How to appear in AI overviews

How to appear in AI overviews

If you’ve been wondering how to appear in AI overviews, the good news is that it isn’t too difficult. This relatively new feature in Google Search is a prized asset in organic visibility. Your SEO strategy doesn’t need to do a U-turn to be noticed by Google AI overviews.

What is an AI overview?

Anyone that uses Google Search on a regular basis will have seen an AI overview. They were officially released in May 2024 (initially to just USA users). Google believes they can offer an immediate and useful answer to search queries. They can often capture the first clicks from those conducting searches.

Here’s an example of one when a user in the UK searches for “Prestashop SEO service“. It’s a phrase that my own SEO strategy tries to capture visibility for:

Google gives a summary of the content in the left-hand side of the pane, and you’ll often see website links in the text.

However, the pane to the right shows the 3 websites that Google feels can best answer your query. As you can see, the organic visibility and presence is excellent.

It is an opportunity to feature above all the standard rankings in a way that immediately grabs attention.

Google’s guide to AI overviews

I adopt a policy of “Google is your friend” for understanding new features and how to leverage them. Google usually provides good quality documentation for all elements of SEO. Unfortunately, and for reasons that I’ll never understand, very few people seem to read them.

There is a AI Overviews and Your Website section on the Google Developers website. Alas, this is one of those occasions on which Google’s documentation on a subject is poor. They won’t give you an answer that is as simple as completing a Join-The-Dots picture in a child’s drawing book.

Why don’t Google publish how to appear in AI overviews?

If you think about it for a short while, you’ll soon realise why. This is a classic case of Google not revealing the way an algorithm works. Otherwise, SEO would be a breeze and I’d be out of a job. It never details the precise methods use to determine what will appear in search results.

I’ve published a variety of SEO related blogs covering what type of content Google likes in the past, and you’d be wise to look at other blogs covering Google Core Updates and their emphasis on UX/UI (user experience and user interface) if you want a fuller picture.

The most you get from Google is this statement:

Google’s systems automatically determine which links appear. There is nothing special for creators to do to be considered other than to follow our regular guidance for appearing in search.

Structure and layout is key to AI overviews

Like all other areas of SEO, the structure and layout of your website is key to appearing in AI overviews.

I’ve seen some fabulous content over the years. Sadly, most of it will rarely have been seen by others. That is largely due to poor website structure, dreadful layout and a basic lack of understanding of SEO principles and best practices. If you don’t present your content in a way Google can read and understand, you’ll cripple your chances of it ever being ranked highly.

Google guidelines have made this clear for a long time, but there is a new emphasis on it.

Where most websites fail

Unfortunately, for businesses, web developers and designers often leave them with a handicapped website to begin with. A priority on how a website looks often comes at the expense of how easy it is for Google to index content.

I can’t stress enough how many questions I’d ask web designers about their consideration for Google’s ability to read content. Don’t accept the standard “SEO friendly” answer, or whatever else digital agencies say to brush off the importance of technical considerations.

Indeed, the first area Google list in their Search Essentials best practices is the technical requirements to index a page. If you observe all of those guidelines, you’ll be surprised at how it can narrow the gap between a failing website and a hugely successful one.

The website platform you use will have an influence on your chances of featuring in an AI overview. WordPress sites I’ve worked on have enjoyed a lot of success. Shopify structures sites well too (abeit you have much less control over technical elements that Google likes to be tweaked). Most modern CMS platforms provide a reasonable technical structure, but some are far better than others.

Titles, Descriptions and Header rules

You’ll hear SEO people talking about meta titles, descriptions and headers. The importance of them is far more than most people understand. The technical guidance on how to use them is, again, frequently underestimated.

Page title and description issues

I see websites with titles and descriptions on pages that are identical. That’s not popular with Google. But that’s just the beginning of the SEO issues.

Page titles and descriptions are important

Title lengths are often too short or too long, and descriptions don’t adequately describe what is on the page. I’ve seen tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pages with no meta description whatsover.

I like analogies related to roads or houses, so let’s bring the good old signposting analogy into this one:

If you were responsible for signposts on a motorway, and on a sign that should point to Manchester, you wrote “Big City in North West”, it isn’t very informative for someone trying to find Manchester, is it?

Don’t automatically set page titles using an app

The lack of effort put into page titles and descriptions, particularly by web designers, never ceases to amaze me.

You’ll often find that most have used a app or plugin to automatically set the page title to contain the brand name followed by the page name that is set by the field that determines the URL of the page. This is shoddy and short-cut style work that the business/client will always pay a price for in terms of organic search results.

Header order and duplicate headers

Recent times have shown the importance of headers to Google. Finding content on a page isn’t much use if Google can’t understand the context of it, the structure of what you’re saying and, critically, allow it to summarise your content for an AI overview.

Missing H1 tags

If your page doesn’t contain a H1 tag (Header 1, the top-most header before a paragraph or section of content), you’re immediately at a disadvantage.

H2 and descending priority tags

Furthermore, if you’ve got sub-content within the H1 tag, use a H2 tag (Header 2), to let Google read and categorise it more accurately. The same can be said of sub-content below a H2 tag – that’s where H3, H4 and descending priority header tags come to the fore.

Use tags in the correct order

Having the header tags is one thing. Having them in the correct order is another that might seem to be common sense. You’d be surprised how many times I see webpages with header tags in the wrong order.

Understand the purpose of the H1 tag

You also need to avoid having more than one H1 tag on a page. Remember that the H1 tag is ultimately there to tell Google about the entire content of a page – it is the summary heading and there should be no reason to use more than one H1 for any amount of content.

Paragraph structure

Headers that lead to relevant content are a good start for directing Google to body text, in paragraphs, that give it the meat of a subject.

Keep paragraphs short

However, how you structure those paragraphs is important. They’ve got to be easily readable and in manageable chunks.

Look at how AI overviews are displayed in Google search results and you’ll see it takes and reforms the content from pages where paragraphs are neat and contain just a few sentences.

I’ve just been looking at a site on which paragraphs look more like a mass of words thrown into a single block that very few readers will get through. That’s important – it is part of the user experience that Google is currently so focused on. Break the paragraphs up.

Use bold text carefully

Your use of bold text might need revisiting too. I see far too many sites that think bold is to be used to draw Google’s attention to keywords at every opportunity.

Use it once or twice, but consider whether it is particularly important to what you’re trying to communicate to the reader. The days when 2-3 keywords in bold on a page would have a marked impact on your search rankings are long gone.

AI overviews feature images

AI overviews will show images if they’re relevant to the subject at hand, as this result for another of my target key-phrases, “Adobe Commerce SEO expert”, shows in the right-hand pane.

You might also note that there are two results in this overview that relate to my site. It is evidence that if Google likes the layout and structure of your content, the visibility gains can be significant.

The pages the AI overview links to are both unique pages. They each contain a different image.

In my experience, the Google AI overview prefers smaller images that can be reasonably contained in a square shape. Keep that in mind and observe the ‘modern file format’ best practise that Google has been trying to communicate to website owners for many years.

What is a modern file format image?

Don’t use images that are in .jpg or .png file formats, something that almost all web designers seem to ignore today.

Instead, Google prefers .webp or .avif file formats – they’re what it calls a modern file format.

You’ll find countless websites on the internet that allow you to upload and convert any image file into either of these file types.

What content do AI overviews show?

There’s no real limitation to this, or indeed a single correct answer.

Google AI overviews will display content it deems will assist the user in finding the information they want. However, in my experience, that does make it more likely to generate an AI overview when there is a specific answer to a question, or the topic is very broad.

A good example of broad content is shown in my own results. Google generates a lot of the AI overview on the Prestashop and Adobe Commerce SEO examples on this page in a way that summarises what the services might entail. It is trying to educate the user on the services that can be provided and what each means.

You could be featured with others

Don’t forget that an AI overview can contain information from more than one website. I’ve seen some results where the overview is a summary of content from 5 websites, and each had a link somewhere within the left-hand pane of content. They also featured a link in the right-hand pane.

Short content rarely gets AI overviews

Short pages of content rarely feature in my experience. You don’t need to write a novel to get a result, but Google is much more likely to reward effort than if it is hurriedly thrown together content.

Summary

If you’ve paid attention to Google Core Updates throughout 2024 and the March update of 2025, you will know how important structure and layout are to your SEO strategy.

The opportunities I’ve been able to exploit for myself and clients have come through observing structure, layout, UX, UI and quality content guidelines.

It would remiss of me not to stress that quality content doesn’t mean you have to spend days on end curating the next greatest bestseller. Try to make it interesting, unique and to give the user value and information they can’t get elsewhere.

I know this isn’t easy in a world with billions of webpages and the same content is almost certainly out there already, but you can probably better it if you put the effort in and take a different approach.

Understanding how to appear in AI overviews isn’t difficult for anyone. Read resources, follow instructions and give the world something valuable.

Feedback

I try to curate content my readers will find interesting. If there’s a subject you’d like to see covered, please let me know.

I’d also love to hear what you thought of this AI overviews blog. I can’t please everyone, but if you think I’ve missed something vital, let me know in the comments section below. Equally, if you found it useful, I’d be delighted if you’d drop a few words in a comment.