When people search on Google today, they increasingly read an AI-generated answer first and only then, if at all, the classic search results. With AI Overviews, Google has built generative AI directly into the world's most-used search engine. The AI answer has long since become part of everyday life for billions of people.
The World's Largest AI Search
AI Overviews are often underestimated as just another Google feature. Yet they reach more people than any chatbot.
- Rapid user growth: According to Google, over 1.5 billion people were using AI Overviews every month at the time. According to Alphabet, that number is now more than 2.5 billion. The conversational AI Mode passed the mark of one billion monthly users within a year.
- Growing presence in search results: As early as March 2025, the Pew Research Center counted an AI summary in around 18% of Google searches, and in 60% of searches phrased as questions. The UK media regulator Ofcom already saw around 30% at the end of 2025.
- Closer to the purchase decision: By its own account, Google is deliberately expanding AI Overviews to commercial queries — exactly where customers compare providers.
One Building Block in the Bigger GEO Picture
AI Overviews work on the same principle as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity: the system looks for reliable sources, filters them and formulates an answer from them. Which brands appear in that answer is no longer decided by ranking alone, but by whether the model recognizes a company as a clear, trustworthy entity.
Use of these systems is growing across all channels:
- Internationally: According to McKinsey, around half of consumers deliberately use AI-powered search. 44% of them call it their primary source of information, compared with only 31% for classic search.
- In Germany: According to Bitkom, half of internet users already also search via AI chats, and 12% do so mostly or exclusively.
Anyone who is invisible in Google AI Overviews is usually invisible in the other AI systems too, and vice versa.
What This Means for Findability
The AI answer changes how users interact with search results:
- Fewer clicks: According to Pew, when an AI summary is shown, users click a classic result in only 8% of cases, compared with 15% without one. Only around 1% click on sources within the summary.
- Zero-click as the norm: According to Bain & Company, around 60% of searches end without a click on a website. 80% of users rely on AI summaries for at least 40% of their searches, which reduces organic traffic by an estimated 15 to 25%.
- Awareness doesn't protect you: McKinsey found that even leading brands are sometimes missing from AI answers. A company's own website accounts for only 5 to 10% of the sources AI searches draw on. What matters is what the entire web says about a company.
The AI answer thus becomes the first and often only point of contact. What it says shapes the image of a brand before a customer ever visits the website.
Why Companies Need to Act Now
McKinsey estimates that 20 to 50% of classic search traffic is at risk and that by 2028, consumer spending of 750 billion US dollars will be influenced by AI search. At the same time, only 16% of brands systematically measure their visibility in AI searches. The gap between user behavior and corporate strategy is large, and that is exactly where the opportunity lies: those who are anchored as a reliable source now will entrench themselves before the competition catches up.
comdaily conclusion: Google AI Overviews show more clearly than any statistic where search is heading: from a list of links to an answer. Visibility today means being named in that answer, on Google as much as on ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity. Generative Engine Optimization is therefore not an add-on to marketing, but the foundation of modern findability. comdaily helps companies anchor their brand as a clear entity on the web and prepare machine-readable facts so that AI systems can recognize, understand and cite them. Because anyone who isn't in the AI answer won't be found in tomorrow's search.
