What are AI Overviews on Google?
AI Overviews (AIO) are AI-generated summaries displayed at the top of search results, designed to deliver quick, concise answers to complex questions by drawing on information from various sources.
Image source: Google Results Page
Benefits for organic site visibility
Securing an AIO SERP feature can significantly boost your organic site visibility in several ways:
Increased exposure through citations: If your content is referenced within an AIO, your site can appear prominently at the top of search results, even above the traditional organic listings.
Higher click-through opportunities: When users see your brand linked in the AIO as a trusted source, they may be more likely to click through for more detailed information.
Authority and trust signals: Being cited by Google’s AI system can reinforce your site’s credibility and topical authority in your niche.
Indirect traffic benefits: Even if users don’t click immediately, repeated appearances in AIO can improve brand recognition and long-term organic engagement.
Better insight into search intent alignment: Tracking when your pages are cited in AIO can help identify which topics or formats align well with Google’s evolving understanding of user intent.
Top 5 page optimisation actions for AIO SERP feature visibility
To improve your chances of gaining visibility in the AIO SERP feature, consider implementing these actions:
1. Get your content AI-ready using structured data & E-E-A-T principles
Think of structured data as sending Google an instruction manual for your content. By enabling your content to be easily understood by Google crawlers, you increase your chances of being included in the AI Overview. While schema markup isn't a new concept, its role as a fundamental pillar of a robust SEO strategy has further highlighted its importance with the rise of AI Overviews. To ensure your content is primed for both traditional and AI-powered search, consider implementing the most relevant schema for your business. Here are a few key examples: These can include:
FAQ Schema: Perfect for addressing common questions your audience asks. Make sure your FAQs are comprehensive, genuinely helpful, and send strong Quality Signals.
Author Schema: Essential for establishing clear authorship and boosting your E-E-A-T, particularly important for content where expertise and author credibility are key.
Media Schema: Crucial for enhancing visibility in visual search results, allowing your images and videos to be better understood and surfaced.
Product Schema: Essential for any e-commerce website. Product schema includes pricing, ratings, reviews, and product descriptions, and hugely increases your chances of being included in rich results.
Double down on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)
In the age of AI-driven search, E-E-A-T remains as important as ever. Google wants to summarise content from sources it trusts, so demonstrating this makes your website more likely to appear in AI Overviews.
Here are a few ways to demonstrate E-E-A-T:
Showcase your team's expertise. Build detailed author bios packed with credentials to demonstrate that there are real people behind your content. For enterprise organizations, this means highlighting the genuine subject matter experts within your company rather than relying on the marketing team. Create detailed author bios that include job titles, qualifications, and relevant experience. To reinforce trust signals, link out to external profiles on places such as LinkedIn, published work, and industry affiliations. You could even mark up their profiles using Author schema.
Support expertise with external validation. These continue to serve as powerful trust signals for authoritativeness. Focus your link-building or Digital PR efforts on securing mentions from industry-leading publications and trusted sources within your sector. These endorsements not only elevate your site's authority but also serve as third-party validation of your content's value.
Publish first-party data and original research. These are highly rated by Google and make you a prime candidate for inclusion in AI-generated answers. Unique data sets, proprietary insights, and original data signal deep topical knowledge — and are increasingly favoured in AI-generated results. When sharing this kind of content, use appropriate schema markup (e.g. Dataset, ImageObject, Article) to help Google understand the importance and provenance of your research.
2. Prioritise educational and informational content
AI Overviews are showing up most frequently on long-tail and informational queries, so creating genuinely educational content is a smart move. It’s not just helpful for users; it can also position your pages as trustworthy enough to be cited directly in AIO summaries. This means creating content like:
Comprehensive guides that go beyond surface-level information
Whitepapers that leverage your company's unique insights and data
Case studies showcasing real-world applications and results
Industry reports that establish your brand as a thought leader
SERP analysis tools can help you identify longer-tail opportunities where AIOs are missing or fail to consistently appear, presenting an opportunity for you to build content to appear in them. As AIOs continue to expand, we may find they start to show up in more middle-of-the-funnel and even bottom-of-funnel queries, including transactional ones, which means that SEOs will need to think further down the customer journey when it comes to content creation. This means developing rich, intent-matched content for every stage of the funnel, not just the top.
3. Diversify your traffic sources beyond Google
Relying solely on Google organic traffic has always been a risky strategy, but with AI Overviews in the mix, now is the time to adopt a more distributed approach to visibility.
Optimise for LLMs (Large Language Models)
Creating content specifically optimised to be cited by LLMs can open up new referral streams beyond traditional search. Google’s AI Overview isn’t the only AI-driven discovery platform to think about. LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing’s Copilot, and Gemini are establishing their own approaches to search and discovery, each with unique methods for indexing content and citing sources. These platforms often emphasise clarity, structure, and authoritative referencing to determine which content to cite and present to their users.
Show up where the conversations are already happening
User-generated content platforms like Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn Pulse are experiencing a resurgence, and it’s no coincidence. As AI Overviews increasingly surface answers from real people (not just publishers), these platforms are becoming key players in both traditional SERPs and LLMs. For SEOs, this means actively participating in discussions on Quora, sharing insights on LinkedIn Pulse, and engaging with relevant Reddit communities (among others!). By contributing valuable content across these platforms, you not only drive traffic but also enhance your brand's authority, increasing the likelihood of being featured in AI-generated summaries. Remember, it's not just about being present - it's about being active and providing value where your audience seeks their information.
4. Rethink where ‘search’ actually happens
While Google continues to dominate traditional search, it isn’t the only place people search. Social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts aren’t just entertainment channels - they're fast becoming discovery engines in their own right, and operate on entirely different algorithms. For SEOs, this presents an opportunity to reach audiences who might never encounter your content through traditional search. If your content strategy stops at Google, you’re missing a huge chunk of the modern search landscape.
5. Coordinate teams across the marketing mix
Digital marketing strategies can no longer thrive in isolation. With AI Overviews fundamentally reshaping search results, SEOs must adopt a more integrated approach to digital and growth strategies. Increasingly, SEO success depends not only on traditional optimisation techniques but also on visibility across social channels and earned media, driven by the rise of F.A.S.T. Content (First-person, Authentic, Social, and Trusted).
When SEO, PR, social media, and paid advertising teams work in isolation, opportunities are missed and resources are often wasted. The most successful responses to AI Overviews involve consistent messaging and coordinated efforts across all channels.
This alignment starts with shared goals and metrics. Rather than each team optimising for their channel-specific KPIs, consider adopting overarching visibility and engagement metrics which encourage collaboration, such as Share of Voice, brand mentions, and conversions.
AI Overviews aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, they’re continuing to gain visibility at the top of the SERP for an increasing number of search queries and intents. Instead of waiting to see how they will affect you, take proactive steps to adapt your enterprise SEO strategy for the AI age.
Instead of seeing them as a threat, see them as a new visibility opportunity, a new format or a new growth engine. By adapting now, you position your organization to benefit from, rather than be diminished by the continuing evolution of search.