Written by Jeremy Souffir Founder, JTS Tech Services
The direct answer first. On US desktop Google, a search for a brand name now often shows the brand's own website at the top of the main column, with an AI Overview about the brand sitting in the right-hand column, in the spot where the knowledge panel used to be. David McSweeney noticed it on 31 October, Chris Long posted examples on 2 November, and Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable wrote it up the same day with screenshots for Apple, Zillow, Coca-Cola, Google and his own site. Google has not announced it and has not said whether it is a test. For a merchant this cuts two ways. The good half: your site is no longer pushed below an AI block on your own name. The other half: the short description a shopper reads beside your site, the one that used to be a knowledge panel you could claim and correct, is now written by Google's AI from whatever it finds, and in one of the five published examples it already disagrees with itself about when the company was founded.
What exactly changed, and how sure is anyone?
Schwartz's summary is one sentence: Google has moved the AI Overviews for many brand-related keywords to the right-hand column of the search results page, where previously they appeared at the top or middle of the main results. PPC Land's follow-up on 3 November adds the detail that this is desktop, US results, and that the right column is where knowledge panels used to sit. The evidence so far:
- Five published examples, all US desktop: Apple, Zillow, Coca-Cola, Google and Search Engine Roundtable. In the Apple case, apple.com leads the main column and the AI Overview is in the right panel.
- Three independent sightings in three days. McSweeney on X on 31 October: Google seems to have changed the layout for branded searches, with AI Overviews now generally in a right panel on desktop, or in some cases further down the page. Long on 2 November: instead of a knowledge panel, Google is showing AI Overviews for brand terms in the right column.
- No statement from Google. Nobody outside Google knows whether this is a test, a rollout, or how far it reaches. McSweeney's own post notes variations, and some overviews moved down the page rather than sideways.
- A possible precursor: on 27 October Sachin Patel posted that knowledge panels had started carrying an AI-generated label. Whether that was the same change arriving in stages is not confirmed.
Schwartz's own verdict is the fairest one-line take we have read. He thinks the right column works much better than having the overview in the main results, but adds that it is not great to trust that AI will do a good enough job writing about your brand than your own website would. His closing line: Google is essentially replacing brand knowledge panels with AI Overviews.
Why does a knowledge panel becoming an AI Overview matter to a store?
Because the knowledge panel was the one surface on your own brand search you had some say over. It drew on Google's knowledge graph, your Business Profile, your site's structured data, and sources like Wikipedia, and it carried a Suggest edits link. Brands claimed it, corrected it, and treated it as the official card. An AI Overview is a different animal. It is composed on the fly from pages Google's systems read, your own included, with source links under it. It can be excellent. It can also be a confident paragraph that blends your current returns policy with a third-party review from 2023. PPC Land's Zillow example shows the risk in miniature: the AI text names 2006 as the founding year, and the fact row directly beneath it says 2004. Same panel, two answers. Whether the Suggest edits link now covers the generated text is, in PPC Land's words, unexplained.
The scale is the part that turns this from a curiosity into a to-do. Ahrefs, the SEO software company, published a study on 2 October built on 232.8 million US desktop crawls between July and September, 92.5 million of them for branded keywords. AI Overviews appeared on 61.3% of branded keyword results in July, 65.1% in August and 73.3% in September, with a single-day reading of 82.91% on 29 September. On a separate panel of 100 bare brand names, Google showed an AI Overview on 63 on 30 September, against 5 of 98 usable results on 1 July, and 48 of those 63 were in the first position. DemandSphere, a different vendor using a different classification, reported 90.48% of its tracked branded keywords on 27 September. Ahrefs sells a brand-tracking product and its figures are crawl counts rather than distinct keywords, so treat the decimals loosely. The direction is not in doubt: three months ago your brand search probably had no AI Overview; now it very probably does, and the new layout decides where it sits and what it replaces.
Google put our site back on top, so this is good news and we can move on
The top-of-column position is genuinely good, and we would rather have it than not. But the shopper's eye on a desktop brand search goes to the main result and the side panel together, and the side panel is now the first prose anyone reads about you. On the old layout you could claim that panel and fix it. On the new one you cannot edit the paragraph, you can only change what it is written from. If the paragraph says you ship in five days and your site says two, the shopper does not know which to believe, and the page you worked on is standing right beside the mistake.
It's a US desktop test and we sell in Canada, so it does not apply
Google runs layout tests on US desktop first and widens the ones that stick; most of what reached Canadian results in the last two years started exactly this way. More to the point, what sits under either layout is the same thing: the facts Google's systems can find about your brand on your own pages and elsewhere. Whether the overview lands at the top, at the side or further down, the sentences in it come from the same sources. Fixing those sources is useful under any layout, in any country, and it is the only lever that works on all of them.
What is this doing to brand traffic and brand ad spend?
Nobody can measure the traffic effect directly yet. Google's Search Console AI report, which we covered on 1 September, shows impressions but no clicks, and Search Engine Roundtable reported on 2 November that Google's Gary Illyes implied click data is not coming. So the honest answer on organic is: watch your branded queries week over week and draw your own line. On paid, the picture is sharper and less comfortable. PPC Land, drawing on a Digiday survey of 18 media buyers, quotes three of them putting between 10% and 30% of their Google search budgets under new scrutiny, with one expecting the questioning to reach 20% to 30% around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Tinuiti's Michelle Merklin put branded keyword cost per click up 5% in the third quarter. None of the five published examples of the new layout shows an ad at all, and text ads have not sat in the right column since 2016, so how brand ads and the new side panel share a page is an open question. Separately, PPC Land notes that Google's help documentation now says Performance Max may filter out navigational and brand-specific searches in favour of dedicated brand Search campaigns, which is worth a look if your brand terms have been riding inside a Performance Max budget.
What should you do this week?
The work is small and most of it is the same work we described on 19 October when ChatGPT started checking the official source. The difference is that Google is now putting the result of that reading beside your name, on the search you were surest you owned. Here is the order we would do it in.
- Search your brand name on Google, on a desktop, and read the right-hand panel sentence by sentence. If you are outside the US, ask a US colleague or partner to do the same and send a screenshot, because the new layout is only confirmed there so far. Note every statement: what you sell, where you ship, your returns window, your founding year, your location, who owns you. Mark each one right or wrong.
- For each wrong or stale sentence, find the source. The overview links its sources; open them. If a source is your own page, fix the page. If it is a third-party page, a directory, a review site, a marketplace listing or an old press release, fix the ones you control and ask the others for a correction. Do not try to argue with the panel; change what it reads.
- Make your own site the easiest source to read correctly. One plain-text page per policy: shipping, returns, warranty. An About page that states founding year, location and ownership in a sentence. These are the facts the panel tends to summarise, and a brand that states them plainly on its own domain is the brand the AI gets right.
- Keep the structured facts consistent. Your Organization schema, your Google Business Profile, your Merchant Center account, your LinkedIn and Wikipedia entries if you have them, and your site's footer should agree on name, address, founding date and website. The Zillow panel contradicting itself is what happens when sources disagree.
- Still claim and correct the knowledge panel. The Suggest edits path is still there, the panel's fact rows still come from the knowledge graph, and the AI text sits above them. Correct facts in the knowledge graph are one more consistent source for the generated paragraph to lean on.
- Set a baseline for branded clicks now. In Search Console, filter queries containing your brand name and export the last eight weeks. There is no AI click data and there will not be, so this trend is the only organic measurement you will have for what the new layout does to you.
- Check where your brand terms live in paid search. If they sit inside Performance Max, read Google's note on brand filtering and decide whether a dedicated brand campaign is now the right home. Watch branded cost per click through November; the buyers quoted expect it to tighten around the holiday weekend.
- Put a monthly reminder in the calendar. The overview is regenerated, not stored. What it says in January will not be what it says today, and the only way to know is to look.
The encouraging part
Three things. Your site is back at the top of your own brand search, which is more than it could say a month ago. The panel beside it is written from sources you mostly control, so a merchant with clear, consistent, plain-text facts on its own domain is in a far better position than a merchant with a Wikipedia page and a messy FAQ. And the work is the same work that improves what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Shopify's own agent facts say about you, because they all read the same pages. Fix the pages once and every one of these panels improves, whichever layout Google settles on.
Where this fits with what we have already covered
On 21 August we covered Google's Preferred Sources button and argued that the brand's own domain was becoming the thing AI search anchors on. On 1 September we covered the Search Console AI report and noted it shipped without click data; that gap is why nobody can tell you today what this layout costs or earns. On 19 October we showed ChatGPT searching brand domains directly to check prices and policies, and Google testing a box for the one or two official places holding exact information. On 31 October we covered Shopify letting merchants review and publish the facts agents get about their store. This week's change is the same movement arriving on the most valuable search you have: the AI reads your sources and writes the card, Shopify lets you approve the facts first, and Google, so far, does not.
Where we fit
Our AI Shopping Visibility engagement begins with the free audit: we read your store the way these systems do and hand you a prioritised list of what an AI can see, what it cannot, and where your own pages contradict each other or the facts Google and Shopify already hold about you. The paid work then closes the gaps across the whole catalogue and the policy and About pages the brand panel is written from, so that the sentence beside your name, the answer in ChatGPT and the fact Shopify publishes to agents are all drawn from the same plain, correct source: your site. If you want to know what the panel says about you before your customers tell you, that is the place to start.
Sources
- Search Engine Roundtable: Google AI Overviews For Brands Now In Right Column (Barry Schwartz, 2 November 2026; the layout change, the Apple, Zillow, Coca-Cola, Google and SER examples, the Chris Long, David McSweeney and Sachin Patel posts, and Schwartz's own assessment)
- PPC Land: Google moves AI Overviews for brand searches out of the main results (Luis Rijo, 3 November 2026; desktop and US scope, the right column as the former knowledge panel position, the Zillow 2006 versus 2004 discrepancy, the Suggest edits question, and the summary of the Ahrefs, DemandSphere and Semrush figures)
- PPC Land: Google moves brand AI Overviews aside as buyers question search budgets (Luis Rijo, 3 November 2026; the Digiday survey of 18 media buyers, the 10% to 30% budget scrutiny figures, the 5% branded CPC rise attributed to Tinuiti, the absence of ads in the examples, and the Performance Max brand filtering note)
- Ahrefs: AI Overviews Currently Appear for 83% of Branded Searches (2 October 2026; 232.8 million US desktop crawls, 92.5 million branded; 61.3%, 65.1% and 73.3% monthly averages; 82.91% on 29 September; 63 of 100 brand names on 30 September versus 5 of 98 on 1 July)
- Search Engine Journal: AI Overviews Now Appear On Big Brand Searches (9 October 2026; DemandSphere's 90.48% reading on 27 September and the September rise on branded terms)
- Search Engine Roundtable: Google AI Overviews Back For Big Brands (30 September 2026; AI Overviews returning on large brand searches)
- JTS Tech: Google just shipped a button that outranks your SEO (21 August 2026; Preferred Sources and the brand's own domain as the anchor)
- JTS Tech: Google switched on AI visibility reporting for every website (1 September 2026; the Search Console AI report and its missing click data)
- JTS Tech: ChatGPT has started checking the official source (19 October 2026; AI systems reading the brand's own site for prices and policies)
- JTS Tech: What the agent says about your returns (31 October 2026; Shopify's knowledge base of merchant-published facts for agents)
