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It’s no secret that AI-powered results are the present and future of Google search. If your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy doesn’t include AI Optimization, you are falling behind.
Google’s AI Overviews are a top-of-SERP feature that provides AI-generated answers, summaries, insights, and more. They are powered by Google’s Gemini family of large language models and are designed to answer complex questions directly on the search results page, rather than requiring an additional follow-up query. If your website is cited in an AI Overview, it counts as an impression in the number 1 position, even if several other websites are also cited within the same overview.
The concept of Search Generative Experience with Google dates back to May 2023, with AI Overviews going out to the masses on May 14, 2024. Further advancements in 2025 include the US rollout of Google AI Mode, which is an advanced language model that expands AI Overviews’ advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal capabilities. It also allows for follow-up questions and a more conversational search.
It’s true that with the addition of AI Overviews, there is more SEO urgency than there has been in the past. But it’s important to note that Google recommends applying the same foundational SEO best practices when optimizing for AI Overviews and other AI-generated search features that they have for years. With that in mind, the following should all help increase AI Overview visibility.
The quality guidelines that Google uses to evaluate content and determine its rankability are based on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust, or E-E-A-T. This is especially important for sites that specialize in someone’s well-being, such as health, wellness, or personal finance, also known as Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sites.
Google’s ultimate goal is to serve content that is most relevant and helpful to the user, and it prioritizes content from credible sources. The importance of establishing E-E-A-T was amplified with the August 2023 Google Core Update and September 2023 Helpful Content Update. Sites that demonstrated E-E-A-T principles generally experienced a boost after those updates, while sites with low-value content or content written solely for the purpose of ranking in search results typically saw declines in rankings and traffic.
The same guidelines for creating people-first, helpful content apply to showing in the AI Overviews. The reason why Google serves them up is to provide more and easier-to-understand information than a traditional search result, right on the search results page. Google is crawling the web to gather and compile this information, so naturally, they want to provide the highest value and most accurate information they can find.
Creating long-form content that answers users’ questions, structuring content in bulleted lists or tables, and adding content hubs to a site are all ways to organize content in a way that is user-friendly and easily parsable by Google, while also being an effective method for establishing site expertise.
Users and Google alike prefer an easy to navigate website that loads quickly. Passing Core Web Vitals, having a mobile-friendly website, avoiding intrusive pop-ups and ads, and having a clear and easy to follow site structure are all considered when evaluating page experience. Google seeks to reward a seamless user experience, and good UX can sometimes be a differentiator between you and another highly authoritative competitor.
If Google can’t discover or crawl your content, it won’t index or appear in the search results. Don’t block important content in the robots.txt or with a meta robots noindex tag. At the same time, don’t allow too many pages that have low value to organic search — such as search results pages, sorted product sets, wishlist pages, etc. — to be crawled, as this doesn’t give a clear sense of priority content and eats up daily crawl budgets.
Ensuring the site is architecturally sound and well organized is also essential for Google to crawl your site as efficiently as possible. Internally linking to high priority pages and having a clear site structure using breadcrumbs shows a clear page hierarchy while telling Google this is content you are proud of, so to speak, and that your company feels the content deserves to rank well.
Using structured data when applicable or relevant to the page provides Google with more information about the content’s purpose and intended use. Google parses structured data when serving up traditional featured snippets, such as the answer box and People Also Ask.
Organization schema on your homepage and about us pages, local business schema, product schema, how-to schema, etc, can all be read by Google and used to modify the appearance of your search results page listings. It’s possible that they are also used as a factor in appearing in AI Overviews.
Videos and images are also appearing in AI Overviews at an increasing rate. It’s estimated that up to 35% of how-to or instructional content also has a YouTube video included in the AI Overview, and up to 10% of current event searches have a video in the AI Overview. When developing long-form or informational content, relevant and helpful imagery and videos demonstrate E-E-A-T and are much more engaging for the user. Don’t forget to optimize your videos and generate a transcript, as well as provide additional on-page copy around the video.
Although there is no clearly defined AI-specific optimization strategy, the foundational aspects of SEO have not been rewritten for AI Overviews. Yes, SEO is harder and more competitive than ever, but that’s even more reason to adapt your content strategy if you haven’t already. AI-powered search results are here to stay, so it’s time to make sure your business is as well.
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