AI Overviews Change Every 2 Days (But Never Change Their Mind)

11/11/25
Source: Data & Studies – SEO Blog by Ahrefs by Louise Linehan. Read the original article

TL;DR Summary of How Stable Are AI Overviews? Insights from Analyzing Over 43,000 Keywords

AI Overviews change frequently, with a 70% chance of content alteration between observations, yet their underlying meaning remains highly stable. Citations and entities within these overviews fluctuate almost half the time, making brand visibility volatile. To maintain presence, brands should focus on establishing authority over core themes and topics rather than individual queries.

Optimixed’s Overview: Understanding the Dynamic Yet Consistent Nature of AI-Generated Search Summaries

Frequent Content Changes with Deep Semantic Stability

Research analyzing over 43,000 keywords across multiple AI assistants reveals that AI Overviews are in a constant state of flux, changing approximately every 2.15 days on average. Despite this, the semantic stability between consecutive overviews is extremely high (cosine similarity of 0.95), indicating that while the wording and citations shift, the core information and themes remain consistent.

Volatility in Citations and Entity Mentions

  • On average, only 54.5% of URLs cited overlap between consecutive AI Overview responses, meaning nearly half of cited sources are newly introduced each time.
  • Entities such as people, organizations, and locations show similar volatility, with about 54% consistency between observations.
  • This dynamic swapping results in AI answers that may look different on repeated queries, but still convey the same essential insights.

Implications for Brands and SEO Strategy

Because AI Overviews do not behave like traditional search rankings and are highly variable, brands cannot rely on a single mention for sustained visibility. Instead, they should:

  • Focus on becoming authoritative across the broader themes related to their niche or industry.
  • Use tools like Ahrefs Brand Radar to track topic associations and AI visibility trends over time.
  • Monitor aggregated AI Share of Voice rather than isolated query appearances to understand competitive positioning.

Insights on AI Overview Caching and Popularity

The study also disproves the idea that Google caches AI Overviews to reduce computational load; popular queries exhibit just as much content change as niche ones. This highlights the inherently dynamic and probabilistic nature of large-language model outputs.

Ultimately, succeeding in AI-driven search environments requires embracing their evolving character by winning the topic and theme rather than focusing solely on individual search queries.