Google AI Overviews are the AI summaries that appear above the familiar ten blue links, built from sources Google selects itself. That block is changing the search behaviour of billions of people and raises one urgent question for brands: how do I get into that answer, instead of below it? This article explains what AI Overviews are, how Google chooses which sources go into them, what they do to your traffic, and how you improve your odds.
What are Google AI Overviews?
Google AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of the search results, powered by a Gemini model that Google tuned specifically for Search. Instead of only showing links, Google answers the question directly with a short piece of text and cites a handful of sources alongside it. They started rolling out in May 2024 in the United States and then more widely.
The scale is enormous. Around its July 2025 earnings, Alphabet reported that AI Overviews reached roughly 2 billion monthly users. For the kind of queries where an AI Overview appears, Google says they drive more than 10% additional searches: people search more because they get an answer faster. For brands that means a growing share of your audience sees an AI answer first, and only then, maybe, your link.
It is important not to confuse AI Overviews with the standalone AI chatbots. For how you get into ChatGPT answers, read ChatGPT SEO; this article is specifically about Google's AI Overviews in the search results.
AI Overviews vs AI Mode: what is the difference?
AI Overviews and AI Mode are two different things that both run on Gemini. An AI Overview is the automatic summary block at the top of a regular search results page. AI Mode is a separate, conversational search experience where you ask follow-up questions, more like a chatbot.
AI Mode counted more than 100 million monthly users in the United States and India by July 2025. For most brands the AI Overview is the place to start, because it appears in the regular search results where your audience already searches.
How does Google choose which sources go into an AI Overview?
Google gathers the sources for an AI Overview with a technique it calls query fan-out: instead of answering a single query, it sends out several related queries at once across subtopics and sources, and assembles an answer from them. So your content is up against a whole cluster of questions at once, and the goal is to be mentioned in the composed answer.
Your organic ranking plays a part, but less decisively than you might think. Research by Ahrefs (July 2025) covering a million keywords found a positive but moderate link between ranking and citation in an AI Overview: even for the page in position 1, getting cited is more a coin toss than a certainty. At the same time, a second Ahrefs analysis found in July 2025 that 76% of cited pages came from the top 10. Ahrefs repeated the study in March 2026 with about 863,000 keywords and about 4 million AI Overview URLs, more than double the citations of the previous analysis. As Search Engine Journal reported, the share fell to 38%. Ahrefs also improved its measurement method in the same update and suspects that query fan-out plays a bigger role, so the difference is partly methodological. The takeaway: a strong organic position helps, but it does not secure a spot in the AI answer.
Veesie measures the AI visibility of your brand for marketers and agencies, so you can see where you stand: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews on every plan, plus Claude and Gemini from Plus.
What do AI Overviews do to your traffic?
AI Overviews push down click-through to websites, because the answer often already sits above the links. In US data from the Pew Research Center (July 2025), users clicked a regular result in 8% of cases with an AI summary against 15% without one, and a source inside the summary in 1% of visits; what GEO is puts that figure in context.
That other research is sharper. Ahrefs measured that the presence of an AI Overview correlates with a 34.5% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking result (data from March 2025), and in a follow-up measurement with data from December 2025 that drop had risen to roughly 58%. This is a correlation, not a proven cause, but the pattern is consistent: if an AI Overview sits above your result, it costs you clicks. Whoever is inside the answer stays visible; whoever is below it loses traffic. You can see your own impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search Console's Generative AI performance report. Google says it has rolled the report out to all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026, but a site sees no data if it has too few impressions in generative AI features on Google Search or has excluded itself from them.
How do you get into Google AI Overviews?
You get into AI Overviews with the same foundation as the rest of GEO: citation-worthy content on an accessible, authoritative site. Three things count the most.
- Write citation-worthy content. The Princeton GEO study (KDD 2024) scored quotes, statistics and sources 30 to 40% higher, the best about 41%, on a relative visibility measure within five pre-selected documents. That is a proxy and no expected effect on your visibility: a survey of 45 GEO studies (July 2026) found no technique with a stable, longitudinal, cross-platform causal effect on organic discoverability, as 8 GEO myths explains. Open every section with a direct, factual answer to the question in the heading, because that is what an AI model can lift out.
- Keep your organic SEO strong. Ranking helps but does not suffice: Ahrefs now finds that 38% of cited pages rank in the top 10, so Google also pulls in pages that answer the related searches it fans out. Accessibility, structure and authority all weigh in. You can read the technical foundation in the AI-Readiness score and the GEO audit checklist.
- Do not waste time on schema as a silver bullet. A difference-in-differences study by Ahrefs (2026) found that adding JSON-LD schema produces no meaningful rise in AI citations. Schema stays useful for classic rich results, but not as a lever for AI Overviews.
Google itself describes AI as an addition to search. Liz Reid, head of Google Search, told Search Engine Land (September 2025) that Google does not view AI as replacing search, and sees it as a way to reinvent search.
The full roadmap is in how to do GEO and the concrete actions in 8 tips to improve your GEO Score. Veesie tracks weekly, for marketers and agencies, whether their brand is cited in AI answers. Start the free 7-day trial and your first measurement is ready within a few minutes.
How does this fit into your wider AI visibility?
Google AI Overviews are one front in a wider fight for AI visibility. Alongside Google, the standalone chatbots ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity also cite brands in their answers, and each does so in its own way, as you can read in how to appear in AI chatbots. Your position in an AI Overview says little about your visibility in ChatGPT, and the other way around. That is why you track both as separate signals within one strategy; the SEO side of it is covered in AI SEO.
Veesie gives you a GEO Score, an index over ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews that shows how often AI models name their brand. From the Plus plan, Veesie also measures Claude and Gemini; their answers show in the dashboard without counting towards the score. Veesie measures both your mention in the AI Overview and in the chatbots directly; your organic ranking and the citation-worthiness principles in this article remain the lever to get into the AI Overview. How you set that up is in the KPI guide: how to measure AI visibility, and the difference from classic SEO is in GEO vs SEO.
Conclusion: the answer now sits at the top
Google AI Overviews shift the search results page from a list of links to a ready-made answer with a few sources. This is no temporary experiment: with around 2 billion monthly users in July 2025 and a measurable drop in click-through, it is the new shape of Google search. Your position below it is worth less, your mention inside it ever more important.
The brands that appear in AI Overviews are the brands with citation-worthy content, a technically healthy site and strong authority, exactly the signals that count in the chatbots too. Start with a healthy GEO foundation and a baseline measurement of where you stand today, before you build a separate AI Overviews tactic. Veesie measures how often your brand is cited in Google AI Overviews and the chatbots, so you steer on measurements. Compare the pricing and features to see which sources each plan covers.