It’s been nearly a year since Google rebranded Search Generative Experience (SGE) and officially launched AI Overviews (AIO). Since its global rollout, which expanded to over 100 countries by October 2024, the impact of AIO on search results has become increasingly clear.
When AI Overviews were first introduced, many marketers speculated on their potential impact and how this would affect search. Fast forward to May 2025, a recent study revealed that AIO now appears on approximately 13% of searches—a significant presence that’s reshaping the landscape of organic search.
In this blog post, Danny Conlon, SVP of Product and Marketing, will explore what Google’s AI Overviews mean for the future of search. She’ll discuss how they work, their effect on search results, and how marketers can adjust their strategies to stay ahead in this new AI-driven search landscape.
What You’ll Learn:
- What Are AI Overviews?
- How AI Overviews Work on Google
- Will AI Overviews Appear for All Queries?
- Will the Increase of AI Overview Answers Decrease My Website Visibility and Traffic?
- Ads in Google AI Overviews: What Marketers Need to Know
- How to Measure Your Website Appearance in AI Overview Answers
- How to Use Semrush to Track AI Overviews Visibility
- How to Optimize for AI Overviews
- Common Issues and Failures in AI Overviews
- How to Remove AI Overviews in Search
- Will AI Overviews Replace Featured Snippets?
What Are AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the very top of Google Search Results for a variety of search queries. (Note, an AI overview does not appear for all queries, only some). These overviews are designed to give users concise answers directly on SERPs. They may also include relevant ads for products or services, especially for shopping-related queries.
Here’s an example of Google search results featuring AI Overviews.
Going off of the question of “what is an AI Overview,” you might also wonder, “Where do Google AI Overviews get information from?” When users enter a query, a Google Search AI Overview pulls relevant information from one or multiple resources to compile the best possible answer.
AI Overviews are similar to featured snippets in that they both aim to provide users with concise answers directly in the SERPs. However, they differ in that, instead of pulling content from a specific webpage, AIOs generate a summary based on multiple sources using AI.
AIO’s can also provide much more in depth answers than traditional featured snippets and answers, especially for complex questions.
For example, beyond the first paragraph is a detailed guide on how to find a doctor, with various subsections.
If you’re curious to know where Google is specifically pulling their answers, as you can see, each section has a citation at the end that you can click to take you to the source of the information, along with underlined text with links to other Google searches for more information.
Google’s AI Overviews also list the cited sources on the right.
You can then click on the cited source to go to the corresponding website for more information.
Because of their in-depth nature, users are far less likely to leave the search engine when they can get most if not all of the information they need in one place.
My Expert Insight into Google’s AI Overviews
With the rollout of Google’s AI Overviews, I believe marketers need to be more agile than ever, keeping a very close eye on how users are interacting with search. While it’s true these AI Overviews are designed to provide direct answers, we must understand exactly where they’re showing up in the SERPs and, more importantly, how we can still ensure visibility. It’s okay for users get information right in the results page – in fact, that’s Google’s intent. However, as savvy marketers, we need to understand where AI Overviews are most prevalent for our brand and strategically optimize our content to be featured.
Let’s also not forget that certain queries require more detailed, in-depth information, and that’s where your content can shine. For these complex or research-driven searches, offer comprehensive, expert-driven content that entices users to click through and explore further. Focus on providing value and engaging users, so they’ll have a reason to seek more information beyond the AI Overview. As AI Overviews and SEO evolve, this balance between concise AI answers and the need for deeper content will be crucial for long-term SEO success.
Optimization for Google’s AI Overviews is no longer optional, it’s essential. To succeed, ensure your content aligns with the principles of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). Additionally, adapt your content to match real-world search language by integrating conversational phrases and targeting long-tail keywords, which are more likely to be captured by AI.
Ultimately, marketers need to monitor AI Overviews closely, understand when they’re taking the spotlight, and make adjustments to their strategies to maintain visibility and relevance. Stay proactive in optimizing your content for AI and traditional search results to ensure your brand is both visible in summaries and engaging for deeper exploration.
How AI Overviews Work on Google
How does a Google AI Overview search work, anyway?
First, let’s consider the role of Google’s AI engine, Gemini. This is what powers all of Google’s AI-driven solutions, including the recently added AI Mode.
Gemini’s language models use a large language model (LLM) to understand and contextualize people’s search queries. Gemini also uses multi-step reasoning to handle some of the more complex search queries, gather information from several sources it deems reliable, and summarize that information.
When users enter a query, Gemini performs deep information retrieval using real-time web data from multiple sources.
In the process, Google uses a “query fan-out” method to simultaneously conduct several additional searches covering certain related subtopics, providing the AI with more diverse information.
Once the AI summarizes the information, it presents it in an organized form, usually with a few sections and subsections. At the end, it then links to the sources from which it pulled all information.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say I want to search for “what are some good SEO analytics tools?”
The AI would then go through and look at some of the many sources for information about “good SEO analytics tools,” pulling from review sites with lists of top solutions, forums with suggestions from users, and industry-related websites making their own recommendations.
The end result is an organized summary with plenty of recommendations and links to various sources.
Will AI Overviews Appear for All Queries?
No, AI Overviews won’t appear for every query. A recent study found that AI Overviews are shown for about 13% of searches, with 88% of those being informational. However, we can expect their presence to grow in commercial and navigational queries in the near future.
AI Overviews are most likely to appear at the top of search results for complex queries that require more detailed information. For example, a query like “steps for building a website” may include an AI Overview with basic steps and considerations for website design, along with links to more in-depth resources. In contrast, a straightforward query like “who is the author of The Lord of the Rings” would likely return a featured snippet with a simple answer.
Will the Increase of AI Overview Answers Decrease My Website Visibility and Traffic?
When Google first rolled out AI Overviews, they addressed concerns about potential declines in website traffic by stating that AI Overviews would not negatively impact visibility.
To be exact, Google’s Senior Director of Product, Hema Budaraju, said the link cards included in AI Overview results encourage more people to click than regular organic results. Google’s most recent data supports this, showing that users who engage with AI Overviews and the ads within them are more satisfied with their search experience and are more likely to interact with the suggested content.
However, recent studies reveal that the expansion of AI Overviews has correlated with a decline in click-through rates (CTR) for informational queries, a trend that varies by industry.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to marketers as this is consistent with the patterns observed when featured snippets and direct answers were first introduced. It was widely reported CTRs for informational searches dropped as users started to rely on the answers provided directly in the search results.
Ads in Google AI Overviews: What Marketers Need to Know
The above mostly covered informational searches. But how about for ecommerce? If you want to maximize your reach with Google’s AI Overviews, you can more easily do so with ads that integrate into users’ feeds alongside conventional Google Search AI Overviews and Featured Snippets. So, if you’re worried about Overviews stomping out your SEO efforts, it should put you at ease knowing that your ads will work together with them.
Now, when people enter certain queries, such as information about certain products, Search and Shopping ads will show up in the top results. Even if people are entering top-level informational queries like “what is the best way to clean my car’s windshield,” Google’s AI Overviews could provide basic steps while ads showcase various cleaning products, giving users all the resources they need with a single search.
To differentiate these results from organic search, Google still marks these ads with a “Sponsored” label.
Generally, these ads show how marketers can use a combination of SEO and paid media campaigns to stay on top of search in various ways using their Google Ads accounts.
Even if a Google AI Overview fails to convert users and lead them to your website, complementary ads could convert them. The more prevalent your brand and offerings are in these search results, the more you’ll also gain people’s trust, encouraging them to click on your links over less dominant competitors.
How to Measure Your Website Appearance in AI Overview Answers
It’s important to note that Google Search Console does track search visibility and clicks from AI overviews, but it aggregates it with your overall report. There is no way to segment out what clicks came from within AIO and organic results.
GSC is still a powerful tool that can provide insights into the queries that are directly impacting your traffic the most. It’s smart to monitor this and manually check for your most important terms to see if they’re generating an AIO and if you’re visible. However, the best way to track your visibility in AI Overviews is to use SEMrush.
How to Use Semrush to Track AI Overviews Visibility
If you want to effectively optimize for AI Overviews, one of the best tools to use is SEMRush. This expansive SEO tool includes a handy AI Overview checker that can help you discover how to rank in AI Overviews.
Here are some basic steps to do so.
1. Set Up Position Tracking
To generate an AI Overview report in SEMRush, you can start by setting up a project in the Position Tracking tool, indicating the keywords you want to target and monitor along with your domain.
In the Keyword Magic Tool, you can also filter keywords based on the AI Overview SERP Feature.
You can then track specific terms for your domain and see if AI Overviews include you as a source.
2. Use the Sensor Tool to Track SERP Volatility
Using the Sensor tool, you can see where you show up in AI Overviews for all industries or industry-specific searches.
You can also see what kind of volatility your rankings have and the frequency of appearances.
Keep in mind that seeing as AI Overviews are still relatively new and undergoing experimentation, they’ll often have a lot of volatility.
How to Optimize for AI Overviews
To show up for a Google AI Overview, there are some steps you can take in your content creation and optimization to appear for these results.
The following are some specific tasks covering how to optimize for AI Overviews:
Create Unique, Non-Commodity Content
When optimizing for AI Overviews, Google wants to see “unique, non-commodity” content that stands apart for its helpfulness. What Google doesn’t want to see is keyword-stuffed, over-optimized content clearly geared toward search engine algorithms instead of users.
Keep in mind that people often conduct more in-depth searches on various topics, often beginning with a surface topic before expanding on that search with additional subtopics. You may want to reflect this kind of behavior in your own content to go with the natural flow of the searcher’s journey.
Meet All the Necessary Technical Requirements
You must also ensure your AI Overviews optimization efforts incorporate all technical requirements. You can do so by making sure that:
- Your website isn’t blocking Googlebot with a robots.txt file
- Pages are loading correctly and adhere to all Google Core Web Vitals for user-friendliness
- Google can index all of your targeted pages
- Your site has a mobile-friendly, responsive design for all users
- Your pages load quickly to keep people engaged
Optimize Your Images and Videos
To give your content even more of an upper hand, be sure to optimize your pages with high-quality images and videos, including captions and alt text that indicate to search engines and Googlebot what your content is about.
Today, users can add images to their search and ask questions about the images, which leads to SERP results with AI Overviews answering questions and connecting them to content with additional related images.
Ecommerce brands can also optimize for these searches as people look for certain products online. They should include plenty of images of their products and an updated Google Business Profile that helps them show up in visually oriented Google AI Overviews.
Review Your Meta Directives
When you optimize for AI Overviews, you must take into account robots meta tags and how they influence your content’s visibility.
You will want to use certain critical meta directives to impact how bots interact with your site, including:
- Nosnippet: If you want to remove AI Overviews from Google search results related to your pages, you would include this tag that tells Google bots not to include your page content in a snippet, including AI featured snippets.
- Data-nosnippet: If you only want specific sections of your page to avoid showing up in Google AI Overviews, you would use this to indicate parts of the page that you want to omit from results.
- Max-snippet: This tag dictates how many characters can show up at a maximum in snippets on Google, e.g., “max-snippet:155.”
- Noindex: Like the “nosnippet” tag, you would include this in your pages’ <head> tag at the top of the code. This tag can prevent Google from indexing the page, keeping it from appearing in search results.
For the most part, your pages should only incorporate these tags if you want to remove AI Overviews from Google Search for certain pages.
Rethink How You Measure AI Traffic Quality in Your AI Overview Analysis
To gauge the quality of traffic from AI Overviews in SEO campaigns, you may want to reconsider the metrics that define success.
While you may want to focus on how many clicks you get, keep in mind that you are likely to get fewer clicks from AI Overviews. Instead, you will want to redirect your attention to more critical AI-related metrics like signups, sales, and user engagement, bearing in mind that AI will tend to attract more engaged users.
Through this AI Overview analysis, you might discover that some of your highest-value customers come from Google AI Overviews.
Common Issues and Failures in AI Overviews
Although Google AI featured snippets like AI Overviews and AI Mode are improving, there are still instances where a Google AI Overview fails to provide users with the desired information or delivers inaccurate results.
Here are some of the most common errors that people have seen with AI Overviews since its initial rollout:
Unusual and Harmful Advice
One of the most well-known types of Google AI Overview fails has involved the platform giving people bad advice, and not just bad advice, but potentially harmful guidance in some cases.
For example, AI Overviews once advised someone to put glue on pizza to help the cheese adhere or to consume rocks for nutrition.
Generally Inaccurate Information / Misinformation
AI Overviews have occasionally delivered false or misleading information due to misinterpreting sources, hallucinating facts, or failing to fully understand context.
In one instance, the tool incorrectly claimed that Tropicana orange juice contains an average of two insects per cup.
These inaccuracies can escalate into the spread of misinformation, especially when the tool pulls from unreliable or conflicting sources.
At one point, an AI Overview falsely claimed that Barack Obama was the first Muslim president, a long-debunked conspiracy theory.
In response, Google has taken steps to improve the reliability of AI Overviews by refining the tool, monitoring feedback, and addressing violations of content policies.
As of 2025, the technology continues to evolve, with improvements in accuracy alongside the broader rollout of AI Mode.
How to Remove AI Overviews from Google Search
If you’re wondering how to turn off Google AI Overviews when viewing search results, now you can.
You’ll need to select the Web button.
This button is a filter that will only show relevant text-based links to searchers. It’s similar to the other filters you see at the top of the SERPS such as Images or Videos. Once you select the Web button all of Google’s knowledge panels, including featured snippets, Shopping features, and Google’s new AI Overviews will be removed from your search results.
This method has been tested but might not be universally available, especially as Google continues to refine the search experience, so some users who are looking into how to remove AI Overviews from Google might not be able to do so. There is no recent confirmation from Google that this filter option is consistently available.
Will AI Overviews Replace Featured Snippets?
No, Google AI Overviews won’t replace featured snippets, knowledge panels, or other types of features stemming beyond traditional results.
Instead, they’ll work alongside featured snippets to give users the most valuable information for complex searches, incorporating a mix of summary content to give them what they’re looking for right at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Now, with the addition of Search and Shopping ads in Google’s AI Overviews, you can also ensure people find your business through PPC efforts in addition to snippets and other organic content.
What Makes Google’s AI Overviews Different From Featured Snippets?
For years, featured snippets have taken the top spots in search results. These results would condense information in a single paragraph and typically appear at the top of search results. Now, AI Overviews will often replace them for most searches and for the foreseeable future.
While they summarize information in a digestible format, AI Overviews are considerably more complex than featured snippets. While the latter extract content from a single web page and present it as a paragraph-long search result, AI Overviews do a deeper dive into several sources, compiling them while summarizing their content in a more extensive exploration.
Get Seen in AI Overviews With Our Generative Engine Optimization Services
Search engine results and search engines themselves are quickly evolving, and so are our optimization strategies.
Now, with ads integrated into AI Overviews, the landscape is even more dynamic, offering new ways for marketers to connect with users at the perfect moment in their search journey.
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