Search for [zillow] on a desktop in the US this week and the box on the right is not the knowledge panel you remember. It is an AI Overview: a paragraph Google's model wrote about the company, with fact rows under it. Barry Schwartz reported the change on Search Engine Roundtable on November 2, and PPC Land collected the examples a day later.
That box used to be assembled from structured facts that Google pulled from its Knowledge Graph and that a company could claim, verify and ask to have corrected. Now it is a summary a model wrote from whatever pages it picked. Nobody claims it. For any company, that is the most visible sentence on the web about itself, and the company did not write it.
What changed on the page
Until last week, AI Overviews for brand searches sat at the top or in the middle of the main results. Now, for many brand names, they sit in the right-hand column. The examples published so far are [apple], [zillow], [coca cola], [google] and [search engine roundtable], all on desktop, all set to the United States.
David McSweeney spotted it first, on October 31. Chris Long of Nectiv saw the same thing on November 2: AI Overviews for brand terms where the knowledge panel used to be. McSweeney also saw some Overviews pushed further down the page rather than to the side, so this is not one clean layout yet.
Google has said nothing. No announcement, no help page, no word on whether it is a test. We would treat it as a test that may stick.
How many brands get one
The move matters because almost every brand search now has an Overview to move. Ahrefs counted AI Overviews on 82.91% of branded keyword results on September 29, up from a monthly average of 61.3% in July. On its panel of 100 global brands, 63 showed one by September 30. On July 1 it was 5 of 98.
In three months the summary of a company's own name went from rare to normal. The layout change only decides where on the screen it sits.
Where the summary gets its facts
Ahrefs also looked at what those brand Overviews cite. Wikipedia appeared in 41 of the 57 that listed sources, YouTube in 22, LinkedIn in 13. The company's own site is not the obvious first source, because the model writes from what other pages say about it.
Errors follow. Zillow's AI text says the company was founded in 2006, while the fact row under it says 2004. Both are partly right: Zillow was founded in 2004 and opened its site in 2006. A person reading quickly gets one date or the other depending on which line they read.
Schwartz liked the new spot better than the old one. He also wrote that it is not great to trust AI to do a good enough job writing about your brand. We agree with both halves.
The advertising side
None of the published examples show ads in the box. Google stopped placing text ads in the desktop right column in 2016, so the column is now an AI answer next to the brand's paid and organic links.
The timing is awkward for Google. In the same week, 18 media buyers told Digiday their clients are questioning part of their Google spend. Bryce Hamlin of Power Digital put it at 10% to 30% of search budgets, and Accuracast's Farhad Divecha said advertisers are looking at other places to spend, ChatGPT among them. Those are quotes from buyers, not measured spend. They do show where the attention is going.
We could not find click data for AI Overviews by placement, and Search Console's AI report shows impressions without clicks or queries. So nobody can yet say whether a summary on the right takes fewer clicks from a brand's own link than one on top. Anyone who tells you the traffic effect is known is guessing.
What we would do this week
Search your company's name on desktop, signed out, and read the box. Check each fact row against what is true. Then look at the sources it cites and ask whether those pages describe you the way you would.
If the summary is wrong, the fix is rarely on your homepage alone. It is the Wikipedia entry if you have one, the LinkedIn company page, the directory listings, the review sites and the YouTube videos the model is reading. Correct those first, because they are what the model writes from.
The bigger picture
A brand search used to be the one query a company could count on owning. It typed its own name, it saw its own site and a panel of facts it could claim and edit. Now the first thing on the right is a model's paraphrase of other people's pages.
That is the same problem a B2B startup has in ChatGPT and Claude, only more visible. When a buyer asks which tool fits their team, the answer is built from comparison pages, reviews and threads, and your own site is one source among many. The work is the same in both places: know what the model says about you, find the pages it read, and fix the ones that are wrong or missing.
ClawWorld runs AI visibility work for B2B startups. Start with a free baseline report: 10 buyer questions, who ChatGPT and Claude name instead of you, and the pages they cite.