If you’ve noticed that Google’s search results page looks a little different lately, a little more crowded and a little harder to predict, you’re not imagining it. Google’s AI Overviews are rewriting the rules of search visibility, and for car dealers, the implications for automotive SEO are significant enough that we wanted to pull back the curtain and share what we’re finding in real data.
This is the first installment of an ongoing study looking at 1,600 search queries broken down by shopper intent – transactional, commercial, and informational – run across three real markets: Pensacola, FL; Kansas City, KS; and Dallas, TX. We’ll be adding more data and going deeper as the research progresses, but the early findings are already telling a compelling story.
The AIO Trigger Rate Tells the Story Immediately
The most important number to start with is simple: how often does an AI Overview actually show up? Because when it does, it reorganizes everything else on the page, such as where ads land, whether a local pack appears, and how far down organic results get pushed.
Here’s what we found across intent categories:
For transactional searches, queries with clear purchase or action intent like “buy a used F-150 near me” or “honda civic for sale,” an AI Overview triggered just 10.5% of the time. For commercial searches, comparison and research queries like “best truck for towing” or “RAM 1500 vs F-150,” that figure jumps to 78.9%. And for informational searches, educational queries like “how does dealer financing work,” an AI Overview appeared 97% of the time.
That progression, 10.5% to 78.9% to 97%, isn’t a gradual climb. It’s a cliff, and it has direct implications for how dealers craft messaging across the path to purchase.
A Market-Level Wrinkle Worth Noting
Before we go further, there’s something in the transactional data that’s worth pausing on, because it illustrates just how locally specific automotive SEO can get.
In Pensacola, the transactional trigger rate was notably higher than what we saw in Kansas City and Dallas, and the likely reason is genuinely interesting. Pensacola is a smaller market with fewer dealerships representing specific brands. When someone in a less competitive market searches for a Honda near them, Google appears to recognize that the truly local options are limited and compensates by broadening the results, surfacing alternatives up to 30 miles away. In a market like Dallas, where nearly every major brand has multiple rooftop competitors within a tight radius, Google has plenty of nearby options to fill the page without needing to reach quite so far.
In other words, the AI Overview stepped in not because the query was ambiguous, but because the local supply of relevant results was thin. That’s a nuance that aggregate national data would never reveal, and it’s a reminder that your market’s competitive landscape shapes your SERP in ways that go beyond just your own automotive SEO strategy.
What the Page Looks Like When an AIO Appears
Knowing an AIO triggered is one thing; understanding what surrounds it is another. The page looks very different depending on what kind of search brought someone there.
In transactional searches, the familiar elements are still present, but the page is more complex than before. Ads appeared 41% of the time, though 75% of those ads landed below the AI Overview rather than above it. A local pack appeared 35% of the time, always beneath the AIO, and when both were present, 49% of the time at least one of the top 3 AIO citations also appeared in the top 3 of the local pack, a sign that strong local SEO still feeds into what Google’s AI surfaces. People Also Asked showed up on 98% of these searches, while Discussions/Forums appeared 17% of the time and video packs 11% of the time.
The commercial intent picture is more crowded. People Also Asked was universal, present 100% of the time, and video packs appeared on 71% of searches, a dramatic leap from the 11% seen on transactional queries. Discussions/Forums appeared 54% of the time, up from 17%, and What People Are Saying appeared in 26% of searches, compared to just 5% for transactional. Ads were actually less common here, only 26% of the time, though 77% of those still fell below the AIO.
On informational searches, where the AIO is nearly always present, Discussions/Forums appeared 38.5% of the time, and People Also Asked was again universal at 100%.
SERP Fragmentation is the New Normal
Here’s something that should make any dealer rethink how much they trust their organic ranking as a proxy for actual visibility: SERP features are routinely interrupting what used to be a clean top-three organic listing, and it’s one of the more underappreciated challenges in automotive SEO right now.
In transactional searches, 30% of results pages included another feature that broke up the top 3 organic results. On commercial searches, that rises to 55%, meaning a dealer sitting at number two organically may be positioned much further down the visual page than that number suggests.
The relationship between AIO citations and traditional organic rankings is also worth watching closely. In transactional searches, 46% of the top 3 citations natively shown in the AI Overview were also among the top 5 organic results, and 60% appeared within the top 10. Commercial searches looked similar: 44% in the top 5 and 57% in the top 10. The correlation is real, earning organic authority still matters for AIO inclusion, but a meaningful share of citations are coming from outside the traditional first page entirely.
Which raises an important question we’re actively digging into: what is it about certain content that keeps it consistently cited in AI-generated answers, even as those citations shift and change over time? As part of this study, we’re analyzing the qualities of content that appear to resist that volatility, looking at factors like depth, structure, specificity, and authority signals to understand what earns a stable seat at the table. That piece of the research has significant implications for automotive SEO strategy, and we’ll be sharing those findings as they develop.
What This Means for Your Dealership
The clearest takeaway from all of this is that Google treats different kinds of automotive searches very differently, and dealers who approach their automotive SEO as a single, uniform strategy are going to find themselves invisible at exactly the wrong moments.
Transactional queries, where a buyer is close to a decision, are still the least likely to trigger an AI Overview. Traditional SEO, local pack optimization, and paid search remain highly relevant at the bottom of the funnel. But the moment a shopper moves into research mode, comparing models, weighing financing options, trying to understand the buying process, the AI Overview takes over the page and the playbook shifts.
There’s more coming. As the study expands, we’ll be breaking down findings by individual market, digging deeper into query level patterns, looking at what content qualities earn stable AIO citations, and sharing what all of it means for your automotive SEO strategy on the ground. The goal is to give you data you can act on, not just trends to worry about. Stay with us.
Related Stories: