Google’s AI Overviews are completely changing the SEO game. Instead of ranking high on the SERP, being cited in the Overview is the new number one spot.
With Overviews, users get quick summaries of their queries. The summaries are concise, direct, and clear, often answering users’ queries without them even needing to click on a website, resulting in a zero-click search.
For website owners, ensuring your website appears in this new SERP feature is essential. It’ll help you stay top-of-mind, boost brand awareness, and increase AI visibility.
What Are Google AI Overviews
Google’s AI Overviews is a feature within the SERPs that uses generative AI to provide concise, AI-generated summaries for queries at the top of the page. Typically, these summaries are generated from multiple web sources, creating the best answer for the user’s intent.
How Google Selects Content for AI Overviews
Google uses a lot of its “standard” procedures for selecting content for AI overviews. These include:
Content Quality (E-E-A-T)
E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) is a Google framework that was first introduced in 2021. Pretty much, it determines the quality and credibility of the content based on various metrics.
Google is very careful about the content it suggests to its users. Both in normal search and their Overviews. Therefore, they follow this framework to offer their users the best search experience possible, only suggesting content that is trusted and credible.
To increase your pages (and website’s) E-E-A-T, users need to provide quality content, have author bios, build solid backlinks, reference credible sources, etc.
Passage-level Clarity
Google’s SGE only pulls specific passages to build an Overview. They don’t recommend or display all the content on a web page, making passage-level SEO very important.
Because of this, Google pulls answers that are clear, descriptive, and straight to the point for its Overviews.
Due to this passage-style retrieval system, to maximise citation in AI results, writing in focus, bite-sized chunks that answer the question directly is recommended.
Entity Signals and Internal Linking
Entity signals are all about how your content clearly identifies and defines people, places, things, and concepts.
For example, let’s say you’re writing a post about “malware removal tools”. Within this content, you’ll need to mention specific software names, relevant cybersecurity terms, and perhaps link them to “further resources”.
A further resource could be a definition of a word, a description of a framework, etc. The goal is to be so comprehensive about a topic that the AI can grab all the information from a single source: your website.
Clusters work well here, as they support entity optimisation. This type of content covers topics comprehensively, which boosts topical authority. Just be sure to internally link them so the AI understands the relationship between them.
Schema Markup and Structured Sections
They also rely on content structure. It needs to be easily understood by the bot parsing your content. This is made possible with schema markup, which is like a universal language for bots.
There are a ton of different schemas you can use. You’ll find them all at schema.org. For example, if you have an FAQ block, you’d use the FAQ schema to suggest to the bot that this area of your website is an FAQ section.
The same goes for other schemas as well. For example, a HowTo schema. This indicates to the bot that this section of the page is a how-to guide.
How to Optimise Your Content for AI Citations
If you want to start appearing in AI citations, then you need to:
- Write Directly and in Micro-Paragraphs
Google’s AI Overviews provide quick, concise, and direct answers. Therefore, you need to mimic this as well.
When developing content, break it into short, focused subheadings and paragraphs. Think of every single paragraph as an opportunity to get cited in the snippet.
- Target Natural-Language Questions
Each year, more and more people are searching in a conversational manner. Therefore, match this tone. Target natural language questions and then answer them directly.
You can find these questions manually or with tools. AnswerThePublic is a good tool. Other than that, look at Google’s Autosuggestions and People Also Ask boxes.
- Apply Schema to Relevant Areas
Schema improves the machine readability of your content. The easier it is for your content to be understood by a machine, the higher the chance it’ll get cited.
There are a load of schema types you can choose from. Person and Organisation can help with E-E-A-T, whereas FAQ, Article, HowTo, and Product can help understand the page’s context.
- Use Lists, Headings, and Clean Formatting
When developing content, use semantic HTML—for instance, lists, headings, tables, etc. Just make sure it makes sense to use it for the particular content you’re designing. It needs to fulfil the user’s intent.
For example, let’s say you’re writing a “How to” guide, then a list is perfect. Numbered headings would also work well. However, for something like an article about travelling, well, using this type of formatting might not be so warranted.
By creating content in an AI-friendly content structure, AI’s are more likely to cite your content as it’s easier to parse for them.
Technical SEO & Schema Tips for AI Overviews
For AI to understand your content and extract from it, technical SEO players play a considerable role. By making your website technically sound it makes it more machine-readable.
Add and Test Structured Data (JSON-LD)
Whenever relevant, always use JSON-LD schema markup. Some popular options you can consider are:
- FAQPage for Q&A sections
- HowTo for step-by-step guides
- Article for articles with author, publish date, etc.
- Organisation to reinforce your site’s identity.
- Recipe, MedicalConditon, etc. for niche websites where relevant.
When adding schema, be sure to validate it once you’ve implemented it. You can do this on tools like Google’s Rich Results Test. This will help verify whether it’s set up correctly.
Use Semantic HTML and Clean Structure
Schema helps to provide context to your website’s content. Semantic HTML, however, helps Google understand the layout of your content by sending out semantic signals.
Like with schema, there are a lot of HTML tags you can use. The basic ones include options like <section>, <article>, <h1>, etc. Only use these tags when relevant.
Optimise Page Speed and Mobile Experience
The technical SEO of your website remains important, despite new AI search engines and features like AI Overviews.
Because of this, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. With Google now being a mobile-first indexing search engine, for your website to be indexed, and, therefore, parsed for Overviews, it must be optimised for mobile.
Alongside this, your website should perform well on Core Web Vitals. These suggest how good the user experience is on your website from a technical standpoint. The higher the core, the better the experience.
Internal Links and Site Architecture for AI SEO
When developing content, make sure it is easy to find and understand. You can do this by linking to relevant pages with keyword-rich anchor text, using breadcrumbs and breadcrumbs scheme for navigation, and ensuring good URL structure and an up-to-date XML sitemap
How to Monitor and Measure AI Overview Citations
Currently, there isn’t a filter or reports on Google Search Console or Google Analytics dedicated to AI Overview impressions and clicks. Hopefully, this will be a feature in the future; however, for now, we need to use other methods to monitor and measure AI Overview citations.
| Strategy | Description | Tools/Notes |
| Manual Checks & Incognito Searches | Search targeted queries in incognito mode or using a VPN to simulate Google SGE and see if your site is cited. | Use in markets where SGE is live; third-party SGE simulators may help. |
| Track Question-Focused Queries in GSC | Filter Google Search Console queries for question formats (e.g., “how”, “why”, “best”) to monitor impressions and CTR trends. | Look for mismatches between impressions and CTR; a high impression + low CTR could suggest AI Overview inclusion. |
| Leverage Third-Party Tools | Use tools built to track AI content inclusion in SERPs. | Examples: SEOmonitor (AIO tracking), Ahrefs, SEMRush, etc. |
| Monitor Featured Snippets & PAA as Proxies | Keep an eye on featured snippets and People Also Ask boxes, which often correlate with AI Overview citations. | Loss of snippets post-SGE rollout could indicate AI takeover; GSC “search appearance” helps track snippets. |
| Analyse Traffic Patterns | Watch for declining clicks but stable impressions or short visits to high-ranking pages as potential signs of AI answers replacing clicks. | Google counts AI clicks/impressions normally in GSC; look for referral patterns or behavioural changes. |
Final Word
Google’s AI Overviews are changing how we approach SEO. Instead of only optimising for ranks and clicks, we must now optimise to be the “answer”.
To rank in these SERP features, some standard SEO practices apply. For example, E-E-A-T. However, alongside this, there’s an emphasis on structured data and topical authority.
If you want to start being cited more in Google’s SGE, performing a content audit is recommended. Look how your content is structured, both in a written and HTML way, and then see if E-E-A-T is applied on all pages.
Just optimising these areas alone could have a massive impact on your Overview visibility. Therefore, take the time to perform an audit now and see how you can improve your AI mentions.
