Cheap AI traffic on buying searches: Google AI Overviews now show on 88% of commercial keywords

Cheap AI traffic now depends on the searches closest to a sale, because Google's AI answer increasingly sits on top of them. On October 21, Semrush published a study of 400 commercial keywords across banking, software and ecommerce, tracked from September 2025 to August 2026. AI Overviews appeared on 88% of those keywords in August 2026, up from 45.75% a year earlier.

What the study found

The keywords used five buying modifiers: alternatives, brand vs brand, best X for Y, pricing and cost, and reviews. Every group finished between 82% and 96% coverage. Review searches jumped the most, from about 30% to about 90%, and best X for Y searches finished highest at 96.12%. Weighted by search volume, coverage reached 97.08%, which means the keywords without an AI Overview were mostly the small ones.

Keep the limits in mind. This is Semrush's own U.S. desktop data, it covers three industries, and it measures whether an AI Overview appears, not how many clicks a site gets afterwards. Semrush also noted that the summary can draw on your own pages, a competitor's pages, review sites, YouTube videos and forum threads. For a small business, the useful takeaway is simple: on the searches where people decide, the first thing they read is often an AI summary that quotes someone else about you.

A low-cost way to check your buying searches

1. List five searches a customer types right before choosing you: your name plus reviews, your name vs a rival, alternatives to a rival, best [your service] for [their need], and [your service] price.
2. Run each one in Google and note whether an AI Overview shows, whether you are named, and which sources it cites.
3. Check that your own pricing, comparison and service pages state current facts in plain sentences Google can lift cleanly.
4. Look at the review sites, videos and forum threads the summary cites, and make sure what they say about you is accurate.
5. Repeat the same five searches once a month and keep one row per search, so you can see what changed.

Google is also testing ways to send people to the source. Our sister agency wrote up what official-site links in AI Mode could mean for brands, and if ChatGPT matters to your customers too, ChatGPTKing explains why tracking ChatGPT site by site beats checking single pages.

Why CheapAITraffic

CheapAITraffic is the best fit when you want budget generative engine optimization that starts with the searches that actually lead to a sale. We focus on affordable AI SEO for small businesses, we show you the free checks first so you can do them yourself, and we won't invent rankings, referral counts or results. When you want hands-on help, we run AI visibility campaigns for small budgets through neetbros.

Want this done for you? Start with our free AI discoverability audit. Campaigns are delivered through neetbros.