Your "[product] review" pages now sit under an AI Overview on most searches, going by Semrush. Semrush reports that in its panel of 400 commercial keywords, review searches showed an AI Overview 30.14% of the time in September 2025 and about 90% of the time in August 2026.
Reviews rose most of the five search types, in a study published October 21, 2026. Across the panel, coverage rose from 45.75% to 88%.
My read is that review queries are where third-party pages used to get the first look. Coverage is not clicks, though, and the study does not measure clicks. Disclosure: Semrush sells AI visibility tracking, and my agency, ViewEngine, sells AI visibility work and builds its own tracking tools.
Luke Harsel of Semrush wrote up the study on the company blog, and the setup is simple.
Semrush says it built a fixed panel of 400 keywords in banking, software and ecommerce. Each keyword carries one of five modifiers: alternatives, brand versus brand, best X for Y, price or cost, and reviews. Semrush says it used its U.S. desktop data and checked every month from September 2025 through August 2026 whether each keyword showed an AI Overview.
Reviews had the biggest jump. Luke Harsel, who wrote the Semrush post, put it this way: "Just a year ago, searches for "review" triggered an AI Overview less than a third of the time. Now, that figure is 90%." Semrush counts a 59 point rise for reviews. It also reports best X for Y finishing highest at 96.12%, up 53.4 points, and brand versus brand growing least, up 23.18 points from the highest starting point of 63.41%.
The gaps between industries closed
Ecommerce keywords rose from 32.62% to 85.11%, and by August all three industries sat between 85% and 91%.
Three combinations of industry and modifier reached 100%: best X for Y in banking, alternatives in software, and best X for Y in software. Three stayed under 80%. Banking alternatives were at 65%, ecommerce price and cost at 71.43%, and software reviews at 75%. Even those climbed fast. Ecommerce price and cost keywords started at 4.76%, and banking reviews went from 13.79% to 89.66%.
Weighted by estimated search volume, Semrush says AI Overviews showed on 97.08% of the panel's search demand in August. The 12% of panel keywords with no AI Overview made up less than 3% of the panel's total search volume.
One answer, one example
Semrush's own example comes from the search "mailchimp vs klaviyo". In the answer it captured, the AI Overview cited Klaviyo's own guide for the Klaviyo side and a third party, Zapier, for the Mailchimp side. Semrush adds that these answers can draw on YouTube videos, Reddit threads and review sites.
That is one answer on one day. It shows what got cited there. It also shows the shape of the risk. Your own page can be cited for your side of a comparison, and someone else's page can be cited for your competitor's.
Read the limits before you plan around it
The post ends with an ad for Semrush's AI Overview tracking, which it sells. I read the method closely for that reason. The post text gives no keyword count for each of the 15 combinations. I would treat the 100% cells as small samples until Semrush publishes the counts.
The data also stops in August. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable said on X on October 20 that Semrush's live tracker was showing a drop in AI Overviews. In his words, "this has to be a bug in Semrush tracking". On October 21 Schwartz wrote "This looks fixed - AIOs back according to @semrush". The study says nothing about that October dip, and I am not going to guess at its cause.
Within its panel, the study shows direction. Semrush says reviews went from the least likely modifier to show an AI Overview to the second most likely. That is an exposure problem for review sites and affiliates, because an AI summary now sits above their pages on most of these searches. Where the click goes next is a separate question the study cannot answer, and my bet is that it goes to whoever the AI Overview names, which is why I care more about mentions than rankings.
The Klaviyo example is the one I keep returning to. When an AI Overview describes your competitor in a third party's words, who wrote them, and have you read them lately?
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