I took 2,581 US "where to buy" keywords that Ahrefs had pre-flagged as AIO-triggering, then live-checked every single one via the DataForSEO API to see what those AI Overviews actually look like — how consistently they show up, how long the answers run, how many sources they cite, which domains get cited most, and how the answers close out.
Keyword data: Ahrefs Keywords Explorer · Live SERP data: DataForSEO API (US, desktop) · Collection date: August 2026
Dataset Overview
Before looking at how AIOs behave, here's what the underlying keyword set looks like — 2,581 US "where to buy" keywords (2 malformed rows with no product category excluded), pre-flagged by Ahrefs as AIO-triggering.
Keywords by Product Category
| Category | Keywords | % of Total | Total Volume | Avg Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food & Drinks | 788 | 30.5% | 320,700 | 407 |
| Pharma & Medical | 266 | 10.3% | 157,500 | 592 |
| Home, Garden & Auto | 251 | 9.7% | 142,950 | 570 |
| Clothing, Footwear & Accessories | 222 | 8.6% | 97,000 | 437 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 173 | 6.7% | 80,900 | 468 |
| Media, Tickets, Toys & Collectibles | 144 | 5.6% | 153,400 | 1,065 |
| Supplement | 125 | 4.8% | 64,650 | 517 |
| Gift Card | 121 | 4.7% | 57,850 | 478 |
| Other / Services | 119 | 4.6% | 88,400 | 743 |
| Electronics & Tech | 115 | 4.5% | 57,100 | 497 |
| Financial & Crypto | 111 | 4.3% | 79,700 | 718 |
| Chemical & Household | 85 | 3.3% | 29,700 | 349 |
| Pet & Animals | 61 | 2.4% | 23,400 | 384 |
Search Intent Distribution
SERP Feature Prevalence
Key Findings
AIO presence is a moving target, not a fixed property of a keyword. Every one of the 2,581 keywords in this dataset was pre-flagged by Ahrefs as AIO-triggering, yet a live check found only 67.3% (1,738) still showed an AI Overview.
Consistency ranges from 88.4% down to 53.0% by category. Gift Card queries show AIO most reliably; Home, Garden & Auto queries show it least — a 35-point gap between the two.
Branded queries trigger AIO far more reliably than non-branded ones — 78.2% vs. 59.2%. Naming a specific brand makes Google more likely to generate an AI Overview for a "where to buy" search.
Non-local queries show AIO more consistently (79.8%) than local-intent queries (63.0%) — counterintuitive, given Local pack appears on 75.9% of all keywords in this set.
The top 30 domains capture just 47.8% of all 11,611 citations. Google, Amazon, and Reddit dominate the top of the list, but the remaining 52.2% is spread across 3,125 other domains — a huge long tail.
91.3% of AI Overviews end by prompting the user for more information — 32% ask for a zip code or city, 12.3% ask to clarify the product or brand. Only 8.7% give a fully self-contained answer.
Presence Rate
All 2,581 keywords were pre-selected by Ahrefs as AIO-triggering. The % below is how many still showed a live AI Overview when checked via DataForSEO — i.e. how "sticky" AIO presence actually is for that group.
By Search Intent
| Category | Keywords | % With AIO | Avg Words | Avg Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gift Card | 121 | 88.4% | 140 | 5.5 |
| Financial & Crypto | 111 | 82.9% | 175 | 7.3 |
| Chemical & Household | 85 | 75.3% | 166 | 6.5 |
| Beauty & Personal Care | 173 | 75.1% | 133 | 6.1 |
| Pharma & Medical | 266 | 74.1% | 178 | 7.1 |
| Supplement | 125 | 73.6% | 144 | 6.1 |
| Other / Services | 119 | 73.1% | 189 | 7.8 |
| Electronics & Tech | 115 | 71.3% | 191 | 7.3 |
| Media, Tickets, Toys & Collectibles | 144 | 70.8% | 178 | 6.6 |
| Clothing, Footwear & Accessories | 222 | 63.5% | 163 | 6.6 |
| Food & Drinks | 788 | 60.4% | 159 | 6.6 |
| Pet & Animals | 61 | 57.4% | 183 | 6.4 |
| Home, Garden & Auto | 251 | 53.0% | 171 | 7.0 |
Presence Rate
Does a keyword's search volume predict whether it still shows a live AI Overview? Keywords were bucketed by volume and checked against the same 67.3% baseline.
| Volume Bucket | Keywords | With AIO | % With AIO | Avg Volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 150-200 | 955 | 673 | 70.5% | 185 |
| 250-350 | 694 | 446 | 64.3% | 289 |
| 400-600 | 475 | 319 | 67.2% | 491 |
| 700-1,000 | 225 | 144 | 64.0% | 825 |
| 1,100-2,000 | 160 | 105 | 65.6% | 1,405 |
| 2,100+ | 72 | 51 | 70.8% | 4,611 |
Interpretation and Implication
Search volume barely moves the needle. AIO presence stays in a tight 64.0%–70.8% band across every volume tier, from 150-200 up to 2,100+. The lowest- and highest-volume buckets show the top two rates (70.5% and 70.8%), but the spread is only 6.8 points — not a meaningful trend.
This suggests AIO presence for "where to buy" queries is driven more by intent and category (see above) than by how much search demand a keyword gets. A low-volume, branded, non-local query is a better predictor of AIO than volume alone.
Presence Rate
Each bar shows how much higher or lower the AIO rate is for keywords with that feature, compared to keywords without it. A bar at 0 means the feature makes no difference; the baseline AIO rate is 67.3%.
| Feature | Present N | % AIO (Present) | Absent N | % AIO (Absent) | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local pack | 1,958 | 62.4% | 623 | 83.0% | -20.6 |
| Top ads | 26 | 84.6% | 2,555 | 67.2% | +17.4 |
| Image pack | 16 | 81.2% | 2,565 | 67.3% | +13.9 |
| Paid sitelinks | 40 | 80.0% | 2,541 | 67.1% | +12.9 |
| People also ask | 2,525 | 67.5% | 56 | 60.7% | +6.8 |
| Top stories | 372 | 62.1% | 2,209 | 68.2% | -6.1 |
| Knowledge panel | 173 | 72.8% | 2,408 | 66.9% | +5.9 |
| Discussions | 278 | 72.3% | 2,303 | 66.7% | +5.6 |
| Bottom ads | 56 | 71.4% | 2,525 | 67.2% | +4.2 |
| Videos | 21 | 71.4% | 2,560 | 67.3% | +4.1 |
| Shopping | 1,578 | 65.8% | 1,003 | 69.7% | -3.9 |
| Shopping Ads | 131 | 66.4% | 2,450 | 67.4% | -1.0 |
| Video preview | 820 | 68.0% | 1,761 | 67.0% | +1.0 |
| Sitelinks | 1,534 | 67.5% | 1,047 | 67.1% | +0.4 |
| Thumbnail | 2,532 | 67.3% | 49 | 67.3% | +0.0 |
Interpretation and Implication
Local pack is the one feature that actually matters here. Keywords with a Local pack show AIO only 62.4% of the time vs. 83.0% when Local pack is absent — a 20.6-point gap, and by far the largest of any feature. It lines up with the earlier finding that local-intent queries show lower AIO consistency than non-local ones.
Everything else is either close to flat (Shopping, Sitelinks, Video preview, Thumbnail all sit within a few points of the 67.3% baseline) or based on too few keywords to trust (Top ads, Image pack, and Paid sitelinks each appear on fewer than 40 keywords, so their larger gaps are more likely noise than signal).
Answer Composition
By Search Intent
Citation Frequency
A Different Cut: Keyword Coverage
The chart above measures each domain's share of all 11,611 individual citation events — a domain cited 3 times in one answer counts 3 times. The chart below measures something different: out of the 1,738 AIO answers, what % cite this domain at least once. Same top 20 domains, same order, for direct comparison.
| # | Domain | Citations | % of Total | In # Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | google.com | 1,512 | 13.0% | 778 |
| 2 | amazon.com | 774 | 6.7% | 599 |
| 3 | reddit.com | 710 | 6.1% | 644 |
| 4 | youtube.com | 422 | 3.6% | 284 |
| 5 | walmart.com | 377 | 3.2% | 333 |
| 6 | facebook.com | 243 | 2.1% | 216 |
| 7 | target.com | 218 | 1.9% | 209 |
| 8 | instagram.com | 175 | 1.5% | 139 |
| 9 | instacart.com | 164 | 1.4% | 157 |
| 10 | goodrx.com | 132 | 1.1% | 93 |
| 11 | walgreens.com | 98 | 0.8% | 88 |
| 12 | cvs.com | 63 | 0.5% | 59 |
| 13 | homedepot.com | 61 | 0.5% | 53 |
| 14 | tiktok.com | 47 | 0.4% | 44 |
| 15 | wholefoodsmarket.com | 46 | 0.4% | 46 |
| 16 | pharmacy.amazon.com | 44 | 0.4% | 41 |
| 17 | kroger.com | 42 | 0.4% | 42 |
| 18 | quora.com | 41 | 0.4% | 41 |
| 19 | ebay.com | 41 | 0.4% | 40 |
| 20 | ulta.com | 40 | 0.3% | 38 |
| 21 | bestbuy.com | 37 | 0.3% | 34 |
| 22 | nordstrom.com | 37 | 0.3% | 35 |
| 23 | giftcards.kroger.com | 32 | 0.3% | 32 |
| 24 | sephora.com | 31 | 0.3% | 31 |
| 25 | kraken.com | 28 | 0.2% | 28 |
| 26 | binance.com | 27 | 0.2% | 25 |
| 27 | lowes.com | 27 | 0.2% | 25 |
| 28 | dickssportinggoods.com | 27 | 0.2% | 26 |
| 29 | coinbase.com | 27 | 0.2% | 24 |
| 30 | sesamecare.com | 26 | 0.2% | 26 |
Interpretation and Implication
google.com leads citations — but this is mostly Google Shopping product links, not editorial content, since these are commercial "where to buy" queries. amazon.com (#2) and reddit.com (#3) are close behind — Reddit shows up in 37% of all AIO answers, ahead of every retailer except Amazon, meaning Google leans heavily on forum discussion for purchase-location questions.
The top 30 domains — under 1% of the 3,155 domains ever cited — still only account for 47.8% of citations. Nearly every individual AIO also pulls in something more niche: a brand's own site, a regional retailer, or a specialty shop.
Answer Endings
The last line of each AI Overview was classified by what kind of follow-up (if any) it asks the user for.
| Closing Line Type | Count | % of Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Other follow-up question | 749 | 43.1% |
| Asks for location (zip code / city) | 556 | 32.0% |
| Asks to clarify product / brand | 213 | 12.3% |
| No closing question — fully answered | 151 | 8.7% |
| Asks about payment / budget | 61 | 3.5% |
| Asks about a specific preference | 8 | 0.5% |
The visibility of AIOs is still volatile to an extent. Despite selecting keywords that were flagged by Ahrefs as having AI Overviews, a live check showed that only 67.3% of the time those keywords returned an AIO. So, the odds of seeing an AI Overview, even if you know a keyword had one before, are only slightly higher than a coin toss.
When it comes to categorizing "where to buy" keywords by product type (e.g., food, pet & animal, home & garden, etc.), the top categories most likely to get an AIO were gift cards (88.4%), financial and crypto (82.9%), despite these being YMYL keywords, and chemical and household (75.3%), which may again fall under YMYL depending on the exact product.
I personally thought AIO visibility was related to search volume. This study of "where to buy" keywords shows that it's almost flat across the dataset, regardless of search volume. The only noticeable insight is that when there's a local pack, there's less likelihood of an AIO.
Also, when analyzing the top cited domains, it was no surprise that Google cites itself 13% of the time, mainly through Google Shopping links. Amazon and Reddit came in as the second and third most cited domains, while 52% of the time, AIOs also pull in something more niche: a brand's own site, a regional retailer, or a specialty shop.
Another noticeable insight: 91.3% of these answers end by asking the user for more information rather than giving a final, closed answer. It's by design, attempting to keep the user on Google's platform.
Perhaps the most notable insight for anyone concerned with AIO impact is that, out of the initial 30K "where to buy" keywords, only 2,581 were initially flagged as having an AIO, and out of those, only 1,738 showed consistent AIOs. This means that "where to buy" keywords are very valuable and could have a higher click-through rate if they are relevant to your niche.
One of the keyword opportunities that I see often wasted by e-commerce websites is the "where to buy" keywords, probably because they think it's for local businesses only.
That's actually not true — AIOs for this type of keyword have been citing Amazon, Walmart, and Target, for example, and many other online stores, not only local businesses.
Strategically, target "where to buy" keywords if you're doing local SEO or e-commerce SEO. Be more specific with your service location and provide as much detail about your offering as possible.
Methodology