This study is the result of a joint effort between Rich Sanger and Authoritas.

Our latest study examines the relationship between search intent and AI Overviews, detailing the impact of different intents and what it means for search visibility. These insights help SEOs, content creators, and businesses shape content strategy, improve online visibility, and influence how users interact with your website.

This article is part of a series that explores Google AI Overviews (previously known as Google Search Generative Experience), bringing to light the latest research findings. It’s a joint project between Authoritas and me, focusing on the impact of AI-generated content in search results based on user intent. The first article in this series examines links and related links in AI Overviews. We strongly recommend reading that study as it underscores everything covered in the following study and provides additional recommendations for optimization. Additionally, our study on AI Overviews across industries sheds light on how different sectors are impacted by these summaries, offering valuable insights for industry-specific strategies.

This study provides an in-depth look at the relationship between search intent and AI Overviews, offering insights into how different intents shape the visibility of AI-generated content in search results. We explored how often AI Overviews are triggered for each intent category, the number of links included, and the alignment with top organic search results. Additionally, we analyzed the space AI Overviews occupy on search result pages and how SERP positions influence the likelihood of being featured in an AI Overview.

Lastly, we provide insights that can help SEOs, content creators, and businesses optimize their strategies for AI Overviews and improve visibility across different search intents.

Background

After reviewing the existing AI Overview studies, it was apparent that Intent has not been studied rigorously across previous AI Overview studies. Recent findings have shed some light on its role.

Advanced Web Ranking identified the highest rate of AI Overviews for informational queries, at 21.29%. Additionally, they found commercial queries appearing in 3.49% of instances.

An August study by seoClarity highlighted that “AI Overviews do not currently appear for most transactional head terms but may show when there’s a mix of commercial and informational intent.” They also found that informational queries triggered AI Overviews at a lower rate compared to Google Labs’ version of the Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Most recently, in a September 2024 LinkedIn post, Mark Traphagen of seoClarity shared that, in a review of over 1 million queries, 96.5% of those triggering AI Overviews were informational in intent. Queries with an informational/transactional mix made up 1.79%, while purely transactional queries accounted for just 1.2%.

These findings suggest that Google AI Overviews predominantly favor informational queries, reflecting their current focus on delivering value in knowledge-seeking contexts. The lower inclusion of commercial and transactional queries points to a gap in the AI’s handling of decision-oriented search intents, which could change in the near future. This also indicates that businesses focused on visibility should continue to prioritize content with strong informational value to align with current AI Overview triggers.

Study Overview

In this study, we aim to take it beyond just analyzing which intents the AI Overview system favors. Focusing on over 11,000 queries across various intents—Informational, Navigational, Commercial, Transactional, and mixed—this research aims to determine not just when AI Overviews are triggered, but also how much space they take up on SERPs, the number of links they include, how closely links aligns with organic results, and the most common domains cited.

This is our hypothesis:

Google AI Overviews are more likely to be triggered by informational queries than by commercial or transactional queries, and the content included in these overviews will more closely align with top organic search results for informational intents compared to other search intents.

Our goal is to help professionals adapt their strategies to align with AI-enhanced search results and gain a deeper understanding of how intent impacts AI Overviews.

You can access the underlying data here.

Results

We analyzed 11,162 queries for this study across a variety of intents including:

• Transactional
• Navigational
• Informational
• Commercial
• Navigational: Transactional
• Informational: Transactional
• Informational: Navigational
• Commercial: Navigational
• Commercial: Informational
  

The intent for the queries was identified using data from Semrush.

Rate of AI Overviews by Intent

Our analysis of how often AI Overviews appear across different search intents varied. Across all categories, the rate was 21.1%. The category with the highest occurrence of AI Overviews was Informational (28.8%), indicating a strong AI focus on providing purely informational content. This was followed by Commercial: Informational (18.6%), showing a considerable engagement where commercial intent blends with informational needs. Informational: Navigational (8.9%) and Informational: Transactional (6.7%) also saw moderate levels of AI Overview activations, highlighting the AI’s attention to informational content that aids navigation or leads to transactions. This highlights potential areas for strategic adjustment to align more closely with AI-driven search features, especially in information-focused content.

Conversely, purely Commercial (6.2%) and Transactional (4.9%) intents had lower AI Overview triggers, reflecting lesser focus. The categories with the lowest trigger rates were Commercial: Navigational (1.4%), Navigational (1.7%), and Navigational: Transactional (1.2%), indicating minimal AI engagement with queries primarily aimed at directing users to specific sites or facilitating transactions.

Both Commercial:Navigational and Navigational:Transactional intents had only one query triggering an AI Overview. As these single instances are not statistically significant, we’ve excluded them from the rest of the analysis.

How Much Real Estate AI Overviews Take by Intent

We examined how AI Overviews utilize vertical space on search results pages across various user intents. The overall average vertical drop across all categories is measured at 202.8 pixels. This indicates the average amount of SERP real estate AI Overviews occupy.

The highest vertical drops are seen in Navigational (288.9 pixels) and Commercial (283.1 pixels) searches, highlighting that AI Overviews tend to dominate these results, pushing down organic listings. This dominance suggests that when users are searching with a navigational purpose or exploring commercial content, AI-generated summaries are more prominent.

However, the presence of AI Overviews is less pronounced in mixed intent queries like Informational:Navigational (143.7 pixels) and Informational:Transactional (162.5 pixels) intents. This reduced vertical drop suggests that AI summaries are not as dominant, allowing organic results to retain more visibility.

Transactional searches see the smallest average vertical drop at 101.1 pixels, meaning that AI Overviews take up far less space, allowing users to see organic results quickly. This pattern aligns with the nature of transactional searches, where users are likely looking for direct pathways to purchase or act.

Overall, AI Overviews occupy the most space in Navigational and Commercial searches, while taking up significantly less room in Transactional and mixed Informational queries, allowing for greater organic visibility.

Number of Links by Intent

The data shows how the average number of links included in Google AI Overviews varies across different search intents, including mixed-intent queries. Across all intents, the average number of links is 8.2. Intents like Commercial (9.1), Informational (9.0), and Commercial mixed with Informational (9.0) show the highest link averages, indicating that AI Overviews for these intents aim to provide a comprehensive set of resources. This breadth allows users to explore various perspectives, aiding in more informed decision-making. Similarly, Informational:Transactional queries show an average of 8.9 links, reflecting the need to balance information and actionable steps for users.

On the other hand, more focused intents like Navigational (7.8) and Transactional (7.7) have fewer links on average, suggesting that AI Overviews for these intents emphasize a streamlined and efficient user experience. The lowest average link count is in Informational mixed with Navigational intents, with just 6.2 links, indicating that fewer resources are necessary to meet the user’s navigational needs.

Overall, the findings suggest that Google AI Overviews adapt the number of links based on the search intent’s complexity and need for comprehensive exploration versus direct navigation or action.

SERP Position and Probability of Being in an AI Overview by Intent

Top SERP Positions (1-2)

Across intents, the top two SERP positions generally show the highest likelihood of inclusion in AI Overviews. Informational queries lead with 53.8% inclusion for position 1 and 47.8% for position 2. Similarly, Commercial and Commercial:Informational have strong representation at the top of the SERPs, with inclusion rates around 49-51%.

Notably, Informational and Transactional has an even higher likelihood in position 2, reaching 63.3%, suggesting a strong preference for AI Overview coverage for these mixed intents. However, Informational and Navigational holds lower percentages at around 33.3% for the top two positions, indicating reduced priority in these mixed-intent queries.

Middle SERP Positions (3-7)

As we move into the middle SERP positions (3-7), inclusion rates generally start to decrease. Commercial, Commercial:Informational, and Informational queries maintain a moderate likelihood of around 30-43% inclusion. For Informational and Transactional searches, these positions still hold relatively strong probabilities, averaging 40-50%. However, mixed intents like Informational:Navigational show notable variability, with lower inclusion rates that can drop to as low as 11.1% at position 6, indicating that AI Overviews are less likely to prioritize these middle positions for more navigational-focused queries.

Lower SERP Positions (8-10)

Lower positions (8-10) show the most variability across intents. Transactional queries show resilience in deeper results, with a high of 60% inclusion in position 10. Navigational queries similarly maintain a strong presence in lower positions, with inclusion rates reaching 50% at positions 9 and 10. In contrast, mixed intents like Informational and Navigational drop to 0% inclusion for positions 9 and 10, signaling that AI Overviews do not prioritize these results in lower rankings.

Overall Trends

The data shows that while the top SERP positions (1-2) generally offer the best chance for AI Overview inclusion, middle and lower positions can still maintain strong probabilities depending on intent, particularly for Transactional queries. Mixed intent and navigational queries exhibit more variability, with some positions either showing high inclusion likelihoods or near-zero chances, emphasizing the importance of intent and ranking when considering AI Overview performance.

Alignment Between Links in AI Overviews and Top Search Results

The alignment between links in Google AI Overviews and organic search results varies by intent, offering insights into how AI results match user expectations. Overall, the average overlap across all intents is 44%, indicating that nearly half of the links in AI Overviews align with those in the top organic search results.

The highest alignment is seen in Transactional (53%) and Informational(52%) queries, suggesting that AI Overviews for these intents closely reflect the organic results to provide highly relevant, action-oriented content. Navigational queries also show strong alignment at 46%, ensuring that users are efficiently guided to their intended destinations with consistency between AI and organic listings.

In contrast, intents such as Commercial, Commercial:Informational hover around a 40-41% overlap, indicating a moderate alignment that balances organic search results with diverse sources to offer a broader range of information. Informational mixed with Navigational has the lowest overlap at 35%, highlighting a more curated approach by AI, which brings in varied sources beyond the top organic results.

Overall, the data shows that AI Overviews are more aligned with organic results for intents that prioritize direct action or navigation, while they adopt a more customized curation for informational and commercial searches.

The chart below uses the GOA Score™ (Generative to Organic Alignment Score) to show how closely AI Overviews align with organic search results. The score is calculated as the proportion of URLs in AI Overviews that match URLs in the organic search results for a given keyword. In simple terms, a higher GOA Score™ means the AI results are more similar to what you’d find in the regular search listings.

Top Domains by Intent

The domains most frequently cited in Google AI Overviews vary significantly by search intent, reflecting how the AI prioritizes content across different user needs. Below, the top domains are broken down by each intent category, highlighting which sources dominate and how they align with user queries.

Informational

In the Informational Intent category, youtube.com ranks highest with 591 mentions, closely followed by en.wikipedia.org at 568 and m.youtube.com at 400. Other notable domains include southernliving.com with 239 mentions, healthline.com with 166, and investopedia.com with 159 mentions. Sites such as bonappetit.com, forbes.com, and allrecipes.com also have significant counts, ranging between 123 to 111 mentions. Notably, shopify.com and sciencedirect.com each have 72 and 70 mentions, respectively. This data provides a clear overview of high-frequency sources in AI-generated informational content.

Navigational

For the Navigational category, shopify.com dominates with 16 mentions, followed by youtube.com with 8 and law.justia.com with 7. Other notable domains include ohiostatebuckeyes.com and en.wikipedia.org with 6 mentions each, and smaller appearances by caselaw.findlaw.com, facebook.com, and forbes.com with 2 mentions each. This dataset reflects a strong presence of platforms with high navigational intent, providing authoritative resources for specific queries or tasks.

Commercial

In the Commercial Intent category, youtube.com takes the lead with 18 mentions, followed by travelandleisure.com with 14 mentions. forbes.com, en.wikipedia.org, and m.youtube.com all appear 13 times. These domains being cited frequently in commercial-intent searches means that they hold high authority or are valuable sources of information in areas related to buying products, comparing services, and making informed purchasing decisions. tripadvisor.com, travel.usnews.com, and shopify.com each have 11 mentions, while cntraveler.com follows closely with 10. cars.com shows up 9 times, and edmunds.com and container-news.com each have 8 mentions. Sites like nerdwallet.com, gartner.com, amazon.com, and lonelyplanet.com appear 7 times, and audleytravel.com, southernliving.com, investopedia.com, and inboundlogistics.com round out the list with 6 mentions each.

Transactional

In the Transactional category, the top-mentioned domains are en.wikipedia.org, cleantechnica.com, and graphcore.ai, each with 3 mentions. Other notable domains include nerdwallet.com, accuratepmr.com, and charitynavigator.org, each with 2 mentions, along with a diverse set of finance-related sites such as morningstar.com, finance.yahoo.com, and nuveen.com. This indicates a strong presence of domains related to finance, technology, and clean energy, emphasizing transactional behavior in the AI Overview analysis.

Commercial: Informational

In the Commercial-Informational Intent category, youtube.com dominates with 38 mentions, followed by en.wikipedia.org with 28 and m.youtube.com with 26. investopedia.com holds 21 mentions, and both linkedin.com and inboundlogistics.com appear 20 times each. southernliving.com has 17 mentions, while amazon.com follows with 16. statista.com comes in with 12 mentions, and cleantechnica.com and ncbi.nlm.nih.gov each show up 11 times. allrecipes.com and shopify.com are mentioned 10 times, while bonappetit.com has 9 mentions. Both forbes.com and finance.yahoo.com appear 8 times, with oec.world, masterclass.com, and indeed.com appearing 7 times. healthline.com closes the list with 7 mentions.

Informational: Transactional

In the Informational-Transactional category, en.wikipedia.org leads with 24 mentions, followed by youtube.com with 8 and ew.com with 7. Several other domains like mission22.com, forbes.com, shopify.com, and www2.ed.gov have 4 mentions each. There are also notable mentions for businessinsider.com, eonline.com, and justice.gov with 3 mentions. This spread indicates a blend of educational, commercial, and governmental sources providing a mix of informational and transactional content.

Informational: Navigational

In the Informational-Navigational intent category, shopify.com leads with 4 mentions, followed by nvidia.com with 3. Several domains such as epa.gov, patagonia.com, zdnet.com, printify.com, and en.wikipedia.org each have 2 mentions. There are also various other domains like linkedin.com, forbes.com, and in.gov, each with 1 mention. The spread across these sites suggests a diverse range of informational content from commercial, environmental, and governmental domains, as well as niche websites like texasregisteredagent.net and fatbuddhastore.com.

Discussion

The findings from this study provide valuable insights into how Google AI Overviews vary across search intents, highlighting the distinct ways the AI-generated summaries impact search results. SEOs, content creators, and website owners must understand these trends to adapt their strategies to align with the summaries.

Informational Content as a Priority

The strong presence of AI Overviews for Informational queries highlights a significant opportunity: content that educates or provides knowledge is more likely to be featured. This means content strategies should prioritize creating detailed, informative pieces that answer user questions comprehensively. For businesses looking to gain visibility in AI Overviews, developing resourceful, well-researched content that fulfills informational needs can enhance visibility.

Leveraging Mixed-Intent Queries

The notable appearance of AI Overviews in Commercial:Informational and Informational:Transactional searches reflects a demand for content that bridges informational and commercial needs. For businesses, consider blending educational content with actionable commercial guidance. By providing content that educates users while also offering practical advice or product information, brands can cater to users who are still in the research phase but leaning towards a purchase, increasing the likelihood of being included in AI Overviews.

Navigational & Transactional Searches: Optimize for Directness

Lower AI engagement in purely Navigational and Transactional queries suggests that users’ clear intent to navigate directly to a site or complete a transaction reduces the need for AI summaries. Businesses should focus on optimizing organic rankings and ensuring clear, brand-focused content to meet these user needs. The AI’s tendency to deprioritize overviews for these intents emphasizes the importance of directly driving brand visibility and providing concise pathways to action.

Vertical Space & Content Dominance

The significant vertical space taken by AI Overviews for Commercial and Navigational queries indicates that these summaries can push organic results further down the SERP. To combat this, businesses need to adapt content strategies to prioritize inclusion in AI Overviews for these intents. Conversely, lower vertical drops for Informational and Transactional mixed intents mean that organic content still retains visibility, suggesting that targeting these queries can balance AI and organic reach.

Tailoring Link Strategies by Intent

The number of links in an AI Overview is reflective of the intent’s complexity and need for thorough exploration. High link counts in Commercial, Informational, and their mixed counterparts imply that these overviews aim to provide comprehensive perspectives. For content creators, this highlights the need to incorporate multiple reputable sources and detailed information to match the breadth of AI Overview content. However, for more direct Navigational or Transactional queries, streamlined content with fewer but highly relevant links can better meet the user’s goal.

SERP Positioning & AI Overview Optimization

While top positions in SERP generally have higher chances of inclusion in AI Overviews, mixed intents like Informational and Transactional show that being in the second position can sometimes be more advantageous than ranking first. For SEOs, this underscores the importance of intent alignment over purely seeking the top SERP position. High-quality, intent-focused content that effectively addresses mixed-user needs can improve inclusion chances, even if it doesn’t occupy the top spot.

Aligning Content with Authority and Relevance

AI Overviews heavily favor authoritative sources like YouTube, Wikipedia, and Investopedia. This signals that competing with these domains directly for top SERP positions may be challenging. Brands should instead focus on niche expertise, unique angles, and topic depth that aren’t covered by top authority sites. By focusing on building a distinct voice and valuable content in less saturated niches, businesses can improve their chances of being featured in AI Overviews. If securing a top 10 position for your desired query seems unlikely, consider targeting related, less competitive queries that AI Overviews may be pulling from.

Limitations of the Study

Several limitations should be considered when interpreting the findings of this study. First, the sample size of 11,162 queries, while substantial, may still be too limited to fully capture the diverse range of search behaviors and intents that occur in real-world searches. Given the complexity of search queries and user behavior, a larger dataset might reveal additional patterns or nuances that were not apparent in this study.

Additionally, the study represents a snapshot in time, analyzing search results and AI Overviews at a specific moment. As Google’s algorithms are frequently updated, the findings of this study may not hold true in the future. Ongoing analysis over time is necessary to track how AI Overviews adapt to new algorithm updates, changes in user behavior, and shifts in search intent.

A third limitation is the classification of search intent based on data from Semrush. While this tool provides a helpful framework for categorizing queries, the intent ascribed to each query may not always be perfectly accurate. Search queries can be ambiguous, and intent often depends on contextual factors that tools like Semrush may not fully capture. As a result, the categorization of queries into specific intent categories (e.g., informational, commercial, transactional) might not always reflect the true intent of the user.

These limitations highlight the need for cautious interpretation of the results and suggest directions for future research to refine and expand on these findings.

Conclusion

The role of search intent and AI Overviews in triggering Google’s results presents opportunities and challenges for SEOs and content creators. As AI-driven search changes over time, understanding how different intents influence the presence of AI Overviews is necessary for shaping effective content strategies. The data indicates a strong emphasis on Informational and mixed-intent queries, where AI Overviews are more prevalent and comprehensive. While purely Navigational and Transactional queries see less presence, these areas still hold potential as Google’s AI capabilities expand. Brands that align their content with user intent and adapt to the nuances of search intent and AI Overviews can better position themselves for visibility and success.

References

• AI Overview Study for 8,000 Keywords in Google Search by Advanced Web Ranking
• Google AI Overviews: Do Ranking Studies Tell the Whole Story? by Rich Sanger
• Google AI Overview Study: Link Selection Based on Related Queries by Authoritas and Rich Sanger
• How Does Google AI Overview Work? Insights From the Patent by Rich Sanger
• Impact of Google’s AI Overviews: SEO Research Study by seoClarity