AI Overviews SEO – How to get your website showing up in Google’s AI Overview

AI overviews take the top spot on a considerable amount of Google searches these days. 

According to a recent report from Semrush, in March 2025, AI overviews were found to trigger on around 13% of searches. This number has doubled since January 2025, when AI overviews only triggered on around 6.5% of searches.

On top of this, ‘zero click’ searches are on the rise. A zero click search occurs when someone taps in a query, gets the results, and then doesn’t click on any of the website links on the page.

So, more AI overviews and fewer clicks for the websites who have put time and effort into SEO to climb up the ranks. That’s quite a worrying prospect!

But should you actually be worried?

We don’t think so.

Your SEO is still valuable. It’s still capable of ensuring you’re visible in the right places for the right audience.

You just need to adapt your SEO to get your website featured in AI overviews. And adapting for the AI overview is nowhere near as complicated as you might think.

What are AI Overviews (AIOs)?

AI overviews, or AIOs, are AI-generated summaries featured at the top of the results page. Officially introduced in May 2024, Google uses AIOs to answer user queries directly.

To do this, AIOs pull information from a selection of websites that appear on the results page. If a website is used as a source, the AIO will also link to it at the top of the page.

But there’s one very important fact to keep in mind here: AIOs only pull from sources that Google considers to be of high authority.

Why you should aim for your website to be featured in an AI Overview

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is for ranking on search engines, like Google and Bing. The higher up you are on the search results, the more likely your website is to be seen and visited.

AIOs appear at the top of the search results, with links to the sources that provided the information capable of answering the user’s query.

Being featured in an AIO highlights you above every other link on the results page.

And remember: being featured in an AIO is a sign that your website has high quality, trustworthy content.

What do you need to do to show up in Google’s AI Overviews?

It’s turned into quite a controversial question. A lot of people are making out that there is a big difference between traditional SEO and SEO for ranking in AIOs.

But there isn’t too much difference at all.

Do you know what you actually need to do to show up in an AI overview? Well, if you’re doing SEO right, not much more than what you’re already doing.

For those of you unaware of what you need to do for SEO and AI:

Creating high quality content.

When you regularly and consistently publish high quality content, you become an authority in your sector.

And where does Google AI pull its information from to provide an overview? Websites that have the highest authority. (Sorry if we sound like a broken record there but it really is the most important factor of all!)

But how do you create content that Google will consider to be high quality and authoritative?

• Write using your expertise

No one wants to sift through search results written by the average joe. Google is far less likely to pull any information from this kind of content as well.

If you’re going to show up in the right place, you need to be the expert.

Expertise = quality.

From your blog posts to your product descriptions to your landing pages, everything you write should position you as an expert.

When writing content, share your insight. Be original, think about what a reader really needs to know, and go into as much detail as possible.

• Answer user queries clearly

When someone wants an answer, they don’t want to have to dig for it.

Google AI also likes it when content is ‘scannable’.

This means making your content easy to read is key to optimising for AIOs.

Answer user queries as directly as possible. Be precise and present your information in simple language, no matter what experience level you expect your average visitor to have.

We also urge you to avoid trying to stuff keywords in wherever you think they should go. It doesn’t look right, sound natural, or allow content to flow!

• Understand why people are searching for these queries

You can’t create properly effective content without knowing why people are searching in the first place.

You need to understand the ‘search intent’ behind your relevant keywords.

It’s often thought that search intent falls into one of four categories:

• Informational: when someone wants to know more about a topic
• Commercial: when someone is interested in buying something
• Navigational: when someone is looking for a specific webpage
• Transactional: when someone is searching for a specific product to buy

But search intent tends to be more complex than this.

AIOs also tend to trigger on the more complex search intents and provide summaries of information that would be hard to find by visiting just one website.

If you understand why someone is really using search, you’ll create content that answers questions they actually have.

Combine this with steps 1 and 2 above to create content that is then more likely to show up in an AIO.

But how are you supposed to understand search intent when it’s so varied and complex?

Google itself can provide the answers here. People Also Asked (PAA) is another great feature in the changing Google Search landscape, where you can find out what users are also searching for regarding the same keywords you’re targeting.

Seeing similar, related searches all in one place can help you to understand what your audience really wants to see.

Creating content using these three steps is the best method for ranking in AI Overviews. Remember, AIOs were designed to provide accurate and detailed information as quickly as possible.

No one using a search engine wants to see shoddy, low quality, spam-worthy content. Google certainly doesn’t want to show this kind of low effort content to its users either.

So, having the right content on your website will indicate that you’re an expert who has what users are looking for.

That being said, it’s not the only helpful method available to you.

Here are a few more ways you to get your website ranking in AI Overviews

Format your content properly

Formatting your webpage content the right way is another part of making it easy to read.

Make sure your H1 header directly states what you’re writing about. Then, break your content down into subheadings underneath this main heading.

When creating your text body, keep paragraphs short and use numbers or bullet points wherever you can.

These formatting tips will keep your content easy to digest for both search users and Google AI alike.

Build your backlinks

Backlinks occur when a different website links to your website within their content. The more backlinks a website has, the more likely the content is to be high quality, engaging, original, and useful.

A.k.a., backlinks are strong signals that your website has the kind of content people can rely on.

It might sound difficult to convince other sites that your site should be linked to, but there are a few ways you can build an authoritative backlink profile:

• Guest post on relevant websites within your niche or connected to your niche
• Respond to journalist calls for expert sources (sometimes known as HARO)
• Consistently create quality content that is worth being linked to!

Link to authoritative sources yourself

On top of building your backlinks, make sure you link to credible authorities within your content as well.

AIOs are more likely to trust content from websites that make an effort to back up their own insights – especially when you’re linking to sources that Google already considers to be trustworthy.

Even if something seems like an established fact, it’s worth finding a source for this.

If you want to find out what websites are seen as authorities in your sector, see what websites pop up in the AIOs when you search some niche-related queries. You should also scroll down the page and see who’s ranking in the first five positions.

Make sure your pages can be indexed

Google won’t be able to use your content in AIOs at all if it can’t index your pages. You need to ensure it’s possible for their robots to crawl your website.

Most of the time this is already pre-enabled, but it’s good to double check just in case.

You can do this by logging into your Google Search Console and simply clicking on the sidebar where it says ‘Page Indexing’.

If there are any issues with page indexation on your site, this is where Google will immediately let you know. Very helpfully, it will also tell you what you need to do to enable page indexing properly.

Make your website as easy to use as possible

User experience, or UX, goes hand in hand with being featured in an AIO. Both tools ensure a user can find what they’re looking for quickly and simply.

Simply put, when a website is easy to use, your visitors will have a much better experience.

To craft a good UX, you’ll need to do the following:

• Organise your blog posts into common tags
• Arrange your webpages into general categories accessible via a navigation bar header
• Enable drop down menus within your header to allow users to see more specific categories
• Use breadcrumbs to allow a user to retrace their steps through your pages

You should also keep your layout as consistent as possible and ensure you have mobile-friendly versions of your pages.

But these methods are worthless without good content in the first place!

Content quality is the be all, end all. You can’t ever hope to show up in Google AIOs without having great content on your website.

You could use all of the methods above and more – it simply won’t happen.

Your content is where your real focus needs to be. Always aim to craft enticing and original insights that have the answers people are looking for.

Understand their search intent, write clearly and with purpose, and showcase your expertise.

Want help creating content that’ll have you ranking in AI Overviews? Talk to us