Brand searches on Google desktop have a new look. From October 31, AI Overviews for brand queries started appearing in the right-hand column, in the spot long held by the knowledge panel, instead of at the top of the main results column. Search Engine Roundtable reported the shift on November 2, 2026, citing screenshots from Chris Long and an October 31 post by David McSweeney. Google has not confirmed the change, but the screenshots show the same AI-generated brand summary in a new place — and for brands that live or die by what searchers see first, the placement matters as much as the summary itself.
The change is about placement, not content. The AI Overview for a brand search is still an AI-generated summary of the brand, but on desktop it now sits in the right-hand column rather than above the organic results in the main column. That right-hand column has long been the home of the knowledge panel — the box of curated facts, official links and entity information that Google assembles about a brand. An AI Overview taking that spot means the machine-written summary is now sharing, or displacing, the space that used to belong to structured brand facts.
Because Google has not confirmed the change, it should be treated as an observed shift rather than an announced one. The evidence so far is the screenshots shared by Chris Long and the October 31 post by David McSweeney that Search Engine Roundtable cited. SEOs should check their own brand queries on desktop and watch whether the right-column placement appears consistently, spreads to more brand names, or turns out to be a limited test. Unconfirmed layout changes have a habit of rolling back, but they also have a habit of becoming the new normal without an announcement.
The move comes against a backdrop of AI Overviews becoming routine for brand queries. SE Visible found AI Overviews on 82.5% of US brand searches, which means a searcher typing a brand name is now more likely than not to meet an AI-generated summary. Ahrefs found a similar pattern in its own tracking: AI Overviews appeared on 63 of 100 brand names by September 30, with 48 of them in position one, versus just 5 of 98 on July 1. In the space of a single quarter, brand AI Overviews went from a rarity to the default experience.
That trajectory helps explain why the placement matters. When AI Overviews appeared on only a handful of brand searches, where Google put them was a curiosity. Now that they appear on most brand searches, the layout is the brand experience for a large share of searchers. Moving the summary into the right column changes what sits beside the organic results, what competes with the knowledge panel, and what a searcher absorbs before ever scrolling. The growth in coverage turned a layout experiment into a question of brand control.
The right-hand column has always been prime brand real estate. It is where searchers look for the official site, the facts about the company, and the signals that tell them a brand is legitimate. An AI Overview in that spot puts a generated summary — built from sources Google chose — in front of the searcher at the exact moment they are forming a first impression. For a brand, the question is no longer only whether an AI Overview appears for its name, but what that overview says and which sources it draws on when it sits in the most trusted-looking corner of the page.
For SEOs and link builders, the practical work is familiar but the stakes are higher. Consistent, accurate brand information across the web feeds the entity signals that shape both knowledge panels and AI summaries, and citations from trusted sources are what an AI Overview leans on when it writes about a brand. Monitoring brand queries on desktop is now a layout check as well as a ranking check: note where the overview sits, what it says, and which pages it links to. If the right-column placement sticks, the brands that win will be the ones whose own pages and earned mentions give Google the most accurate material to summarise.
Sources: Search Engine Roundtable, November 2, 2026; Agency AEO, November 2, 2026.
Related reading on this site: Facebook Answers' 6 Million AI Pages Are Google's Scaled-Content Test, November Click Spikes in Search Console Are Bot Traffic, Not a Ranking Win, What Gets Cited by ChatGPT: Ahrefs' 1.4 Million-Prompt Study, AI Share of Voice Is Not Organic Rankings — and the Overlap Is Small, Google Can Temporarily Protect Important URLs From Falling Out of the Index, and 3 in 4 Homepages Lost Organic Clicks, Analysis of 110 Sites Finds.
Linkbaits helps you create content that earns citations and backlinks. Start with the free tools and build your first linkable asset this week.
Start free trial