New data: Google AI Overviews show more often to signed-in users

Google AI Overviews are triggered 10-20% less for signed-out users. While this percentage varies by industry, it is particularly noteworthy right now for ecommerce queries, which trigger AI Overviews 90% less often for signed-out users.

Why we care. We’ve been closely watching the evolution of Google’s AI Overviews because it has the potential to disrupt the amount of organic traffic you receive. Different industries will be uniquely impacted, so it’s important to understand how AI Overviews are rolling out to your industry.

By the numbers. While ecommerce had the largest difference, Google AI Overviews appear 10-20% less often to signed-out users in other industries, according to the latest analysis from enterprise SEO platform BrightEdge:

• Education: 21% less.
• B2B tech: 17% less.
• Healthcare: 16% less.

More Google AIO ecommerce findings. BrightEdge also found that:

• In August, product carousels for apparel-related queries increased by 172%.
• The use of unordered lists across industries rose by 42%.

Google AIO citations findings. Google is leaning away from consumer-focused media and blogs and more heavily toward specialized, expert, authoritative and trustworthy domains. For its healthcare citations:

• General health sites like verywellhealth.com saw a decline in citations.
• Domains like arthritis.org saw substantial increases in citations.

SearchGPT vs. Perplexity. In other AI search developments, BrightEdge told me that their customers (particularly large and Fortune 100 brands) are getting more referral traffic from SearchGPT than Perplexity. This is super interesting because OpenAI just introduced SearchGPT on July 25 and it is in a limited data. BrightEdge didn’t have data to share as of publication, but hopefully will soon.