In Ahrefs SERP data for 160 Indian marketing and website queries, AI Overviews appeared on 74 of 80 informational searches and 22 of 50 commercial searches without a city name. On the 30 commercial queries that did carry a city name, they appeared zero times. Marketing-services queries only, so treat this as a lead rather than a law.
Zero of thirty. That is how many city-qualified agency queries in our sample carried an AI Overview in Ahrefs' SERP data.
74 of 80
Informational queries carrying an AI Overview
22 of 50
Commercial queries without a city name
0 of 30
Commercial queries with a city name
The interesting line, we would argue, is not commercial against informational. It is local against everything else.
How we measured this
We pulled Ahrefs SERP feature data for two fixed query sets in India, both filtered to a minimum monthly volume of fifty, both defined before we looked at a single result.
- Set A, 80 commercial queries, seeded from seo services, digital marketing agency, google ads management, social media marketing and website design.
- Set B, 80 informational queries, question form, from the same seeds.
- Inside Set A, 30 queries carried a city name, of the form digital marketing agency in Delhi. Those are a subset and not a third set, so we report the other 50 separately rather than counting the same result twice.
We did not run these searches ourselves. The data is Ahrefs' record of what its crawler saw. The segmentation and the analysis are ours.
| Query type | AI Overview present | Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Informational, question form | 74 of 80 | 92.5% |
| Commercial, no city name | 22 of 50 | 44% |
| Commercial, city name | 0 of 30 | 0% |
| All commercial, for completeness | 22 of 80 | 27.5% |
Why does adding a city name change the result?
Strip the city queries out and commercial searches still carried an AI Overview 22 times in 50. Add a city name and it went to nothing.
"A summary helps someone who is learning. It does not help someone who wants a shortlist of firms near them."
That reading is ours, but Google states the underlying rule directly. AI Overviews "are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search, and as such, often don't trigger."
For a query like digital marketing agency in Coimbatore, the map pack and the organic results already answer it, which is also why your location pages are not where the pressure is.
Google confirms the mechanism on the informational side too. Both AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a query fan-out technique, "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources", to build a response. Explainer content is what that technique consumes.
Want this run on your own keyword set? We will segment your top queries by intent and send back which are exposed and which are not. Free SEO audit of your site and one competitor. No deck, no pitch.
What Google says to do about it
Less than the industry implies. Two quotes worth having to hand, both from Google's AI features page.
- 1
On optimisation: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."
- 2
On markup: "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add."
On the clicks that still arrive, the full sentence is worth reading to the end: "when people click from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality (meaning, users are more likely to spend more time on the site)."
That parenthetical matters. Google is claiming longer time on site, not more revenue. Anyone turning it into a conversion promise, ourselves included, would be going further than the source does.
One requirement quietly appeared in July
Google publishes two pages on this and they do not currently agree, which is worth two minutes of your time.
| AI features page | Generative AI optimisation guide | |
|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 10 December 2025 | 10 July 2026 |
| On extra requirements | "There are no additional technical requirements." | "In addition to the technical requirements for Search, a site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console to be eligible for display in generative AI features on Google Search." |
The newer page names a Search Console control the older page never mentions. We are not going to tell you which page is operative, because we do not know. What we can tell you:
- The setting exists, and Google's help page for it says sites are included in generative AI features by default.
- The July page treats that inclusion as a condition of eligibility.
- The December page, still live and unchanged, states there are no additional technical requirements.
One caveat before you go looking. The same help page says Google is still rolling this control out to a subset of properties, so not finding it in your account is not itself a signal.
So this is something to confirm rather than something to fix. It costs nothing to look, and it is the only item on this page that somebody could have switched off without telling you.
What we would actually do with this
Nothing dramatic and nothing needing a new budget line.
- 1
Split your keyword list by intent, then split the commercial half again by whether a place name appears.
- 2
Check the generative AI inclusion setting in Search Console, because the July guidance treats it as a condition of eligibility.
- 3
Expect the informational list to lose clicks. Stop judging it on clicks alone and track assisted conversions instead.
- 4
Leave your location pages alone. On this evidence they are not where the pressure is.
- 5
On informational pages, put a direct answer in the opening lines, with clear headings and self-contained sections.
- 6
Re-run the check quarterly, because none of this is stable.
On point three, the metric that replaces clicks is brand visibility in AI answers, which is a different measurement rather than a softer one.
Point five does not contradict Google's no special optimisation line. Google is describing eligibility and says none of this is required to appear. Writing a clear answer near the top is ordinary content craft that happens to survive extraction well.
Field note
Do not delete an informational page because it lost clicks. It may be the reason a buyer recognises your name later, when they search your city and see a result with no AI Overview above it. That assist will never show up in a traffic report.
What this study cannot tell you
Four limits, and the first one could overturn the headline rather than qualify it.
- Instrument coverage. A zero is exactly what a gap in Ahrefs' AI Overview tracking would produce for India-locale local queries. We have not ruled that out. Until we hand-check a sample in a clean browser, the honest claim is that Ahrefs recorded none, not that Google showed none.
- A zero is not proof of never. Nought out of thirty queries is still consistent with a true presence rate as high as 9.5%, at 95% confidence on n=30. It means rare, not absent.
- Selection. Every seed is a marketing-services query, so this measures our own market. The intent pattern may travel. The rates almost certainly will not.
- One day. AI Overview presence moves, so a single reading is a snapshot and not a trend.
Only the last three of those leave the finding standing. If the instrument has a blind spot for India-locale local results, the zero is an artefact and the headline goes with it. That is why our next step is a hand-check in a clean browser rather than another Ahrefs pull, and we will publish that result whichever way it lands.
Key takeaways
- Segment by intent before reacting. Exposure ran from 0 of 30 to 74 of 80 inside one small study.
- Add a place name to a commercial query and AI Overview presence fell to zero in thirty tries.
- Check the Search Console generative AI inclusion setting. Google's July 2026 guidance calls it a condition of eligibility and its older page says no such condition exists.
- Google defines the higher-quality clicks it reports as longer time on site, not more sales. Quote it accurately.
Frequently asked
Does this mean AI Overviews are not a threat?
Not at all. It means the exposure is uneven. On informational queries in our sample it was 74 of 80, which is close to total. The point is that a single site-wide reaction is wrong when one part of your site sits at 74 of 80 and another at 0 of 30.
Will this hold for my industry?
We cannot say. Our seeds were marketing-services and website queries, so this measures our own market. The local-intent pattern is likely to travel, because it follows Google's stated logic about when an overview is additive, but the rates are ours and not yours.
Should we add schema or an llms.txt file to get into AI Overviews?
Google says no special structured data or machine-readable files are required for these features. Good schema is still worth having for rich results and clarity, just not for this.
How do we measure whether AI Overviews cost us anything?
Two places, and they are not the same thing. AI feature appearances are already inside the standard Performance report, counted within the Web search type, so they are mixed into your existing totals. Separately, Google's July 2026 guide points to a Generative AI performance report for generative AI features specifically. Compare click-through rate by query intent over time rather than watching total traffic.
Why publish a number you say might be wrong?
Because the limit belongs next to the number, or a reader cannot judge either. A zero we have not stress-tested is still worth knowing, provided we say that is what it is.
Sources
Adith Krishnan
Co-Founder & COO, Kula Digital
8+ years building marketing that is measured in revenue. Runs strategy, AI search visibility, and education marketing at Kula. Written from the studio in Coimbatore.