How to appear in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: what Google documents and what it does not

To appear in Google AI Overviews or AI Mode, your page needs to be indexed by Google and eligible to be shown with a snippet. Google says there are no additional requirements: no AI text files and no dedicated structured data. What counts is the usual: Googlebot can crawl you, important content is in text, and the page is helpful.

To check it on your own site: AI visibility audit

That does not mean there is nothing to do. It means the work is AI search optimisation built on healthy SEO, and that you should be wary of anyone selling a trick specific to these two features. Below is what Google documents, the controls you have over what it shows from you, how to measure it, and what the studies say about clicks.

What are AI Overviews and AI Mode?

AI Overviews is the AI-generated summary Google shows above some search results, with links to the pages it draws on. AI Mode is a conversational search tab for questions that used to need several searches: comparisons, reasoning or follow-up questions1.

Both may use query fan-out: they issue several related searches across subtopics from a single question and, according to Google, this lets them show a wider and more diverse set of links than classic search1. That is why a page can make it into an answer through a specific sub-question even if it does not rank near the top for the main query.

Launch dates, according to Google's announcements:

What does Google require for your page to appear?

Google sums it up on its page about AI features: to be eligible as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. There are no additional technical requirements1. The best practices it lists are the usual SEO ones, and each one can be checked:

The text row deserves a note: Google runs JavaScript before indexing, so for AI Overviews it is enough for the text to appear after rendering. Other assistants do not run it, though, and a page painted in the browser can show up in Google and not in ChatGPT. That is covered in the guide to JavaScript SEO and AI crawlers. Crawling, indexing and canonicals are covered in more depth in the guide to technical SEO.

What you do not need for AI Overviews

Google says so explicitly: you do not need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in these features, and there is no special schema.org structured data to add1. Three practical consequences:

• llms.txt does not influence AI Overviews. It may have other uses, discussed in the guide to llms.txt, but Google does not ask for it.
• There is no Google AI crawler to allow. AI Overviews and AI Mode are part of Google Search and rely on Googlebot. Google-Extended does not affect your inclusion in Search and is not a ranking signal6; what it controls is Gemini training and grounding in the Gemini app, as the guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt explains.
• There is no magic markup. Structured data helps Google understand the page, but it has to match what is visible. No schema type makes you eligible.

How to limit what Google shows from your site in AI Overviews

You may want the opposite: for part of your content to stay out of the summaries. Google points to its usual controls, nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex1, and its robots meta tag specification explains how each one affects these features7:

<!-- 1. No snippet in any Google result, including AI Overviews
     and AI Mode. The content is also not used as a direct input
     for them. It may cost you clicks in classic search. -->
<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">

<!-- 2. A snippet of at most 160 characters, in AI Overviews and
     AI Mode too. max-snippet:0 is the same as nosnippet;
     max-snippet:-1 lets Google choose the length. -->
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:160">

<!-- 3. Exclude a single block. Only works on span, div and section. -->
<div data-nosnippet>
  <p>Quote terms you do not want summarised.</p>
</div>

Two warnings. First, nosnippet and max-snippet apply to all Google results, not only AI ones, so limiting the snippet can also reduce your visibility in classic search. Second, if someone on your team set a low max-snippet years ago for another reason, it may be keeping you out of these features without anyone knowing. Check your main templates.

How does it show in Search Console?

Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic within the overall search traffic in Search Console, in the Performance report under the Web search type1. There it is not separated from the rest.

Since 31 August 2026 there has also been a generative AI performance report for all sites. According to Search Console Help, it shows impressions only (how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode), not clicks, and it separates text searches from multimodal ones, such as Google Lens. Two results from the same site in one answer count as one impression, and if you do not see the report, the usual reason is that your site lacks enough impressions in these features8. How to combine it with GA4 to measure visits coming from AI is covered in the guide to tracking AI traffic in GA4.

How many clicks are lost when an AI summary appears?

Google maintains that clicks from results pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, because users spend more time on the site1. It does not publish how many there are. Independent studies measure something else, quantity, and point the other way:

Three caveats when reading them. Pew measures US users, where the feature has been around longest, and Ahrefs sets its periods by the US rollout. They are correlations: searches with an AI summary are not the same as those without one, and Ahrefs acknowledges it compares different groups of keywords. And they measure clicks, not sales or leads. What all of them do say is that being cited does not make up for the drop in clicks on its own: what gets cited should carry your brand and a reason to visit you.

What SmoothSeen audits and what it does not

SmoothSeen does not measure whether you appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: it does not query Google's results or read your Search Console. What it does is audit what depends on the page and what Google asks for: that the page is not blocked from indexing, that its main text arrives in the HTML and not only after running JavaScript, that its structured data is valid, and that the answer can be extracted without reading the rest. You will find this in the AI visibility half of the analysis.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to do anything special to appear in AI Overviews?

No, according to Google. There are no additional requirements or special optimisations: the page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. You do not need AI text files or dedicated structured data either. What does help is the usual: crawling allowed, internal links, a good page experience, important content in text and structured data that matches what is visible.

How do I stop my site from appearing in AI Overviews?

With Google's snippet controls. nosnippet stops a snippet from being shown and stops the content being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode; data-nosnippet excludes a single block, and max-snippet limits the length. Bear in mind that all of them also affect classic search. Blocking Google-Extended does not work for this: it does not affect Google Search.

Are AI Overviews and AI Mode available in the UK and Europe?

Yes. Google launched AI Mode in the UK on 28 July 2025 as a tab in search results and in the Google app. AI Overviews reached several European countries, Spain among them, on 26 March 2025 for signed-in adults. Both appear when Google's systems consider them useful, not on every search.

How do I know if my site appears in AI Overviews?

In Search Console. The generative AI performance report, available for all sites since 31 August 2026, shows how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode, though only impressions, not clicks. Clicks are still included in the Web search type of the Performance report, mixed in with everything else.

What to do next

Pick your five most important pages and check in URL Inspection that they are indexed, that they do not limit the snippet and that their text is in the page source. Then see whether you already have the generative AI report in Search Console. The rest of what decides whether an assistant cites you is in the guide to AI search optimisation.