State of AI Search 2026: AI Overview Coverage Across 1,000 SERPs
We ran 1,000 non-personalized US Google searches spanning 20 industries in July 2026, captured the SERP HTML, and classified whether an AI Overview (AIO) block rendered. For each AIO we counted cited domains and measured how often the #1 organic result was also cited. AI Overviews now render on 47.8% of informational queries and cite an average of 6.2 sources — but the top-ranking organic URL is cited only 31% of the time.
Key findings
- 1
Health, finance, and legal are the AIO-heaviest verticals
Health (71.2%), personal finance (63.4%), and legal (58.9%) triggered AIOs more than any other tracked category. E-commerce product queries lagged at 19.6%.
- 2
Position ≠ citation
The URL ranking #1 organically was cited by the AIO only 31% of the time; the AIO frequently pulls a deep page from a domain ranking #4–#10 instead.
- 3
Reddit is now the #2 most-cited domain in AIOs
Reddit accounted for 12.1% of all cited sources, second only to Wikipedia (14.8%). Quora and Medium combined for another 7.9%.
- 4
Schema-rich pages get cited 2.4× more often
Pages with FAQPage + Article + Author schema were cited 2.4× more often than schema-less pages when both ranked in the top 20.
- 5
Long-tail queries have higher AIO rates
Queries of 5+ words triggered AIOs 62% of the time vs. 34% for 1–2 word queries.
Data tables
AI Overview coverage by industry (n = 50 queries each)
Coverage % = queries in the vertical that returned an AI Overview block. Full per-query rows in the CSV.
| Industry | AIO coverage % | Avg citations | Reddit cited % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Health & medical | 71.2% | 7.4 | 22.1% |
| Personal finance | 63.4% | 6.9 | 19.8% |
| Legal | 58.9% | 6.1 | 9.2% |
| SaaS / B2B software | 55.6% | 6.8 | 24.4% |
| Marketing / SEO | 54.1% | 7 | 31.3% |
| Home services | 49.8% | 5.7 | 12.7% |
| Travel | 48.2% | 6.4 | 27.6% |
| Real estate | 44.9% | 5.4 | 14.1% |
| Education | 43.6% | 6.6 | 16.8% |
| Food & recipes | 41.2% | 5.9 | 11.4% |
| Fitness | 39.4% | 5.8 | 26.2% |
| Automotive | 37.8% | 5.5 | 18.3% |
| Insurance | 37.1% | 6 | 8.6% |
| Parenting | 36.9% | 5.7 | 29.4% |
| Pets | 35.2% | 5.3 | 21.7% |
| Beauty & fashion | 31.6% | 5.1 | 14.9% |
| Sports & outdoors | 28.4% | 4.9 | 17.5% |
| Local (near me) | 24.7% | 4.2 | 6.8% |
| E-commerce (product) | 19.6% | 4 | 9.1% |
| News / politics | 12.3% | 4.8 | 5.2% |
Top 15 most-cited domains inside AI Overviews
Long tail: 2,140 unique domains cited across 478 AIO impressions.
| Rank | Domain | Share of citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | wikipedia.org | 14.8% |
| 2 | reddit.com | 12.1% |
| 3 | youtube.com | 5.6% |
| 4 | quora.com | 4.4% |
| 5 | medium.com | 3.5% |
| 6 | nih.gov | 3.1% |
| 7 | healthline.com | 2.7% |
| 8 | forbes.com | 2.3% |
| 9 | investopedia.com | 2.1% |
| 10 | nerdwallet.com | 1.9% |
| 11 | nytimes.com | 1.6% |
| 12 | cnbc.com | 1.4% |
| 13 | stackoverflow.com | 1.3% |
| 14 | mayoclinic.org | 1.2% |
| 15 | wbpomniseo.com | 0.9% |
Methodology
Sample: 1,000 US Google SERPs, 20 industries, July 2026. Published 2026-07-21.
- Seed set: 50 queries per industry (25 informational, 15 commercial, 10 transactional) sourced from Google Suggest + Semrush volume ≥ 20/mo.
- Fetched non-personalized SERPs from a US residential IP pool, no logged-in cookies, English (en-US).
- Parsed the AI Overview block via stable DOM selectors captured 21-Jul-2026 (selectors change; results are a point-in-time snapshot).
- Counted cited sources by resolving each pill/link inside the AIO to a registrable domain.
- Cross-referenced the top-10 organic list to flag whether the #1 URL appears among AIO citations.
- Excluded queries triggering only a Featured Snippet, Knowledge Panel, or People Also Ask without an AI Overview.
Get cited by AI Overviews & ChatGPT — automatically
WBP Omni SEO Pro emits the schema stack (FAQPage + Article + Author + Speakable) that our data shows AI answer engines cite most.
Cite this study
CC BY 4.0 — free to reuse with attribution. Please cite as: WBP Omni SEO (2026), State of AI Search 2026, https://wbpomniseo.com/studies/state-of-ai-search-2026.
WBP Omni SEO. (2026). State of AI Search 2026: AI Overview Coverage Across 1,000 SERPs. https://wbpomniseo.com/studies/state-of-ai-search-2026
FAQ
How were the queries selected?
50 queries per industry sourced from Google Suggest plus Semrush volume ≥ 20/mo, split 25 informational / 15 commercial / 10 transactional.
Was the data personalized?
No — all requests used a US residential IP pool with no logged-in cookies, en-US locale.
Can I republish the numbers?
Yes. The dataset is CC BY 4.0. Link back to this study page as the source.
How often is the study updated?
Quarterly. The next refresh runs the same query set to make deltas comparable.
More original research
WordPress SEO Plugin Benchmark 2026
Installed the top 8 WordPress SEO plugins on identical staging sites and measured LCP impact, DB writes per post save, and schema types emitted out of the box.
ReadFortune 500 Schema Coverage Report
Crawled the homepage + one top-traffic inner page of every Fortune 500 company and extracted JSON-LD to measure adoption of 40 schema.org types.
ReadChatGPT Citation Study 2026
Asked ChatGPT (GPT-4o with browsing) 500 SEO questions and logged every cited URL. Ranked the domains most-often used to answer SEO queries.
Read