Data study · How the news covers AI search
Relative to Their Size, Indian News Sites Publish 5.9 Times More AI Search Coverage Than UK News Sites
Per million articles they publish, .in news domains ran 191.7 AI search stories from 2023 to September 2026, against 62.9 for German domains and 32.6 for UK domains. Global .com sites wrote 62.6% of all coverage.
Analysis of 21,983 AI search news articles by domain ending, January 2023 to September 2026 · GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, October 2026
Key findings
- 1
.com sites published 13,756 of the 21,983 AI search articles (62.6%), and .com, .net and .org together published 66.8%.
- 2
German domains led country-coded sites with 1,280 articles (5.8%), followed by Italy with 968 (4.4%) and the UK with 572 (2.6%).
- 3
Adjusted for output, Indian news domains wrote 191.7 AI search articles per million articles, 5.9 times the UK rate of 32.6.
- 4
German domains tripled their rate from 32.2 per million in 2024 to 104.7 in the first nine months of 2026, while UK domains fell from 44.7 to 34.3.
- 5
Australia's rate rose 4.5x between 2024 and 2026, from 14.4 to 64.6 articles per million.
- 6
Non-English articles made up 14.4% of AI search coverage in 2023, peaked at 42.4% in 2025 and fell back to 28.3% in 2026.
Summary
Picture a hotel owner in Munich who hears a guest say she found the place through an AI answer. He searches the German press and finds plenty about Google's AI Mode launching in Germany. A friend who runs a guesthouse in Bristol says he has barely seen it in the British papers. Both could be right, depending on how you count.
We grouped 21,983 news articles about AI search by the domain ending of the outlet that published them, then divided by how many articles GDELT collects from each domain ending. That turns raw counts into a rate: AI search stories per million articles published.
Global .com outlets publish most of the coverage. Among country domains, Germany has the most articles, but India has the highest rate: 191.7 AI search stories per million articles, 5.9 times the UK's 32.6.
What we measured
GDELT does not record a source country, so we used the outlet's domain ending (.de, .in, .co.uk and so on) as a stand-in and kept generic endings like .com, .net and .org as their own groups. Many national outlets use .com, including most US papers, so the US cannot be measured this way.
AI search articles are those whose URL slug names Google AI Overviews, AI Mode or SGE, ChatGPT search or SearchGPT, Perplexity, or AI search in general, including common German, French, Spanish and Italian phrasings. For each domain ending we also counted every GDELT article in the same period to calculate a rate per million.
Global .com sites carry two thirds of AI search coverage
Most coverage comes from outlets with generic domains. Germany and Italy lead the country domains by volume.
Articles
| Domain ending | Articles | Share of all AI search articles (%) |
|---|---|---|
| .com (global) | 13,756 | 62.6 |
| Germany (.de) | 1,280 | 5.8 |
| Italy (.it) | 968 | 4.4 |
| .net (global) | 720 | 3.3 |
| United Kingdom (.uk) | 572 | 2.6 |
| India (.in) | 417 | 1.9 |
| France (.fr) | 322 | 1.5 |
| Australia (.au) | 206 | 0.9 |
| .org (global) | 206 | 0.9 |
| Brazil (.br) | 193 | 0.9 |
| Ukraine (.ua) | 182 | 0.8 |
| Spain (.es) | 181 | 0.8 |
| Poland (.pl) | 180 | 0.8 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 21,983 AI search news articles by domain ending, January 2023 to September 2026 · GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, October 2026
German domains published 1,280 articles and Italian domains 968, both well ahead of UK domains at 572. Part of that lead comes from the launches of Google's AI features in those markets, which appear in slugs such as ki-modus and modalita-ia.
Measured against output, India and Hong Kong cover AI search most intensely
Raw counts favor countries with big news industries. Dividing by each domain ending's total output shows where AI search takes up the most space.
| Country domain | AI search articles | Per million articles |
|---|---|---|
| India (.in) | 417 | 191.7 |
| Hong Kong (.hk) | 62 | 173.1 |
| New Zealand (.nz) | 104 | 105.2 |
| Switzerland (.ch) | 164 | 82.6 |
| South Africa (.za) | 57 | 77.8 |
| Pakistan (.pk) | 71 | 70 |
| Germany (.de) | 1,280 | 62.9 |
| Taiwan (.tw) | 120 | 62 |
| Czechia (.cz) | 108 | 61.4 |
| France (.fr) | 322 | 56.2 |
| Italy (.it) | 968 | 51.2 |
| Poland (.pl) | 180 | 43.9 |
| Austria (.at) | 122 | 42.3 |
| Netherlands (.nl) | 76 | 37.9 |
| United Kingdom (.uk) | 572 | 32.6 |
| Ukraine (.ua) | 182 | 31.6 |
| Brazil (.br) | 193 | 28.5 |
| Australia (.au) | 206 | 26.8 |
| Canada (.ca) | 76 | 26.5 |
| Spain (.es) | 181 | 21 |
| Greece (.gr) | 177 | 19.9 |
| Mexico (.mx) | 61 | 11 |
| Turkey (.tr) | 50 | 10.7 |
| Russia (.ru) | 119 | 8.5 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 21,983 AI search news articles by domain ending, January 2023 to September 2026 · GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, October 2026
Indian domains, which publish a lot of English-language tech and business news, ran 191.7 AI search stories per million articles. Hong Kong was close at 173.1 but on a small base of 62 articles. Germany's 62.9 and the UK's 32.6 sit in the middle, and Russian domains were lowest among those shown at 8.5.
Germany and Australia sped up while the UK slowed
We compared each country's rate in 2024 with January to September 2026, for country domains with at least 10 AI search articles in 2024.
| Country domain | Articles 2024 | Articles 2026 (Jan to Sep) | Per million 2024 | Per million 2026 | Change (x) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand (.nz) | 11 | 62 | 39 | 346.2 | 8.9 |
| Poland (.pl) | 16 | 49 | 13.6 | 67.6 | 5 |
| Australia (.au) | 36 | 73 | 14.4 | 64.6 | 4.5 |
| Germany (.de) | 199 | 377 | 32.2 | 104.7 | 3.3 |
| South Africa (.za) | 11 | 20 | 52.4 | 166.6 | 3.2 |
| Pakistan (.pk) | 17 | 25 | 55.8 | 145.1 | 2.6 |
| Greece (.gr) | 28 | 47 | 10.9 | 28.3 | 2.6 |
| Hong Kong (.hk) | 10 | 15 | 104.7 | 254.2 | 2.4 |
| France (.fr) | 77 | 98 | 43.6 | 104.8 | 2.4 |
| Ukraine (.ua) | 27 | 38 | 16.3 | 36.7 | 2.2 |
| Canada (.ca) | 20 | 21 | 22.7 | 49.2 | 2.2 |
| Brazil (.br) | 37 | 41 | 18.5 | 34.5 | 1.9 |
| Spain (.es) | 41 | 48 | 15.4 | 27.1 | 1.8 |
| Taiwan (.tw) | 25 | 33 | 44.6 | 77.6 | 1.7 |
| Russia (.ru) | 19 | 20 | 5 | 8.5 | 1.7 |
| Czechia (.cz) | 18 | 18 | 35.4 | 60.2 | 1.7 |
| Austria (.at) | 24 | 25 | 28.6 | 48.2 | 1.7 |
| Italy (.it) | 229 | 194 | 41.9 | 54.8 | 1.3 |
| Mexico (.mx) | 20 | 16 | 13.1 | 14.3 | 1.1 |
| India (.in) | 86 | 81 | 148.8 | 162.1 | 1.1 |
| United Kingdom (.uk) | 238 | 105 | 44.7 | 34.3 | 0.8 |
| Switzerland (.ch) | 27 | 11 | 46.2 | 31.6 | 0.7 |
| Netherlands (.nl) | 19 | 7 | 38.8 | 17.2 | 0.4 |
| Turkey (.tr) | 19 | 3 | 13.9 | 3.7 | 0.3 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 21,983 AI search news articles by domain ending, January 2023 to September 2026 · GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, October 2026
New Zealand had the biggest jump, though from only 11 articles in 2024 to 62 in 2026. Poland, Australia, Germany and South Africa all rose more than threefold. The UK, Switzerland and the Netherlands moved the other way. A falling rate does not mean less interest overall; it can mean the big UK stories happened in 2024, when the UK rate was 44.7.
Coverage outside English rose to 42.4% in 2025, then eased
GDELT records the source language of translated articles. Among languages with at least 20 AI search articles:
| Language | Articles | Share (%) |
|---|---|---|
| English | 14,134 | 64.7 |
| German | 1,468 | 6.7 |
| Italian | 1,191 | 5.5 |
| French | 1,045 | 4.8 |
| Spanish | 1,002 | 4.6 |
| Portuguese | 329 | 1.5 |
| Turkish | 270 | 1.2 |
| Indonesian | 211 | 1 |
Source: aisearchoptimization.net analysis of 21,983 AI search news articles by domain ending, January 2023 to September 2026 · GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, October 2026
The non-English share was 14.4% in 2023, 33.6% in 2024 and 42.4% in 2025, then 28.3% in the first nine months of 2026. German was the top non-English language in 2025 (842 articles) and 2026 (346 articles).
What this means
If you sell outside the US, AI search is already a local story in many markets. German, French, Australian and Indian readers have seen steady coverage of Google's AI features and AI chatbots arriving in their language. Customers there are likely to try AI answers for local questions, and the answers will draw on local sources.
Check what AI tools say about your business in each market you serve and in each language your customers use, since the cited sources often differ by country. Each market can be checked separately in a free AI visibility audit, and our generative engine optimization services pick up the fixes from there.
Limits
Domain endings are a rough stand-in for country. Many national outlets, including most US outlets, use .com, so .com is reported as global.
Matching relies on URL slugs. Outlets with numeric or non-Latin URLs, common in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic media, are undercounted, which depresses rates for those countries.
Rates for small domains can swing on a handful of articles. We show only domains with at least 50 AI search articles in the intensity table.
2026 covers January to September only.
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Cite this study
APA
Grenyo, K. (2026). Indian News Sites Cover AI Search 5.9x More Than UK Sites. AI Search Optimization. https://aisearchoptimization.net/resources/data-studies/ai-search-news-coverage-by-country
Plain link
Indian News Sites Cover AI Search 5.9x More Than UK Sites - AI Search Optimization - https://aisearchoptimization.net/resources/data-studies/ai-search-news-coverage-by-country
Frequently asked questions
Which countries write the most about AI search?
By volume, global .com sites lead with 13,756 of 21,983 articles (62.6%). Among country domains, Germany leads with 1,280, then Italy with 968 and the UK with 572.
Which country covers AI search most relative to its news output?
Indian domains published 191.7 AI search articles per million articles from 2023 to September 2026, the highest among country domains with 50 or more articles. The UK rate was 32.6.
Is the UK covering AI search less than before?
Relative to output, yes. UK domains ran 44.7 AI search articles per million in 2024 and 34.3 in the first nine months of 2026. German domains went from 32.2 to 104.7 over the same period.
How much AI search coverage is not in English?
Non-English articles were 14.4% of AI search coverage in 2023, 42.4% in 2025 and 28.3% in January to September 2026, among languages with at least 20 articles.
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