Every SEO team has been asked the same question this year, and most can't answer it: when Google shows an AI Overview, does it mention us?
Rank trackers don't answer that. They tell you where you sit in a list that fewer people scroll to. So we ran a study to find out what actually drives citation in Google's AI answers — and whether the classic ranking playbook still gets you in.
Method
120 commercial-intent keywords across 9 niches (SaaS, finance, health, e-commerce, travel, marketing, B2B services, education, home & DIY). US, English, desktop, single snapshot on 12 July 2026, collected through residential IPs. For every keyword we captured:
whether an AI Overview appeared,
