HOW TO RANK IN AI OVERVIEWS

 

Table of Contents

·         What is AI Overview?

·         How Search Has Changed with AI Overview?

Ø  Example 1: Information Search Intent Query

Ø  Example 2: Commercial Search Intent Query

Ø  Example 3: Navigational Search Intent Query

Ø  Example 4: Transactional Search Intent Query

·         What does this mean for online visibility?

·         The Great Search Decoupling – When rank stops driving clicks.

·         If Clicks Are Gone, What’s the Goal?

·         Why SEO is Still in the Game?

·         Why AI Overview-Visibility Matters in Digital Marketing?

·         How To Rank in AI Overviews - A Ten-Step Strategy

·         Why Google AI Overview Optimization Is the New SEO Priority

·         Why Brands Need to Control the Narrative in AI Overviews

·         Conclusion

Key Takeaways

 

·         The new goal is to become a trusted source that AI models cite directly.

·         AI Overview optimization is is rapidly becoming the standard search behavior.

·         Format content with an "answer-first" principle, using headings, lists, and tables for easy AI extraction.

·         Strengthen your E-E-A-T by adding author bios with credentials and earning mentions from respected industry sites.

·         Actively guide your brand's narrative in AI Overviews to prevent misrepresentation

 

What is AI Overview?

 

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of a Google search results page, providing a concise, multi-sourced answer to a user's query. The feature officially launched in the U.S. on May 14, 2024, and is now available in over 120 countries and territories. They are displayed prominently at the top of the search results, generally above traditional organic listings and below most paid advertisements.

 

"AI Overviews are one of the most successful launches in Search in the past decade. As people use AI Overviews, we see they're happier with their results, and they search more often. AI Overviews are driving over 10% growth in the types of queries that show them, and this growth increases over time." - Google CEO Sundar Pichai (May, 2025)

 

Google’s AI Overviews change how information appears on the search page. Instead of clicking through a line-up of links, users see a synthesized response drawn from multiple trusted sources, sometimes paired with images or video. The system is built for complex queries and can process text, voice, and even visuals, making Search feel more like a conversation than a lookup.

 

What makes this shift sharper than past features? The answer is – intent.

 

These aren’t quick answers or information snippets, but structured answers designed to satisfy user needs in seconds. That speed and convenience will reshape click behavior -- challenging websites to rethink how they attract attention when Google itself is serving the “best version” of an answer upfront.

 

How Search Has Changed with AI Overview?

 

Let's take a look at how AI Overviews transform the search experience from a simple list of links into a direct, streamlined answer -- no matter what you're looking for.

 

Example 1: Information Search Intent Query

• Before AI Overviews: User queries, "Which type of Pizza has Parmesan Cheese," and a list of links to articles about pizza types and ingredients appears. The user must click through several articles to find the answer to their query.
• After AI Overviews: The search provides a summarized answer directly at the top of the page, listing specific pizzas that use Parmesan, along with links to the source websites for more detail.

 

Example 2: Commercial Search Intent Query

• Before AI Overviews: User queries, "Pizza Restaurants in Dubai," and the search results show a Google Maps pack with local listings, followed by a list of websites for popular pizza restaurants or review sites like Yelp. The user must then browse these sites to compare options.
• After AI Overviews: The search results provide a synthesized overview of top-rated pizza restaurants in Dubai, potentially including a list with brief descriptions, ratings, and a link to the restaurant's website or a booking page – speeding up the decision-making process.

 

Example 3: Navigational Search Intent Query

• Before AI Overviews: User queries, "Pizza Delivery Near Brooklyn Bridge," and a list of pizza delivery services near that location appears, likely with their Google business profiles. The user must manually navigate to a website to place an order.
• After AI Overviews: The search returns a summary of the best-rated pizza delivery options near the Brooklyn Bridge, with direct links to "Order Now" buttons or the restaurant's online ordering system.

 

Example 4: Transactional Search Intent Query

• Before AI Overviews: User queries, "Order pepperoni pizza online," and the search results primarily show product-specific landing pages from various pizza chains. The user must visit a site, browse a menu, and complete the transaction.
• After AI Overviews: The search presents a summarized answer with a direct call to action, potentially showing a one-click ordering widget or a list of options with direct links to the checkout page for a pepperoni pizza from various providers.

 

The above examples clearly show how AI Overviews is a significant change (in addition to AI Mode) in the way Google searches works. It's user-friendly and improves search experience by using AI to aggregate the best information from the web in response to queries.

 

What does this mean for online visibility?

 

Let’s see some of the latest facts that show the effects of Google AI Overviews on web traffic, CTR,  user behaviour, and other performance metrics.

 

·         Almost every keyword that triggers an AI Overview carries informational intent. For commercial or transactional searches, the feature shows up in only about one out of ten cases. Source: WordStream

·         Top-ranking pages lose about a third of their organic traffic when AI Overviews appear, pushing marketers to reconsider how they structure SEO. Source: Genesys Growth, August 4, 2025

·         Over 90% of cited pages in AI Overviews contain AI-generated content, making AI-assisted content creation essential for visibility. Source: Genesys Growth, Aug 4, 25’

·         By Q2 2025, Sundar Pichai confirmed AI Overviews had surged to 2 billion monthly users, up from 1.5 billion in May, now live across 200+ countries and territories.

·         Source: TechCrunch

·         AI Overviews have cut overall organic traffic by 15% to 25%, pushing publishers and marketers to adjust their strategies. Source: Bain & Company

 

The Great Search Decoupling – When rank stops driving clicks.

 

Our research shows that in 2025, AI dominance, zero-click behavior, and rising trust in machine-generated answers are the key forces driving how search evolves.

 

The rise of Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) has broken the long-standing link between traditional search engine rankings and website traffic. Once held by featured snippets, the title of “position zero” now belongs to AIOs. They now take over prime digital space, covering more than 1700 pixels at the very top of the results and leaving traditional organic listings buried further down the screen.

 

As the above facts show, AI Overviews are driving steep drops in search traffic and click-through rates (CTRs), especially on informational pages. Websites that once relied on steady organic visibility are now losing significant user activity at the search results stage. Entire categories of content are seeing traffic erosion that is too sharp to dismiss as normal fluctuation.

 

This decline stems from AIOs accelerating the rise of zero-click searches. We call this shift The Great Search Decoupling, as it breaks the long-standing link between rankings and traffic. With traditional KPIs losing relevance, marketers must adopt a new framework for measuring success.

 

In 2024, zero-click searches became the norm. About 58.5% of U.S. searches and 59.7% in the EU ended without a site visit. That means roughly 640 out of 1,000 queries in the U.S. stayed within Google, driven by AI Overviews and richer on-page results. Source: Boston Institute of Analytics (based on research by SparkToro and Datos )

 

 

If Clicks Are Gone, What’s the Goal?

 

The goal of search optimization is no longer about chasing top rankings. What matters now is becoming a trusted source that AI models cite directly. The value has shifted from blue links to brand presence within the answer layer. Success will now be measured by brand mentions, audience sentiment, and visibility inside AI-generated responses.

 

The task for digital marketers and search optimisation professionals is to ensure AI presents your products, services and expertise accurately and favourably.

 

Search has moved beyond lead generation and now sits at the core of brand strategy, working alongside PR and corporate communications to shape digital identity in an AI-first world.

 

Why SEO is Still in the Game?

 

The rise of AI Overviews doesn’t mark the end of SEO; it signals its essential evolution. Google confirms that “normal SEO works for AI Overviews,” since the feature relies on the same core ranking systems, including PageRank and the helpful content system, that drive traditional search. A solid base in conventional SEO remains the entry ticket for visibility.

 

However, it is also seen that the websites Google pulls into AI Overviews don’t always cite webpages with high organic rankings. In some instances, sources that didn’t even appear in the top 100 results are now featured prominently in AIO, appearing at the top of the page.

 

This clarifies two things:

a)     While strong SEO is still important for improving your chances of being cited in AIOs, it is no longer a guarantee.

b)    Even if your webpage does not rank high in search results, it can still appear in AIOs and provide crucial online visibility for your brand.

 

This shows that evolving from traditional SEO to AI SEO is essential, since AI Overviews still rely on Google’s core ranking signals.

 

 

Why AI Overview-Visibility Matters in Digital Marketing?

 

Being featured in AI Overviews delivers:

 

• Prime visibility at the very top of search, above both ads and organic results

• Greater brand authority and credibility through inclusion in Google's curated answers

• Higher-quality traffic from users who get direct, relevant responses to their queries

• A lasting edge in SEO and digital marketing as search continues shifting toward AI-driven models.

 

How To Rank in AI Overviews - A Ten-Step Strategy

 

Winning space in AI Overviews takes more than high rankings. It requires a strategy built around how Google’s models select and cite sources. This 10-step blueprint, created by SEOTonic, a leading SEO Agency in India, gives you a clear, practical path to help your brand rank in AI Overviews where it matters most.

 

Step 1: Build Topical Authority, Not Just Keyword Coverage

·         Develop pillar pages that cover broad topics in-depth.

·         Link them with cluster pages that explain sub-topics in detail.

·         Anticipate all user questions and next steps within your topic.

·         Focus on contextual completeness instead of keyword repetition.

·         Create content to help users make decisions.

 

Step 2: Format Content for AI and Human Readability

·         Use the “answer-first” principle—give direct answers upfront.

·         Headings (H2/H3) → clear hierarchy for topics and subtopics.

·         Add a TL;DR summary in the intro for quick takeaways.

·         Include bulleted lists, numbered steps, and tables for easy AI extraction.

·         Structure content with H2/H3 headings and short, simple sentences.

·         Formatting boosts AI extraction and readability, making it key for AI SEO success.

 

Step 3: Strengthen Your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust)

·         Show first-hand experience via case studies, personal insights, or research.

·         Add author bios with credentials, social profiles, and past publications.

·         Earn mentions and backlinks from respected industry sites.

·         Maintain accuracy, transparency, and updated content for trust.

 

Step 4: Implement Structured Data & Schema Markup

·         Use JSON-LD, Google’s preferred schema format.

·         Apply relevant schema types like FAQPage, HowTo, Article, Person, and Organization.

·         Validate with Google’s Rich Results Test to avoid errors.

·         Treat schema as your AI-readable language to boost inclusion in AIOs.

 

Step 5: Expand Your Off-Page Authority Footprint

·         Secure listings in high-trust databases like Wikidata, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn.

·         Prioritize brand mentions in Tier-1 media—even unlinked ones carry weight.

·         Encourage customer reviews on G2, Trustpilot, and Google Business Profile.

·         Manage online reputation proactively for consistent authority signals.

 

Step 6: Target Queries That AI Struggles to Answer

·         Focus on long-tail, complex, or niche topics that AI struggles to summarize.

·         Create content for transactional and commercial intent keywords (“buy,” “near me”).

·         Leverage local SEO as AIOs currently impact fewer local queries.

·         Target branded queries—low AIO competition and higher CTR potential.

 

Step 7: Publish Unique Data, Research, and Multimedia

·         Share proprietary surveys, studies, and first-party data.

·         Use videos, infographics, and custom visuals for added uniqueness.

·         Build interactive tools (calculators, quizzes, configurators) that AI can’t replicate.

·         Differentiate with original, irreplaceable insights AI must cite.

 

Step 8: Optimize Technical SEO for Crawlability & Indexing

·         Ensure robots.txt and noindex tags don’t block key pages.

·         Resolve 4xx errors and maintain a clean internal linking structure.

·         Improve Core Web Vitals & site speed, especially for mobile traffic.

·         Use HTTPS and logical site architecture to strengthen trust signals.

 

Step 9: Build Knowledge Graph Presence for Your Brand

·         Claim and optimize profiles for brand + key team members.

·         Enrich entries with accurate data, images, and structured details.

·         Ensure consistency across Wikidata, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, etc.

·         Help AI connect entities to your brand in its knowledge graph.

 

Step 10: Continuously Refresh & Expand Content for AI Signals

·         Keep articles updated with the latest facts, stats, and trends.

·         Expand coverage to new subtopics and user questions.

·         Monitor AIO-triggering queries and adapt content formats accordingly.

·         Treat freshness and comprehensiveness as a non-stop process.

 

Looking to secure your brand’s place in Google’s AI Overviews? Partner with SEOTonic, a leading SEO Agency in India, trusted by businesses worldwide to help them dominate digital search and stay one step ahead of every trend.

 

Why Google AI Overview Optimization Is the New SEO Priority

 

AI Overviews are moving out of pilot mode and are fast becoming the standard search behaviour. This begins a long-term rewrite of search engine discovery that replaces lists of links with conversational, answer-first interactions.

 

Planning for that trajectory is essential for attaining durable strategic positioning. Brands that shape the answers users see will lock in citations, credibility, and sustained visibility inside the answer layer, while failure to adapt will hand the advantage to the competition.

 

Here are some facts from recent research and reports on the future of online search.

 

·        Organic Search Traffic Decline: Gartner projects that by 2028, organic search traffic to websites will decrease by 50% or more as consumers increasingly adopt generative AI-powered search tools. Source: Gartner: AI In Marketing

 

·        AI Search Overtaking Traditional Search: Semrush's research indicates that by early 2028, AI-powered search could surpass traditional search in driving visitors to websites, particularly for digital marketing and SEO-related topics. Source: Semrush, July 21, 2025.

 

·        Google's AI-Driven Search Experience: Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE) is expected to become the default search mode by 2028, handling an estimated 30-40% of informational queries across industries, marking a significant shift in how users interact with search engines. Source: Google- AI In Search

 

·        AI Overviews Redefining Search Behavior: By March 2025, Google’s AI Overviews appeared in over 13% of searches, mainly informational, reducing clicks to websites. This shift is driven by younger users favoring social media, chatbots, and user-generated content, accelerating the move away from traditional link-based search. Source: Semrush

 

The data above clearly shows why depending only on traditional Google-focused SEO is now a risky bet. With AI Overviews and AI Mode reshaping how people search, the rules of visibility have fundamentally changed.

 

Why Brands Need to Control the Narrative in AI Overviews

 

The Air Canada chatbot fiasco is a perfect cautionary tale for the AI era. A grieving customer was misled by the airline’s own support bot, which confidently provided a “refund later” policy that didn’t exist. When the company tried to argue in court that the chatbot was a “separate entity,” the judge quickly reminded them: ‘if it’s on your website, it’s your responsibility.’

 

This illustrates a larger truth: in the world of AI Overviews, it's not always the brand that frames the story; sometimes it's the AI. Hallucinations, oversimplified summaries, or misplaced emphasis can easily distort narratives. They can also be influenced by questionable sources, including inauthentic user feedback, discussions in community forums like Reddit, and half-truths spreading across social media. The result is a version of your brand story that feels authoritative to the user, even if it's incomplete or false.

 

For brands, the takeaway is clear: you must actively guide how AI interprets your content. That means structuring your website for accuracy and clarity while monitoring how your company is represented in AI-generated summaries.

 

If an AI Overview contains errors, brands can flag and correct it directly by submitting feedback —> clicking the thumbs down icon —> selecting “Report a problem,” and clarifying the issue. Over time, this diligence helps ensure AI systems rely on accurate, brand-aligned sources, reducing the risk of misrepresentation and keeping your narrative consistent, credible, and in your control.

 

Conclusion

 

The shift to Google's AI Overviews requires a significant change in SEO strategy, moving away from a traditional focus on organic rankings. This new landscape, dubbed the "Great Search Decoupling," breaks the direct link between a high ranking and a user click due to the rise of zero-click searches. Brands must now aim to become a trusted, authoritative source that AI models cite directly. This is crucial for maintaining brand presence and controlling the narrative in an "answer-first" world.

 

Ready to stay visible in the age of AI-driven search? SEOTonic offers affordable SEO Services in India. We can help your business adapt, transform, and win visibility in Google’s AI Overviews. Connect with us today to discuss how we can make it happen for your brand.

 

 

Source: https://www.seotonic.com/how-to-rank-in-ai-overviews/