AI Overviews appear in over half of French searches after launch
Google's AI Overviews appeared on 52.63% of French searches in the first month after the feature launched on 22 July, according to an analysis of 100,000 keywords across 20 niches. That is nearly twice the first-month coverage recorded when AI Overviews rolled out in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands in March 2025, where it did not exceed 33%.
YouTube dominates the citation pool, appearing in 51.31% of AI Overviews and accounting for 14.33% of all citations, more than the other nine domains in the top 10 combined. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Dailymotion also rank in the top 10, with five of the ten leading sources being social or video platforms. YouTube ranks first in every one of the 20 niches studied.
Official French sources feature heavily in regulated topics. Ameli.fr appears in 34.56% of healthcare answers, service-public.gouv.fr in 32.32% of legal answers, and Parcoursup in 22.71% of education answers. In Legal, Finance, Real Estate and Insurance, French-language sources account for roughly 97% of citations.
The average AI Overview cites 6.91 sources, and 57.19% cite between five and eight. Just over 60% of cited pages come from the organic top 10, while 76.33% appear somewhere in the organic top 50. Roughly a third of AI Overviews, 32.93%, do not sit at the top of the page.
Reported by SE Ranking Blog ↗
Topics: AI Overviews, Citations, Google Search