-serve. AdExchanger's McNally also reported that LinkedIn's B2B audiences are now available on CTV via Google DV360. LinkedIn claims a 2.6x stronger awareness lift for B2B audiences than other providers, and says 94% of its members watch ad-supported streaming. VistaPrint is the only named advertiser; its brand lift study ended in September and the results have not been published. "Small business owners usually wear a lot of hats," said Erica Haydock of VistaPrint. LinkedIn's Dave Roter: "CTV is becoming an increasingly important part of the B2B marketing mix."

Local television is preparing for the midterms on November 3. PPC Land reported that Madhive gains AdImpact data on 54,000 local CTV advertisers before midterms. AdImpact's competitive spend data for broadcast, cable and streaming will feed Madhive's Maverick AI, covering all 210 US markets. AdImpact projects midterm political spending of $11.6 billion, up from $8.9 billion in 2022. "As ad dollars follow audiences to CTV, local advertisers need more than just reach," said Don Norton of AdImpact. PPC Land notes there is no launch date or pricing, and that the jump from 19,000 local advertisers in June to 54,000 may compare different measures.

Sport keeps its pull. Digiday's Sam Bradley reported that media buyers chart a path for brands and sponsors through high NBA demand as the 2026-27 season opens. Sponsorship accounts for about 15% of league revenue, at least $1.9 billion a year, and streaming ad spend reached $874 million last season. "Demand is very high for the NBA across the board," one buyer said. Some broadcasters sell NBA spots only within combined packages, pushing brands without sponsorships toward streaming, paid social and creators.

Adweek's TVNewser published its weekly morning news ratings for the week of October 5. NBC's Today led with 2.859 million total viewers, ABC's Good Morning America drew 2.683 million and was "the only broadcast to lose viewers in both measurements," and CBS Mornings grew to 1.735 million. Its daily cable news ratings for Tuesday, October 20 had Fox News' The Five with the largest audience and MS NOW winning the primetime demo.

Audio and newsletters

PPC Land reported that iHeart gains 1.4M weekly podcast downloads in Triton's September ranker. The iHeart Audience Network averaged 67.3 million weekly downloads, up from 65.9 million. Audioboom rose to 15.5 million and Cumulus held near 2.9 million. By PPC Land's calculation, iHeart now accounts for about 78.5% of the top three networks' combined total. Triton describes its data as "validated and transparent podcast audience data", but only networks that opt in are measured, video is excluded, and IAB Tech Lab finalised a new measurement version on September 29 with no transition date, which could break the series.

Substack is selling sponsorships that look nothing like banner ads. PPC Land reported that Substack adds three formats that let brands pay to open paywalled posts. Upgrade has a brand fund a month of paid access for a publication's free subscribers. Unlock makes a single paid post free for everyone. Masthead creates a brand-partnered collection. Kantar brand lift surveys are offered for "large-scale" campaigns. "Right now, our team is bringing small groups of bestsellers and brands together as we test and learn," Substack's head of brand partnerships wrote. There is no pricing, revenue split or launch date, and only mock-ups have been shown.

Deals and independents

Zeta Global keeps buying. AdExchanger's Allison Schiff interviewed chief executive David Steinberg on why Zeta Global keeps buying companies, including two in two days. Senso helps brands appear in AI answers; Digital Audience, a Dutch firm, adds deterministic identity and European reach. Zeta has made 19 acquisitions in 19 years. "We'll look at, I don't know, 100-plus deals to do just one," Steinberg said, and offered his thesis: "AI levels the playing field on public data, so proprietary data is what changes the game." No deal terms were given.

Independent agency groups are expanding too. Adweek's Hannah Bowler reported that Common Interest expands its US presence with a Mirimar investment. The London group is taking a minority stake in the Los Angeles agency and plans to move to majority ownership, with Mirimar's founders becoming shareholders in Common Interest. Terms were not disclosed.

On screen

PPC Land reported that MUBI sets a December 31 German release for Cannes prize film Coward. Lukas Dhont's First World War drama shared the Best Actor prize at Cannes and is Belgium's submission for the 99th Academy Awards. It opened in Belgium on October 21 and reaches France on November 18 as "Les Braves." Deadline's Pete Hammond wrote that it "may be a story taking place in war, but it is set firmly in the human heart." Sources disagree on its runtime, at 127 or 120 minutes.

The film is a small story, but it sits comfortably beside the rest of the day. Distributors, publishers, retailers and advertisers all spent October 22 negotiating the same thing: how much control to hand to systems run by someone else, and how to measure what those systems return. Google's summaries now answer most commercial questions before a click. The studies say the clicks that follow are few. Walmart has at least written down what its agents may spend.