AI Overviews Hit 85% of Questions, 10% of Money

In a live pull of 60 real Arizona legal searches, Google’s AI Overview showed up on 85.2% of question-shaped searches but only 10.0% of money searches (hiring intent), a 75.2-point gap.

Legal marketers have treated search visibility and AI visibility as one fight. Our own measurement shows they’re two separate battlegrounds. A firm that optimizes for only one is defending half its market.

We pulled this ourselves. The sample covers 60 Arizona legal-vertical keywords, split evenly between two query shapes. Money searches carry hiring intent, like “phoenix car accident lawyer.” Question searches read more like “how much is my case worth.”

We seeded the list from AZ Law Now’s real market data. A live 180-day Google Search Console pull confirmed which practice areas the firm actually publishes on. Search-results and cost-per-click data came from live pulls run July 21 through July 22, 2026. Google Trends data covers the trailing 12 months in Arizona, and the Reddit sample was pulled July 21, 2026.

Of the 60 keywords, 57 resolved. Three question-shaped keywords timed out after six attempts. That’s an hourly limit on how many searches we could pull at once, not a dead search. The exact 85.2% reflects the resolved sample, not the full 60. The pattern holds in aggregate, not row by row. A few individual searches on each side broke from it, and the finding below shows exactly where.

AI Overviews Show Up on Questions, Not on Hiring-Intent Searches

That’s the finding in full: Google’s AI Overview showed up on 85.2% of question-shaped searches but only 10.0% of money searches in our live pull, a 75.2-point gap.

The split isn’t close. Only three of 30 money searches carried an AI Overview at all. Of the 27 resolved question searches, 23 did.

AI Shows Up Where People Search Least

The AI Overview land grab concentrates on the query shape people ask least often. Question-shaped searches carry roughly 85% AI Overview presence, and money searches carry roughly 10%. Raw search interest runs the exact opposite way. Money phrasing sustains high search interest across the full 12 months. Question phrasing stays near the baseline the entire period.

Google Trends confirms the shape without a precise multiple attached to it. The money-query archetype sustains high relative search interest, 50 to 100 on Google’s indexed scale, across the full 12-month window. The question-query archetype sits on a near-zero flat line the entire period, hugging the bottom of the chart. When one series hugs zero on an indexed scale, no exact multiple is derivable. So we’re reporting this as directional only. Money search interest stays high all year. Question search interest stays near the baseline all year.

A parallel read of real posts in Reddit’s legal-advice communities points the same direction. In a sample of 18 threads on r/legaladvice and r/AskLawyers, 14 (78%) were phrased as questions or situational asks. Few were framed as a bare referral request. That’s forum-phrasing texture from a community sample, not a search-query-share measure, but it lines up with the same pattern.

Visibility Risk and Citation Upside Run in Opposite Directions

Two different studies sit behind this finding. One is ours: a live measurement of Google’s AI Overview. The other is Citorian’s: a cited study measuring something else entirely, whether an AI engine names a specific law firm.

Our own pull found Google’s AI Overview appears on 85.2% of question searches and just 10.0% of money searches.

Citorian’s study, published June 15, 2026, sampled five AI answer engines, including Google’s own AI Overview. It covered five metros including Phoenix and 359 logged answers. It measured how often an engine names a specific law firm. There, the pattern reverses. A firm gets named 79% to 94% of the time on money searches. On question searches, it’s only 18% to 23% of the time. (Citorian, “Which Personal Injury Lawyers Does AI Recommend?”)

An AI Overview showing up at all and an AI engine naming a specific firm are two different measurements. They aren’t the same surface, and they don’t move together. A firm’s risk of losing the click to Google’s own AI Overview sits almost entirely on question searches. A firm’s odds of getting named directly, per Citorian’s data, sit almost entirely on money searches. Same query set, opposite behavior, two separate things to manage.

What This Means for a Firm Deciding Where to Spend Effort

For a firm deciding where to put effort, the split matters more than the average. A page built to answer “how much is my case worth” is competing for attention too. Google fills that surface with its own AI Overview text 85.2% of the time. A page ranking for “phoenix car accident lawyer” competes for a surface Google’s AI Overview mostly skips, at 10.0%. But an AI engine may name a competing firm directly there 79% to 94% of the time. That’s per Citorian’s data across five engines, including Google’s own AI Overview. Those are two different fights with two different rules, and a strategy built for one doesn’t cover the other.

One theory worth naming honestly: does Google hold AI Overviews back on money searches to protect ad-click revenue? We tested it. The data leans weakly in that direction. But the whole pattern rests on just three AI Overview appearances inside a 30-keyword sample. That’s too few events to call it more than a lean. A simpler explanation fits the same numbers just as well. Money searches may resolve to map listings and organic results regardless of ad price. We’re naming this as a hypothesis the data is consistent with, not a mechanism we’ve confirmed.

None of this happens in a vacuum. Clio’s 2025 Legal Trends Report found 28% of consumers who used AI to answer a legal question. That AI redirected them to contact a lawyer. AI isn’t a side channel for legal search anymore. It’s already routing real people to real firms, on some searches and not others.

Google’s AI shows up for the ask, not the hire.