AI Overviews appeared on 63 of 100 global brand-name searches by Sept. 30, up from five of 98 usable results on July 1, according to Ahrefs' weekly panel of U.S. Google results published Oct. 2.

Ahrefs checked the exact names of 100 brands drawn from Interbrand's Best Global Brands 2025 every week from July through September. The panel tracked where AI Overviews appeared and which external sites they cited. It did not track clicks or how often the brand's own site appeared in the answers.

How Fast Did Coverage Grow?

The weekly counts climbed slowly through August, then jumped in September. Ahrefs recorded five AI Overviews on July 1, 13 on July 29, 13 again on Aug. 26, and 16 at the checkpoint before Sept. 9. On Sept. 9 the count leapt to 42. It reached 46 before Sept. 30 and finished at 63 that day. Ahrefs noted AI Overviews "vastly increased at the start of September."

Placement matters as much as presence. Of the 63 AI Overviews recorded on Sept. 30, 48 sat in position one, eight in position two, and the average position across all 63 was 1.49, with a median of one. Ahrefs suggests Google could "move these AI Overviews lower in the SERP," though the data does not show whether brands' own listings moved down the page.

Do Competing Counts Agree?

Not exactly — each uses a different sample. The 83% figure in Ahrefs' headline comes from broader U.S. desktop crawls on Sept. 29, not the 100-brand panel. In that wider analysis, Ahrefs examined 92.5 million branded-keyword crawls out of 232.8 million total U.S. desktop crawls between July and September. Branded keywords triggering AI Overviews rose from 61.3% in July to 65.1% in August and 73.3% in September — a 12-point gain, versus 4.8 points for non-branded keywords, which averaged 78.3% in September. On Sept. 29, AI Overviews appeared in 82.91% of U.S. desktop results for branded keywords.

On Sept. 30, Chris Long, co-founder of Nectiv, wrote on LinkedIn that he "ran a quick scrape with SerpApi this morning and found that 93 out of 100 enterprise brands had AI Overviews present for them." He did not publish his list of 100 brands.

DemandSphere's daily series, published Oct. 1 and built on its DemandMetrics platform covering "all markets, all devices," showed AI Overviews on 26.12% of branded keywords on Sept. 1, rising to 90.48% on Sept. 27, then dropping to 82.06% on Sept. 29. Before Sept. 26, the daily percentage stayed below 60%. DemandSphere counts an AI Overview as present "regardless of whether brand itself is cited in the AIO."

Neither vendor explains how it classifies branded keywords, and DemandSphere does not disclose its keyword count.

Who Gets Cited in Brand-Name Answers?

Chris Long warned in his post that "competitors/external sources can now control the narrative of your brand directly in the search results." Ahrefs' panel data partly tests that claim.

For AI Overviews collected from Sept. 16 to 29, Ahrefs had source lists for 57 brand-name answers. Across those, it identified just one verified competitor-owned website. Among 58 responses with accessible full text, two — or 3.4% — directly discussed competitors. Pepsi's answer referenced Coca-Cola in the context of the "cola wars"; Intel's response mentioned TSMC and Nvidia.

Wikipedia, YouTube, and LinkedIn were the most frequently cited outside domains in the panel's answers for that period. Ahrefs did not specify how many cited pages belonged to the brands themselves.

What Can Brand Teams Measure?

Google offers partial visibility. Search Console's branded queries filter, announced in November 2025 and opened to all eligible sites in March, shows clicks, impressions, average position, and click-through rate for queries Google classifies as branded. The filter applies only to top-level properties with "a sufficient volume of queries and impressions." Google's John Mueller said in March there was no way to add queries "at the moment" and he wasn't "aware of plans to provide customization."

Search Console's generative AI performance report, globally available to all websites as of Aug. 31, shows how often site links appeared within AI Overviews and AI Mode — but it lacks a query dimension, so brand-name searches cannot be isolated. In Google Analytics 4, visits from AI Overviews land in Organic Search; the AI Assistant channel launched in May does not track them.

Ahrefs cautions there is no guarantee the current situation will stay the same, and DemandSphere says it is working on historical data plus breakdowns by device and market. Until then, dated screenshots of the results page for your company's name remain the only reliable record of what Google is showing — and citing — under your brand.