What are AI Overviews?

AI Overviews, explained

Google says AI Overviews help people get to the gist of a complicated topic or question more quickly, with links to explore further. AI Mode is for queries that need more exploration, reasoning or comparison, in a chat-like interface. AI Overviews grew out of an experiment Google first called Search Generative Experience (SGE).

Both use a technique Google calls query fan-out: issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources to build the response. That's why an AI Overview can link to a wider, more varied set of pages than the classic top ten.

Getting cited works through normal Search. Google's documentation says that to be eligible as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. There are no additional technical requirements, and you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup. The Google-Extended robots.txt token doesn't control AI Overviews either, because they're part of Google Search.

If you want to limit what appears, there are two levels. For a whole site, Search Console has a Search generative AI control (Settings > Search generative AI), rolled out to all websites by August 31, 2026. Choosing Exclude keeps your links and content out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover, and Google says the control isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal for the rest of Search. For single pages or passages, the snippet controls still work: nosnippet, max-snippet, data-nosnippet or noindex. These change your normal results too, so use them carefully. Our guide to AI Overviews and AI Mode for founders covers when excluding makes sense.

Measuring the effect is only partly possible. Clicks from AI features count in Search Console's Performance report under the Web search type, with no separate filter. Since August 31, 2026, the Generative AI performance report shows which of your pages get impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by country, device and date, but no clicks or queries. Expect click-through rates on those queries to behave differently from classic results, since the summary may answer part of the question before anyone scrolls.

The practical approach: make pages that are clearly the best source for one specific question, with the answer stated plainly and supported with specifics. Those are the pages Overviews link to.

Why it matters for founders

AI Overviews sit above the organic results for many informational queries. Being one of the linked sources is now part of ranking well, and the path there is ordinary SEO done carefully.

Example

A search for "does blocking GPTBot affect ChatGPT search" shows an AI Overview explaining OpenAI's separate crawlers, linking to OpenAI's docs and a clear guide that quotes them.

Common mistakes

• Looking for special AI Overview markup or files. Google says there are none.
• Blocking Google-Extended expecting to leave AI Overviews. It doesn't do that.
• Using nosnippet sitewide to avoid Overviews, when the Search Console control does that without touching normal snippets.
• Judging performance on clicks alone when Overviews change click behavior.