Eight Canadian sites, one structured data rollout, what moved
Across eight Canadian websites, the share of Google AI Overview answers that cite the client rose from 4.4% to 4.9% between February and October 2026, after a structured data rollout that hit every site at once on February 23. The largest gains went to the sites with the most structural work in the window; the one decline was a site rebuilt in the same period.
Written by Michael Landry, Founder and Head of AEO. Source: Semrush, Canadian database, monthly, snapshot of October 15, 2026, Google only.
Why this is a fair test
The rollout created a natural experiment: same engine, same method, same month, eight sites in different industries. Raw citation counts rose for almost everyone, but AI Overviews also appeared on 58% more of these sites’ keywords over the period, so the honest measure is share: of the answers where an AI Overview appeared for a site’s keywords, how many cited the site.
The numbers
| Site | Citations, Feb 2026 | Jun 2026 | Oct 2026 | Citation share, Feb to Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| National furniture store chain | 72 | 70 | 218 | 4.5% to 5.0% |
| Ontario restaurant equipment supplier | 25 | 42 | 63 | 3.0% to 4.0% |
| Ontario auto repair network | 58 | 90 | 99 | 4.4% to 5.3% |
| Ontario family law firm | 11 | 21 | 37 | 2.9% to 7.5% |
| The Influence Agency | 48 | 56 | 87 | 4.1% to 4.2% |
| Ontario trades college | 163 | 229 | 221 | 5.6% to 5.8% |
| Ontario window manufacturer | 66 | 17 | 47 | 3.6% to 2.8% |
| Mobility technology company | 2 | 11 | 10 | 4.1% to 11.1% (tiny base) |
| All eight | 445 | 536 | 782 | 4.4% to 4.9% |
The honest reading
Citations across the eight sites rose 76%, from 445 to 782. Seven of eight sites rose. The share gains were largest where we did the most structural work in the window: the law firm (new practice-area pages and entity work), the restaurant supplier (city and segment pages) and the auto network (a network-wide update). The window manufacturer, whose site was rebuilt in the same months, lost share and recovered later in the year. This is correlation with a plausible mechanism, stated as such, with the counterexample included. It is the first piece of first-party Canadian data on the subject, and we will run it again each quarter.
Method
Semrush Canadian database, monthly snapshots. “Citations” means keywords where the domain is cited inside Google’s AI Overview. “Citation share” divides that by the number of the domain’s ranking keywords where an AI Overview appeared. Google only; ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini are measured separately on our own tool. Sites are described by industry and geography only.