If you use Google to search for things online, chances are that you’ve stumbled across an AI Overview.
Google introduced these AI-generated summaries to the world in 2024, and they are appearing more and more frequently in the search results.
But the annoying thing is, we didn’t ask for them.
And they’re not just a hindrance for Google users, but for website owners too.
So, if you run a website, what issues can Google AI Overviews cause? Let’s take a look.
We’ll also see how to tell if your website appears in an AI Overview, and whether it’s worth trying to get cited in one.
Take this query that came up recently.
AI Overviews claimed that the Games Workshop logo is a ‘stylised eagle with outstretched wings’ when the actual red, yellow, and black logo is right there.
There are two reasons why AI Overviews are prone to providing the wrong information.
Firstly, AI Overviews can pull in inaccurate or incorrect information.
Last year when AI Overviews were in their infancy, one AI Overview attracted scorn by saying that it was okay for people to eat rocks.
Turns out it had pulled this information from an article from The Onion in 2021 – a satirical news site.
Secondly, AI can hallucinate and make things up. It can do this when it doesn’t have enough information to answer a question or it’s made an incorrect assumption about something.
Bing’s chatbot (now known as Copilot) did this in 2023, when it got the year wrong and called users out when they challenged it.
Another issue is that using AI isn’t good for the environment.
Large amounts of energy are used to train AI models and generate answers to questions. Google has announced that its greenhouse gas emissions are up 48% since 2019.
If you open up a generative AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini to ask a question, that’s not so bad, as at least you’re making a proactive decision to use it.
However AI Overviews appear whether you want them to or not.
(Of course, it’s important to note that zero click searches in Google aren’t a new thing. Google used to use Featured Snippets to answer customer questions in the hope of keeping them around.)
A study by Pew Research Centre found that only 8% of people who encounter an AI Overview will click on a link in the search results, compared to 16% of people who don’t see an AI Overview.
I’ve noticed a drop in visits to my own website too. Over the last three months, the number of impressions my website receives in Google has increased by 40%, but actual web visits have decreased by 32%.
Could other factors be at play here? Possibly.
But with the rise of AI Overviews, it feels like too much of a coincidence.
Google has started citing web pages it uses in its AI Overviews, meaning there’s a chance that search engine users may click on the links within these overviews.
What are the odds of this happening? Not great – the study from Pew Research Centre showed that only 1% of people do this.
However, it’s better to appear in an AI Overview and have a small chance of someone clicking through to your site, than not to appear and have no chance at all.
Plus as the use of AI Overviews increases and the format of them changes, this percentage may increase in the future.
Check out the ‘People also ask’ bar in Google to see what questions people ask or use a platform like AnswerThePublic which gathers this information for you.
One of the best tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
This is free to use as long as you own your website – you just need to connect your Google Search Console account or add an HTML tag to your site.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools tells you how many citations you’ve got on different platforms and which pages are mentioned, although you need to upgrade to view more info.
However, if you go to the Organic Keywords report, you can see which keywords generate an AI Overview.
Just look for the star, which signifies that you’ve been cited.
While it doesn’t help with AI Overviews, you can use Google Analytics to see which AI chatbots your web traffic is coming from.
Just go to the Traffic Acquisition report and split your report by session and source.
For example, here I can see that two visits from my website have come from ChatGPT – meaning that ChatGPT has referenced my website and someone has clicked the link.
While I can’t see what query specifically triggered this, it’s a good starting point, and it means I can keep an eye out for future traffic.
With this in mind, I created an article rating over
60 different 404 pages, with screenshots for every page.
After all, there would be no way that a Google AI Overview would show all those images.
Still not sure how to go about this? Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and search for a few queries in Google.
Which results would persuade you to click through?
It’s also important to make sure your meta titles and
descriptions are compelling.
Meta titles and descriptions are pieces of text which appear in Google, and play a key part in encouraging search engine users to visit your site.
You want your meta titles and descriptions to be:
For example, over 2 in 5 people have used TikTok as a search engine, with one in ten Gen Zers preferring it to Google.
For example, here’s an example of one for Firefox.
There are browser extensions in Chrome too which I’m surprised about. I wonder how long they’ll stay in the store for…
Adding ‘-AI’ or ‘udm=14’ to your search query stops a Google AI Overview from showing up.
What does the udm=14 parameter do?
It forces Google to retrieve only web results, meaning it doesn’t generate AI Overviews.
Bear in mind this doesn’t work for everyone.
When I mentioned this on LinkedIn, some people based in the US advised that AI Overviews still pop up for them, swears and all.
Why do people not like AI Overviews?
The sad fact of the matter is that people don’t trust AI Overviews. I ran a poll and found out that nearly half of people only trust AI Overviews 50% of the time, while a third of people don’t trust them at all. Personally speaking, I never take AI Overviews at face value as I’ve seen so many results that aren’t accurate.
Take this query that came up recently.
AI Overviews claimed that the Games Workshop logo is a ‘stylised eagle with outstretched wings’ when the actual red, yellow, and black logo is right there.
There are two reasons why AI Overviews are prone to providing the wrong information.
Firstly, AI Overviews can pull in inaccurate or incorrect information.
Last year when AI Overviews were in their infancy, one AI Overview attracted scorn by saying that it was okay for people to eat rocks.
Turns out it had pulled this information from an article from The Onion in 2021 – a satirical news site.
Secondly, AI can hallucinate and make things up. It can do this when it doesn’t have enough information to answer a question or it’s made an incorrect assumption about something.
Bing’s chatbot (now known as Copilot) did this in 2023, when it got the year wrong and called users out when they challenged it.
Another issue is that using AI isn’t good for the environment.
Large amounts of energy are used to train AI models and generate answers to questions. Google has announced that its greenhouse gas emissions are up 48% since 2019.
If you open up a generative AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Gemini to ask a question, that’s not so bad, as at least you’re making a proactive decision to use it.
However AI Overviews appear whether you want them to or not.
Why are AI Overviews causing problems?
The key reason that Google AI Overviews cause issues for businesses and other website owners is that they stop search engine visitors from clicking through to websites. Imagine that you own a recipe website which uses display ads and affiliate marketing to generate revenue. Someone searches for the query: ‘How to bake a chocolate cake.’ Instead of showing your website in the top result, Google shows an AI Overview, listing a chocolate cake recipe. The searcher grabs this recipe and leaves Google, without visiting your site. This means no clicks, no traffic, and most importantly, no money. ‘Zero click searches,’ where people get an answer to their question in Google without visiting another site, are a big money spinner for Google. In 2023, Google made a staggering $175 billion from Google Search ads.
(Of course, it’s important to note that zero click searches in Google aren’t a new thing. Google used to use Featured Snippets to answer customer questions in the hope of keeping them around.)
A study by Pew Research Centre found that only 8% of people who encounter an AI Overview will click on a link in the search results, compared to 16% of people who don’t see an AI Overview.
I’ve noticed a drop in visits to my own website too. Over the last three months, the number of impressions my website receives in Google has increased by 40%, but actual web visits have decreased by 32%.
Could other factors be at play here? Possibly.
But with the rise of AI Overviews, it feels like too much of a coincidence.
Is it worth appearing in an AI Overview?
The fact is that Google AI Overviews, as much as we might not care for them, are here to stay. This means we need to factor them into our SEO strategies, rather than fight against them.
Google has started citing web pages it uses in its AI Overviews, meaning there’s a chance that search engine users may click on the links within these overviews.
What are the odds of this happening? Not great – the study from Pew Research Centre showed that only 1% of people do this.
However, it’s better to appear in an AI Overview and have a small chance of someone clicking through to your site, than not to appear and have no chance at all.
Plus as the use of AI Overviews increases and the format of them changes, this percentage may increase in the future.
How can you appear in an AI Overview?
Google advises that you don’t have to do anything special to feature in AI Overviews – you just need to be eligible to appear in the search engine results and have good SEO in place. This makes sense. The better your SEO, the more likely you are to rank highly, and the more likely you are to appear in an AI Overview. That’s what I’ve discovered with my highest-ranking pieces of content. (So if anyone asks if SEO is now dead due to AI, you can tell them that it isn’t. It’s just working in a different way than before.) I’ve been lucky enough to appear in a few Google AI Overviews – my article about how to submit an emoji to Unicode has got a lot of traction. With this in mind, here are a few tips to increase the odds of getting featured in an AI Overview.Focus on informational content
Different search engine users will be at different points of their journey with you. Some will be discovering how you can solve their problems. Others will be comparing you to other providers. And others will be ready to buy from you. At this moment in time, AI Overviews are more likely to appear when people are at the start of their journey, seeking answers to a specific question or topic. This is sometimes referred to as ‘informational search intent.’ By answering the questions customers are most likely to ask, you can increase the chances of showing up in an AI Overview.
Check out the ‘People also ask’ bar in Google to see what questions people ask or use a platform like AnswerThePublic which gathers this information for you.
Provide information quickly
AI Overviews use what are known as large language models (LLMs) to analyse content from multiple sources. The easier it is to read through your content, the more likely you are to appear. Use headings, paragraphs, and bullet points, as well as clear and easy-to-understand language, to increase the odds of featuring. A good strategy to follow is ‘BLUF’ – bottom line up front. This is when you start your heading with the key point, and then provide the additional information afterwards.Show that you’re trustworthy
As mentioned earlier, Google has faced a lot of criticism for publishing AI Overviews that are inaccurate and out of date. So showing that you’re a credible source of information can help you get featured. You can do this by:- Regularly updating your content with new information
- Demonstrating your expertise and experience
- Linking to reliable sources
- Including quotes from experts
How can you tell if you appear in an AI Overview?
A lot of websites advise that you can see if you feature in an AI Overview by searching for your keywords of choice in Google and checking if you appear. Seriously though, who has time to do that? Google advises that AI Overviews are included in Google’s Search Console’s Performance report. However, they’re bundled in with the rest of the results and you can’t separate them out – making this a bit useless. (Will this change in the future? Possibly. Will Google make people pay to uncover this information? I wouldn’t be surprised.) There are tools that will show you which AI Overviews you appear for, but you have to pay for them. And they can be expensive, meaning they’re only an option if you’re a large business or agency, or have invested a lot of resources into ranking in AI Overviews. If you don’t have the budget for AI tools or the time to painstakingly check every keyword you use, there are a few ways you can gauge your success in ranking in the AI Overviews.
One of the best tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
This is free to use as long as you own your website – you just need to connect your Google Search Console account or add an HTML tag to your site.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools tells you how many citations you’ve got on different platforms and which pages are mentioned, although you need to upgrade to view more info.
However, if you go to the Organic Keywords report, you can see which keywords generate an AI Overview.
Just look for the star, which signifies that you’ve been cited.
While it doesn’t help with AI Overviews, you can use Google Analytics to see which AI chatbots your web traffic is coming from.
Just go to the Traffic Acquisition report and split your report by session and source.
For example, here I can see that two visits from my website have come from ChatGPT – meaning that ChatGPT has referenced my website and someone has clicked the link.
While I can’t see what query specifically triggered this, it’s a good starting point, and it means I can keep an eye out for future traffic.
How can you get traffic to your website in spite of AI Overviews?
You need to offer something that AI Overviews can’t provide. Something which tempts search engine users to click through and visit your website. What could this be? It depends on your industry and what your goal is. Here’s a personal example. While AI Overviews can show images and videos, they will typically only show a few images to support what is being said.
With this in mind, I created an article rating over
60 different 404 pages, with screenshots for every page.
After all, there would be no way that a Google AI Overview would show all those images.
Still not sure how to go about this? Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and search for a few queries in Google.
Which results would persuade you to click through?
It’s also important to make sure your meta titles and
descriptions are compelling.
Meta titles and descriptions are pieces of text which appear in Google, and play a key part in encouraging search engine users to visit your site.
You want your meta titles and descriptions to be:
- Unique
- Descriptive
- Engaging
- Truthful (if Google doesn’t think your meta title or description is relevant to the page it’s pointing to, it may rewrite it)
For example, over 2 in 5 people have used TikTok as a search engine, with one in ten Gen Zers preferring it to Google.
Google AI Overviews: Frequently Asked Questions
Got any other questions about how Google AI Overviews work? You’ll find the answers here.Can you turn AI Overviews off?
You can’t turn AI Overviews off in Google. However, if you don’t want to see them, and you don’t want to use an alternative search engine, there are workarounds:Use a browser extension
There are browser extensions you can download which will automatically hide AI Overviews for you.
For example, here’s an example of one for Firefox.
There are browser extensions in Chrome too which I’m surprised about. I wonder how long they’ll stay in the store for…
Add a qualifier to your search
Adding ‘-AI’ or ‘udm=14’ to your search query stops a Google AI Overview from showing up.
What does the udm=14 parameter do?
It forces Google to retrieve only web results, meaning it doesn’t generate AI Overviews.
Get sweary
The final (and my favourite) way is to add a swear word to my search query – Google AI Overviews doesn’t like this for some reason.
Bear in mind this doesn’t work for everyone.
When I mentioned this on LinkedIn, some people based in the US advised that AI Overviews still pop up for them, swears and all.
