Google moves brand AI Overviews to the right column on desktop

Google has moved the AI Overview for many brand searches into the right-hand column on desktop, the slot that used to hold the brand’s knowledge panel. Search Engine Roundtable’s report shows the new arrangement on a search for [Apple], where the overview previously sat at the top or in the middle of the main results.

Two practitioners logged it within days of each other. Chris Long, who leads marketing at the SEO agency Go Fish Digital, posted the find on X and wrote that “instead of a Knowledge Panel, they’re showing AI Overviews for brand terms in the right column”. David McSweeney, an SEO who posts on X as @top5seo, had spotted it on October 31 and put the overview “generally in a right panel on desktop (or in some cases further down the page)”, with other variations alongside it. Google has not confirmed the change.

For anyone tracking AI Overview presence, the move will look like a removal. A tracker that decides whether a query carries an overview by parsing the main results column finds nothing on a brand term and logs the query as clean, while the overview is sitting on the page in the column to the right. Brand-query presence data is unreliable until the vendor confirms the right column is in scope. Trackers already disagree badly on how often overviews appear, with two tools putting coverage at 62% and 82%, and a layout change on one class of queries is the kind of input that widens that gap. Placement is not the only mechanical reason a tracker under-reports either, since late-loading citation cards have produced the same false negative.

The second consequence is editorial. A knowledge panel is a largely factual entity summary, while an AI Overview is generated prose assembled from whatever Google decides to cite. Barry Schwartz, who wrote the Search Engine Roundtable post, judged the right-column placement better than the main results while adding that it is “not great to trust that AI will do a good enough job writing about your brand than your own website would”. The likelier consequence is that the most prominent description of a brand on its own name query is now a summary of third-party coverage, so the text and the citations in that panel are worth reading query by query.

What to do

• Search three or four of your own brand terms on desktop, logged out, and record where the overview renders and whether a knowledge panel still appears at all.
• Ask the vendor behind any AI Overview tracking whether presence detection covers the right-hand column, and treat a drop in brand-term presence from late October as a likely measurement gap rather than proof that Google removed the overviews.
• Read the overview text and its cited sources on your own brand queries, then go after the pages or coverage feeding any claim that is wrong.
• Hold off on permanent reporting changes. McSweeney saw several variations and Google has said nothing, so the layout may still be a test.