As of October 2026, Google now shows an AI Overview on most searches for a personal injury law firm’s name.
Recent studies from Ahrefs, SE Ranking, and others found AI Overviews on more than 80% of branded searches after a sharp jump in late September 2026, but those studies looked mostly at large national brands. Nobody had published the figure for law firms, so we measured 775 personal injury firms in 100 US cities, each searched by name from its own city on desktop and mobile, three times in one day.
Key findings:
- 58% of personal injury law firm name searches showed a Google AI Overview (2,701 of 4,650 searches).
- Mobile: 77%. Desktop: 39%. On a phone, an AI answer is now the norm for a firm name search. On desktop it shows up less than half the time.
- 89% of firms (686 of 775) got an AI Overview at least once across six checks (desktop and mobile, three runs each).
- Lesser-known firms get AI Overviews more often. Firms with under 200 name searches a month saw them on 83% of mobile and 49% of desktop searches. Firms with 5,000+ saw 65% and 25%.
- The AI answer usually sits above the firm’s own website. On searches with an AI Overview where the firm’s site ranked in the regular top 10, the AI Overview appeared above it 84% of the time (1,312 of 1,557).
- Desktop results are unstable; mobile results are not. On desktop, 36% of firms got an AI Overview on some runs but not others. On mobile, only 9% did.
Results
| Measure | Desktop | Mobile | Both |
|---|---|---|---|
| Searches with an AI Overview | 38.9% (905/2,325) | 77.2% (1,796/2,325) | 58.1% (2,701/4,650) |
| Run 1 / Run 2 / Run 3 | 36.3% / 39.5% / 41.0% | 76.8% / 77.3% / 77.7% | |
| Firms with an AI Overview on at least 1 of 3 runs | 57.7% | 82.6% | 88.5% (either device) |
| Firms with an AI Overview on all 3 runs | 21.7% | 73.4% | |
| Firms with no AI Overview on any run | 42.3% | 17.4% | 11.5% (either device) |
95% confidence intervals for the search-level rates: desktop 37.0–40.9%, mobile 75.5–78.9%, overall 56.7–59.5%.
By firm type (share of searches with an AI Overview)
| Group | Firms | Desktop | Mobile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 5 most-searched firms in each city | 497 | 33.1% | 74.6% |
| Smaller firms (under 200 searches/month) | 278 | 49.3% | 81.9% |
| Under 200 searches/month (all firms) | 360 | 48.5% | 83.0% |
| 200–999 | 214 | 34.1% | 79.6% |
| 1,000–4,999 | 166 | 27.3% | 64.5% |
| 5,000+ | 35 | 24.8% | 64.8% |
| Multi-state firms | 68 | 35.3% | 55.4% |
| Single-state firms | 707 | 39.3% | 79.3% |
| Generic name | 95 | 43.9% | 69.8% |
| Distinctive name | 680 | 38.2% | 78.3% |
| Wikipedia article for firm or founder | 21 | 42.9% | 69.8% |
| No Wikipedia article | 754 | 38.8% | 77.5% |
- The size effect is the clearest pattern. The more often people search a firm’s name, the less likely Google is to show an AI Overview. That matches SE Ranking, which found AI Overviews on 85.2% of brands under 50,000 searches versus 63.3% of brands over 1 million.
- Name type and Wikipedia presence show no consistent effect. Only 21 firms have a Wikipedia article, too few to draw a conclusion.
- Secondary finding: when an AI Overview appeared, it cited the firm’s own website 72% of the time (1,953 of 2,701).
How law firms compare with national brands
| Study | Branded searches with an AI Overview |
|---|---|
| This study, PI law firms, Oct 27, 2026 | 39% desktop, 77% mobile |
| Ahrefs, US desktop, Sept 29, 2026 | 82.91% (63 of 100 for bare brand names) |
| DemandSphere via Search Engine Land, late Sept 2026 | Over 80% |
| SE Ranking, US desktop, Oct 2026 | 82.5% |
| Ruglas, 12 brands | 92.2% overall, 80.8% for plain brand names |
| Ahrefs, Nov 2025, as reported by Passionfruit | 13.1% |
- On mobile, law firms match the national-brand studies.
- On desktop, law firm name searches trigger AI Overviews at about half the national rate.
- A likely reason is that Google treats a local firm’s name as a local, navigational search on desktop. In those results it leads with the map listings and knowledge panel instead of an AI answer. This is an interpretation, not something the data proves.
- No earlier study has published a figure for law firm name searches.
Methodology:
Firms:
- 775 personal injury firms in 100 US cities:
- The top 5 most-searched firms in each city (497), from Optimize My Firm’s September 2026 Most-Googled PI Firms study.
- A random sample of up to 3 smaller firms per city with under 200 name searches a month (278). Ten cities had fewer than 3 eligible smaller firms.
Search:
- The plain firm name only, using the firm’s most-searched name from the earlier study (for example, “The Smith Law Firm”). Modifiers like “reviews” or “near me” were excluded. If the most-searched name was an attorney’s personal name, we used the firm name instead.
Location and devices:
- Each search was run from the firm’s own city (city-level location), on desktop (Windows) and mobile (Android).
Runs:
- Three runs on October 27, 2026.
Definitions:
- “Generic name”: every distinctive word in the firm name is one of the 500 most common US surnames (Census 2010) or a place name. “Smith Law Firm” counts as generic.
- “Wikipedia”: a dedicated English Wikipedia article about the firm or its named founder, checked by hand.
Limits:
- Results come from one day.
- The top-five firms lean toward heavy advertisers.
- The position finding only covers searches where the firm’s site was in the regular top 10. Some firms appeared only in the map listings.
