AI Overviews and AI Mode: appear in Google’s AI answers

AI Overviews and AI Mode: what they are

“AI overview” is searched 2,900 times a month in France, “mode ia google” (Google AI Mode) 3,600 times. Google lists France and French among the countries and languages where both features are available.

AI Overviews summarise the essentials of a topic at the top of the results page, with links. Google specifies that they only appear when its systems judge they add something beyond the classic results, and so they do not appear often. In our own survey of trade searches, 6 out of 25 showed one.

AI Mode is for questions that call for comparing, reasoning or going deeper: the user has a conversation, and each follow-up question is a new search.

• Both rely on the index and ranking systems of Google Search: the AI fetches up-to-date pages from the index, extracts the information and shows links to them (Google speaks of retrieval-augmented generation, or grounding).
• Both can run several related searches in parallel to build their answer (the “query fan-out”): for a question about a lawn overrun with weeds, Google cites sub-searches such as the best weedkillers or weeding without chemicals.
• They may use different models and techniques: the links shown are not necessarily the same from one feature to the other.

This guide covers Google only. ChatGPT, Perplexity and the other assistants have their own crawlers and their own rules: see our guide to GEO.

The technical requirements: those of classic search

Google is explicit: to appear as a link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode, a page must be indexed, be able to appear in search with a snippet, and meet the usual technical requirements. There is no additional requirement, and nothing is guaranteed even when everything is in order.

The best practices Google cites for these features are those of SEO as it has always been:

• crawling allowed in robots.txt, and by the CDN or hosting provider too;
• pages reachable through internal links;
• a good page experience, on mobile as on desktop;
• important content in text form, with quality images and videos where useful;
• structured data that matches the visible text;
• up-to-date information in Merchant Center and in the Google Business Profile.

For a local business or a shop, that last point matters: Google says AI answers can include product listings and information about local businesses.

The content Google says it uses

Google writes that creating unique, compelling and helpful content will probably have more long-term influence on a site’s presence in generative AI search than any other suggestion. Its criteria are concrete; we add one rule of form at the end:

1. 1
   A point of view of your own: lived experience, data only you have, an expert opinion. Google contrasts a personal view with a mere summary of what already exists elsewhere.
2. 2
   Non-generic content: Google cites “seven tips for first-time home buyers” as an example of generic content that could come from anyone.
3. 3
   A readable structure: paragraphs, sections, headings that organise the page.
4. 4
   Quality images and videos related to the topic, which can be reused too.
5. 5
   The answer first (our rule): every page or section starts with the sentence that answers the question, before the details.

What you can ignore, according to Google

Google devotes part of its guide to “misconceptions” about optimising for AI answers, sometimes sold under the names AEO or GEO. For Google Search, it says you can ignore:

• the llms.txt file and “special” markup: Google Search does not use them. Creating them has no effect on your visibility in Google, but may be useful for other services;
• “chunking” content into small pieces: there is no ideal page length;
• rewriting purely for AI: the systems understand synonyms and the meaning of a search;
• chasing inauthentic “mentions” across the web: the quality and anti-spam systems apply to AI answers too;
• excessive structured data: no particular schema.org markup is needed, even though it remains useful for rich results.

We keep an llms.txt on our sites, for the other assistants that read it; for Google it has no effect, and we do not present it any other way.

Measure your presence in AI Overviews

Clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the Performance report of Google Search Console, search type “Web”. Google details the rule: an AI Overview occupies a single position on the results page, and all its links get that same position; in AI Mode, a follow-up question counts as a new search.

Google also mentions, in Search Console, a report on performance in generative AI to track content in these features. Be wary, on the other hand, of tools that promise to improve your place in AI answers or claim to use Google’s “internal” metrics: Google points out that no third-party tool has access to its systems.

1. 1
   Track the clicks and impressions of your informational pages in Search Console, month by month.
2. 2
   Look in your analytics tool at what these visitors do: Google states that clicks from results pages with an AI Overview are of higher quality, with more time spent on the site. Check it against your own figures.
3. 3
   Test your customers’ questions by hand and note which pages are cited: those are your competitors in these answers.

Limit or prevent the reuse of your pages

Google treats AI as part of search and offers no setting specific to AI Overviews. To limit what is reused from your pages, Google points to the usual preview controls:

• nosnippet: no snippet of the page is shown;
• data-nosnippet: excludes only part of the page;
• max-snippet: limits the length of the snippet;
• noindex: removes the page from search.

These controls also reduce your visibility in classic results: keep them for content you really do not want reused. The Google-Extended setting only concerns training and grounding in some other Google systems, not the AI Overviews of Search. Finally, Google warns that a change can take from a few days to several months to be taken into account, depending on how often the page is crawled.