How to get your business into Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode

To appear in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet in Google Search. There are no other technical requirements. After that, it comes down to the same things Google has always rewarded: helpful, original content that answers the question clearly, on a site that’s fast, accessible and trusted.

That’s straight from Google’s own guidance. It hasn’t stopped a small industry springing up around “AI Overview hacks”, most of which Google says you don’t need. Here’s what actually helps.

What are AI Overviews and AI Mode?

AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries that appear at the top of some Google results, with links to the pages they draw on. Google says they appear only when its systems judge them to add something beyond the normal results, so many searches don’t show one.

AI Mode is a separate, conversational way to search. It launched in the UK on 28 July 2025. You’ll find it as a tab on the results page or at google.com/aimode. You can ask longer, more complex questions and follow-up questions, and the answer includes links to sources.

How Google chooses its sources

Both features are built on Google’s core ranking and quality systems, which is why good SEO still matters. The new part is query fan-out. Google describes it as “a set of concurrent, related queries generated by the model to request more information”. Ask AI Mode “what’s the best way to insulate a Victorian terrace?” and it might also search for costs, grants, solid wall insulation and damp risks, then combine what it finds.

Two things follow from this:

1. Your page can be cited for a question it doesn’t rank for in the normal results, because it answers one of the related questions well.
2. A page that covers a topic thoroughly, answering the natural follow-up questions too, has more chances to be picked up.

Check you’re eligible

Before working on content, rule out the technical blockers:

• Can Google index the page? Check it in the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.
• Is Googlebot allowed? Make sure robots.txt doesn’t block the page or the files it needs to display.
• Is a snippet allowed? A nosnippet tag, or a very low max-snippet value, will keep a page out of AI Overviews.
• Is the important information in text? Prices, opening hours and answers locked inside images or PDFs are harder to use.
• Is the page linked from elsewhere on your site? Pages with no internal links are hard for Google to find and judge.

Eight steps that make a difference

1. Lead with the answer

Put a clear, direct answer in the first sentence or two, then explain. If someone copied that opening paragraph on its own, it should still make complete sense.

2. Say something only you can say

Google’s 2026 guide encourages content with a “unique point of view”, created “based on what you know about the topic”. Real prices from your own jobs, before-and-after photos, mistakes you’ve seen customers make: this is the kind of detail an AI summary can’t get from anyone else.

3. Cover the follow-up questions

Think about what someone asks next. A page about boiler servicing should also answer how often, how long it takes, what it costs and what happens if you skip it. Use headings that match those questions.

Don’t go too far the other way. Google warns that creating lots of pages mainly to target fan-out variations breaks its scaled content abuse policy. One thorough page beats ten thin ones.

4. Show who’s behind it

Add the author’s name and experience, when the page was last updated and how you know what you know. Google’s guidance on helpful content says “trust is most important” of the E-E-A-T qualities. Our E-E-A-T guide explains how to show it.

5. Use images and video where they help

Google’s guide suggests including images and video where they fit. A short video showing how to bleed a radiator, or a labelled diagram, adds something a text summary can’t.

6. Keep your business data up to date

Google says Merchant Center feeds and Google Business Profiles “can help your products and services to be visible in both AI responses and other Google Search results”. For local businesses, an accurate, complete Business Profile is one of the most effective things you can do. See our Google Business Profile guide.

7. Keep structured data accurate

Structured data isn’t required for AI features, and there’s no special AI markup. It still helps Google understand your pages and makes them eligible for rich results, so keep it, and keep it consistent with what the page says. Our guide to schema markup in 2026 covers what’s still worth adding.

8. Get the experience right

A fast, stable, mobile-friendly page keeps visitors who do click through. Google also says that clicks from results pages with AI Overviews tend to be higher quality, with people more likely to spend time on the site, so make that visit count.

What you don’t need

Google’s guide is unusually blunt about the shortcuts that get sold as “AI optimisation”:

• llms.txt files and AI-only pages. “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in Google Search.”
• Chopping content into small chunks. “There’s no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it.”
• Writing for robots. “You don’t need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search.”
• Buying mentions. “Seeking inauthentic ‘mentions’ across the web isn’t as helpful as it might seem.”

How to measure it

• Search Console’s Performance report includes clicks and impressions from AI features within the “Web” search type.
• Search Console’s Generative AI performance reports, introduced in June 2026, show how often your pages appear as sources in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover. Google is rolling them out gradually, and at launch they showed impressions but not clicks.
• Manual checks. Search your key questions in AI Mode each month and note whether you’re cited.

Our guide to tracking AI search traffic covers the set-up step by step.

Ready for some help?

If competitors keep turning up in AI Overviews and you don’t, book a free chat. We’ll check your key questions in AI Overviews and AI Mode with you and show you what to change first. Our answer engine optimisation service handles the rewriting, structured data and technical fixes.