AI Overviews now sit on 80% of Google searches. In one 100-site study, ChatGPT sent under 1% of Google's traffic. Plan for both.

Short answer: AI Overviews appear on over 80% of Google searches, according to Semrush, SE Ranking and seoClarity data reported Oct 26, 2026. Marie Haynes found ChatGPT sessions equal to 0.62% of Google organic sessions across 100 sites. Her read: the AI search that sends people to businesses today is Google. Plan to be cited there first. (Search Engine Roundtable, Oct 26 and Oct 22, 2026)

TLDR

• Over 80% of searches show an AI Overview. (SER, Oct 26, 2026)
• ChatGPT sent 0.62% of Google organic's sessions in a 100-site sample. (Marie Haynes, Oct 21, 2026)
• Win the citation on Google's page before you chase a separate AI channel.

How often do AI Overviews show up now?

Search Engine Roundtable reported on Oct 26, 2026 that AI Overviews show for over 80% of Google searches, up from 50% in June of last year, using Semrush, SE Ranking and seoClarity data. SE Ranking put it at 82.5% of US brand searches. seoClarity's Mark Traphagen told SER about a month earlier that they saw over 62% of queries, ranging from 55% to 84% by industry. Ahrefs found that as of Sep 29, 2026, AI Overviews appeared in 82.91% of US desktop search results for branded keywords, in a July to September sample of 92.5 million branded-keyword crawls. (Ahrefs, Ryan Law and Xibeijia Guan, Oct 2, 2026)

The numbers differ by method. They all point the same direction.

How much traffic does ChatGPT actually send?

Marie Haynes looked at 12 months of GA4 data across 100 websites and more than 145 million sessions. ChatGPT sessions equaled 0.62% of Google organic sessions. Adding other LLMs raised it to 0.73%. ChatGPT visitors converted at 13.8% against 3.02% for Google organic, yet Google still drove 96.5% of conversions in her dataset. (Marie Haynes, "GEO is a distraction," Oct 21, 2026; covered by SER, Oct 22, 2026)

Her post describes the sites only as "of varying sizes" and does not give an industry mix. (Marie Haynes, Oct 21, 2026)

An analyst read points the same way. Nate Elliott of EMARKETER told Digiday: "Most U.S. internet users still don't use AI chatbots in any given month." (Digiday, Krystal Scanlon, Oct 27, 2026: https://digiday.com/marketing/anthropics-ad-bill-is-soaring-according-to-ipo-filing/)

So where should an agency spend the effort?

On Google's page. If the AI answer sits on top of most results, being the source it cites is the visibility your client gets.

My take: getting cited in AI Overviews is good SEO with a new label.

Does that mean ignore ChatGPT?

No. Measure it. If your client's GA4 shows LLM referrals, track them as their own channel. Haynes found 45 of her 100 sites tracked no key events at all, so start there.

What do I do this month?

1. Pick the client's 20 most valuable queries.
2. Search each one and note whether an AI Overview shows and who it cites.
3. Set up a GA4 key event if one is missing.
4. Add an LLM referral segment to the monthly report.
5. Rewrite one page per week so it answers the query in the first paragraph.

Next step

Who: the SEO lead on each account. What: the 20-query citation check. When: before the November report. How: one sheet with query, AI Overview yes or no, cited sources, and whether the client is one of them.