To help dealerships understand what they can do to ensure placements in AI Overviews, the C-4 Analytics SEO team conducted a nationwide study across 151 dealership domains. Our goal? Uncover what types of queries trigger AI Overviews most often, which types of pages get cited and what that means for the future of automotive SEO strategies.
Google launched AI Overviews in May of 2024, and their visibility atop Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) has surged since. Organic results can now be big, bold and prominently featured in a way we haven’t seen since featured snippets. AI Overviews are appearing more and more often, more than doubling their presence on SERPs from January to now, per SEMRush. For auto dealers, that means more customer eyes are landing on organic, AI-generated answers before they ever even see ads, a Map Pack or traditional organic listings.
For early adopters, this presents the best opportunity in years to drive actionable traffic to your site through SEO.
What Are Google’s AI Overviews and Why Do They Matter for Car Dealers?
AI Overviews are Google’s generative AI summaries that appear at the top of search results. They pull in content from multiple websites to deliver instant, consolidated answers to a user’s query, like the one we see here for the generic query “Kia safety.”
For dealerships, this matters because the AI Overview often appears above the Map Pack and main organic listings. When shoppers search on Google for information about vehicles, service or financing, the first thing they see is often an AI-generated box pulling content from across the web. If your content is cited there, Google is signaling that it sees your site as an authority. Google is putting you directly in front of car shoppers at the most valuable, visible portion of a SERP.
If your dealership is included in an AI Overview, you gain instant visibility and authority. If you’re not, your competitors could earn that edge instead.
C-4 Analytics’ Automotive AI Overviews Study
Throughout the month of July 2025, the C-4 Analytics SEO team conducted a study to learn which types of queries trigger AI Overviews and what types of pages are cited. We selected a test group of 151 domains from car dealerships around the country. These domains ranged across:
- The most common automakers, from economy to luxury to exotic.
- Ten different automotive website providers, including Dealer.com, DealerInspire, DealerOn and others.
- Dealerships in 33 different states.
Using Semrush, we discovered how many individual queries for each domain triggered an AI Overviews appearance. We used this data to conduct an internal analysis to learn not just the intent behind the queries people searched, but also what types of pages ranked most often. More specifically, we set out to learn:
- What percentage of the 151 tested domains had pages cited in AI Overviews?
- How many total queries triggered an AI Overview appearance?
- What is the intent behind the queries that triggered AI Overviews most often?
- Is locality a factor in automotive AI Overviews?
- What types of pages are cited most often within AI Overviews?
Key Takeaways:
Most dealers are cited in AI Overviews. Of the 151 domains tested, 85% had at least one unique URL earning a citation.
- Most dealers are cited in AI Overviews. Of the 151 domains tested, 85% had at least one unique URL earning a citation.
- Opportunities for visibility abound. Across those 151 domains, 937 unique URLs were cited in AI Overviews. Those 937 unique URLs were triggered by 3,080 unique queries.
- Informational queries are king. Nearly 77% of queries had informational intent.
- Fixed ops questions are common. Many informational queries had a secondary intent, with 14% related to fixed ops.
- Local searches don’t land here. Only 5% of queries had explicit local intent.
Dive deeper into the data below to learn how car dealerships can earn AI Overviews and win the race to succeed in the AI SEO era.
What percentage of the tested domains had pages cited in AI Overviews?
Out of the 151 tested domains, 131, or 85.4%, had at least one page earning a placement in AI Overviews.
- Across those 131 domains, we identified 937 unique URLs displayed within AI Overviews results.
- Of those 131 domains, each showed between 1 and 52 unique URLs cited in AI Overviews.
Takeaway for Dealers: Most dealers already appear in AI Overviews, but to varying extents.
How many total queries triggered an AI Overview appearance?
Across the 151 dealership domains we studied, we identified 3,080 search queries that triggered an AI Overviews appearance in the search results. This number shows just how frequently Google is generating AI Overviews, and how many opportunities there are for dealership content to appear in this coveted space. Of the 151 domains analyzed, we found that sites had between 0 and 312 unique queries triggering AI Overviews.
Takeaway for Dealers: Tier 3 dealership websites are more than capable of earning placements in AI Overviews.
What is the intent behind the queries triggering AI Overviews most often?
To determine which types of queries were triggering the presence of AI Overviews on SERPs most often, we broke the primary query type down into four intents: informational, commercial intent, branding/reputation and geotargeted.
Unsurprisingly, informational queries triggered AI Overviews on SERPs most often. Next were commercial intent, branding/reputation and geotargeted, in that order. Here’s a breakdown of the queries:
- 76.59% Informational
- 20.75% Commercial Intent
- 1.88% Branding/Reputation
- 0.78% Geotarget
Due to the complexity of long-tail keywords, we found that many had secondary intents, especially those with geotargeted terms attached. Therefore, we assigned secondary intents to queries when relevant.
Informational Queries
As stated, informational queries were the most likely to trigger an AI Overview, appearing in 2,359 cases, or 76.6% of all queries tested. Within all queries:
- 48.8% were categorized as purely informational, as in asking a question or conducting model research.
- 13.90% were related to fixed ops, including service codes, tires, maintenance schedules and more.
- 9.09% were comparison-based, including trim comparisons, on-brand model comparisons and off-brand comparisons.
- 4.19% were finance-related, including pricing, leasing, specials and more.
- <1% were geotargeted, including any type of location in the query.
- <1% were branding/reputation-related, including questions related to specific dealerships.
Note: Percentages in this chart represent the share of queries within the informational category (2,359 queries), not all queries tested. This is a percentage of informational queries with secondary intent.
Commercial Intent Queries
Commercial intent queries triggered AI Overviews second most often, appearing in 639 cases, or 20.8% of all queries tested. Within all queries:
- 12.69% were categorized as purely commercial intent.
- 5.52% were financial in nature, including pricing, leasing, specials and more.
- 1.40% were related to fixed ops, including scheduling service appointments, service pricing and more.
- 1.14% were geotargeted, including a specific location in the query.
Note: Percentages in the chart represent the share of queries within the commercial intent category (639 queries), not all queries tested. This is a percentage of commercial-intent queries with secondary intent.
Branding/Reputation Queries
Branding- and reputation-related queries only triggered AI Overviews 58 times, which is less than 2% of all the queries tested. Within all queries:
- 1.59% were categorized as purely branding- or reputation-related. These included questions related to the specific dealerships we analyzed.
- <1% were geotargeted, including any type of location within the query.
- <1% were finance-related, including specials or credit related keywords.
Dealers should not take these results to mean that optimizing for branded and reputation-based keywords is no longer important. Both types of keywords still have massive impacts on overall SEO performance. They simply do not trigger AI Overviews as often as other types of keywords at present.
Note: Percentages in the chart represent the share of queries within the branding/reputation category (58 queries), not all queries tested. This is a percentage of branding/reputation queries with secondary intent.
Is Locality a Factor in Automotive AI Overviews?
Local/Geotarget Queries
While informational queries drove the majority of AI Overviews appearances, local or geotargeted keywords were the least likely to trigger an AI Overview. Out of 3,080 total queries, only 24 (0.78%) were primarily local in nature.
To better understand local intent beyond primary queries, we reviewed longtail keywords for which geotargeting appeared as a secondary or even tertiary factor.
- Only 24 queries (0.78%) could be classified as having primarily a geotargeted keyword.
- However, more longtail keywords incorporated some sort of local intent. In total, 138 keywords included some level of geotargeting.
- This means that 162 total keywords ranking in AI Overviews had some sort of geotargeted term attached to them, or about 5.26% of all queries.
- For examples of the types of queries in this category, consider “Acura RDX for Sale Boston” to more informational type queries, such as “How to Sell a Car in Massachusetts.”
Takeaway for Dealers: AI Overviews are rarely triggered by a query with local intent. Users searching with local intent are far more likely to see traditional SERP features, such as the Map Pack or Google Business Profile, than an AI Overview.
Earning Automotive AI Overviews: Our Findings
We found that Informational queries, by far, earn the most placements in AI Overviews. This makes sense, as AI Overviews were designed to answer questions from Google users. But the breakdown of secondary intents gives us sharper direction in shaping our strategy:
- Fixed ops content stands out. Queries with secondary intents related to service and maintenance consistently earned visibility. This suggests that they’d be a smart focus for dealerships.
- Finance content performs strongly. Commercial intent queries with secondary intents related to finance- and lease-related keywords performed second-best. This shows the value in creating content that simplifies lease, finance and specials options for customers
- Local intent does not drive AI Overviews. AI Overviews are triggered by general research queries with national relevance. Geotargeted keywords rarely trigger AI Overviews.
The chart below highlights the distribution of primary and secondary intents within each query type.
What types of pages are cited most often within AI Overviews?
Since we learned above that informational queries trigger AI Overviews most often, it’s no surprise that informational landing pages, or pages targeting a unique question, were cited most frequently in AI Overviews. Of the 3,080 instances in which we saw an AI Overview appear on the SERP, 37.86% of pages cited were informational landing pages. The other types of landing pages that were cited included:
- 20.58% were model-specific landing pages or trim-specific landing pages
- 12.82% were service or parts pages
- 7.63% were either vehicle description pages (VDPs) or vehicle listings pages (VLPs)
- 6.36% were full model landing pages
- 8.22% were model comparison pages
- 12.9% were other page types
Generating Automotive AI Overviews:
AI Overviews reward content that directly answers questions. That’s why informational landing pages dominate, earning nearly 38% of all citations in our study. These pages are built to solve problems and answer specific questions. This is exactly the kind of content Google wants to showcase.
The takeaway: Different page types serve different purposes, and different SEO strategies are designed to meet specific goals. It’s important to ask: What is the goal of each strategic tactic you’re employing?
- Informational landing pages should be built with AI Overviews in mind, because they’re your best shot at being cited.
- Model landing pages and VDPs aren’t likely to earn an AI Overviews placement, but they’re crucial in adding to your site’s overall keyword portfolio. Their job is to capture direct-match value for commercial-intent queries with a geotargeted focus and move customers down the funnel.
In other words: Don’t expect every page to rank in an AI Overview. Instead, align each page type with its real goal. That might be visibility in AI Overviews, but it could also be direct-match SEO value or overall topical site authority.
Conclusion:
AI Overviews are rapidly becoming the first thing shoppers see on a SERP when searching for the answer to their questions on Google. Depending on the type of content you’re publishing on your site, there’s a high likelihood that your dealership is already being cited in answers.
This creates an opportunity to increase your site’s visibility. The more often you’re featured, the more likely it is that Google will consider your website an authority and include you in future AI Overviews appearances. This means more opportunity to get directly in front of your customers in the most visible portion of the SERP.
Want to be featured in AI Overviews more often? Here’s how to win on SERPs:
- Do answer your customers’ questions. Informational queries lead to informational pages. If you’re not publishing content on your site that answers your customers’ questions, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to improve your visibility and your authority in Google’s eyes.
- Don’t expect AI Overviews to appear for local queries. AI Overviews are much more likely to appear for general research queries with national relevance. There is a low chance of them appearing on a SERP for local queries. While national relevance establishes authority and that can play a hand in influencing local ranking, you should still consider other tactics to earn local visibility.
- Keep the end-goal in mind! Earning a placement in an AI Overview increases your visibility on SERPs. It is not a silver bullet that will instantly earn you an influx of organic traffic. A well-rounded approach to SEO is still necessary.
Special thanks to the C-4 Analytics SEO team for their research and contributions to this report.