AI Overviews for car, telecoms and retail searches in South Africa

AI Overviews for consumer searches in South Africa appeared on 23 of the 24 car, telecoms and retail searches we ran on 11 October 2026, and every one that listed sources cited at least one site from the top ten ordinary results. Who got cited differed sharply by sector: marketplaces for cars, a tech publisher and providers for telecoms, and a scattered mix of retailers, makers and social platforms for retail.

This is the consumer slice of our analysis of 96 Google South Africa searches. Each sector rests on 8 searches, so read the figures as a sample.

In short

• 23 of 24 searches showed an AI Overview. The exception, "car finance calculator south africa", was the most-searched query in the group at 2,900 searches a month.
• All 22 Overviews with sources cited a top-ten site and 20 cited a top-five site, but the site ranking first was cited in only 10.
• autotrader.co.za or cars.co.za appeared in all 6 car Overviews with sources.
• mybroadband.co.za was cited in 5 of 8 telecoms Overviews.
• 15 of 22 Overviews cited a social or video platform; facebook.com alone appeared in 12.

How often do AI Overviews appear for consumer searches in South Africa?

On 23 of 24. One more, for "cheapest new cars in south africa", showed an Overview with no source list.

Sector	Overview shown	Listed sources	Avg links cited	.za share of links	Cites a top-5 site	Cites the #1 site
Automotive	7/8	6	12.0	73.6%	5/6	2/6
Telecoms	8/8	8	10.6	69.4%	8/8	3/8
Retail	8/8	8	8.4	67.2%	7/8	5/8

Ranking mattered in a loose way. Every telecoms Overview cited a top-five site, yet the site in first place was cited in only 3 of 8. We look at that gap across all sectors in does ranking first get you cited in AI Overviews?

Cars: marketplaces and motoring media

Car questions drew on a small set of sites: 21 different domains across 6 Overviews.

• autotrader.co.za was cited in 5 (17 links) and cars.co.za in 5 (7 links). Both are vehicle marketplaces that also publish reviews and news.
• youtube.com and facebook.com appeared in 4 each.
• carmag.co.za, a motoring publisher, appeared in only 2 Overviews but with 14 links. 13 of them came from one Overview: "best car to buy in south africa", which listed 36 links from just 11 sites.

Carmakers' own sites barely featured. toyota.co.za was cited once, for "electric cars in south africa price". Every car Overview with sources cited a social or video platform.

Telecoms: a publisher, providers and comparison sites

Telecoms drew on 48 different domains across 8 Overviews.

• mybroadband.co.za, an IT news publisher, was cited in 5.
• Internet and network providers' own sites appeared in 5 of 8, led by afrihost.com (4) and telkom.co.za (3).
• Independent comparison sites fibretiger.co.za and datacost.co.za appeared in 3.

Some answers reached well beyond South Africa. "best network coverage in south africa" drew only 2 of its 11 links from .za domains. "best cellphone contract south africa" cited 4 sites, none of them a network's own site.

Retail: the most scattered sources

Retail was the hardest sector to predict. 8 Overviews cited 49 different domains, and none appeared in more than 4: facebook.com was cited in 4 and game.co.za in 3.

"best online shopping sites in south africa" cited 8 different sites, none of which ranked in the top five ordinary results. Appliance and electronics makers' own sites appeared a few times: samsung.com in 2 Overviews, and philips.co.za and defy.co.za in 1 each. Computer retailer evetech.co.za and its evezone subdomain were cited on the laptop and router questions.

How much does social media feature in consumer AI Overviews?

A lot more than in financial services. Social and video platforms appeared in all 6 car Overviews, 5 of 8 telecoms Overviews and 4 of 8 retail Overviews. In the same study, none of the 7 medical aid Overviews cited one (see banking, insurance and medical aid). facebook.com was cited 20 times across 12 consumer Overviews. Why those platforms appear is covered in why Google's AI cites Facebook, YouTube and Reddit.

What consumer brands can do

• Know your category's source mix. For cars, it is marketplaces and their reviews. For telecoms, a publisher, providers and comparison sites. For retail, it is wide open, which favours whoever answers the specific question best.
• Make your own pages quotable. Providers', retailers' and makers' own sites were cited in all three sectors. Put the answer on the page: prices, specifications and comparisons, in rand and dated.
• Keep ranking. All 22 Overviews cited a top-ten site, so ordinary SEO still matters.
• Watch the social conversation. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok or Reddit were cited in 15 of the 22 consumer answers here.

How we measured this

On 11 October 2026 we ran 24 automotive, telecoms and retail searches, part of a 96-search study, through DataForSEO's live Google results: South Africa, English, desktop, top 20 results, AI Overview loaded. Volumes are Google Ads monthly averages for South Africa. "Cited" means the domain appears in the Overview's reference list. We described site types from each site's own homepage, checked the same day.

Caveats: one day, desktop only; 8 searches per sector; the .za share understates South African sites on .com, such as afrihost.com. None of this judges any company named.