Optimizing for AI Overviews and AI Mode: What Google Says

This guide is for site owners who keep hearing about “GEO” and “AEO” and want to know what Google itself says about appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Everything below comes from two pages of Google Search Central documentation, so it describes Google Search only. Other AI products have their own crawlers and rules, which the AI Crawler Access Checker can help you review.

The short answer

Google states that the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Search, and that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor any other special optimization. These features are rooted in Google’s core ranking and quality systems, so the work that helps a page rank in classic Search is the same work that makes it eligible here.

How the features work

AI Overviews and AI Mode are different experiences. AI Overviews help people get to the gist of a complicated topic and provide a jumping-off point to explore links. They are only shown when Google’s systems determine that they add something beyond classic Search, so they often don’t trigger. AI Mode is aimed at queries that need further exploration, reasoning or comparison, and returns a longer AI-powered response with links to supporting websites. Google notes that the two may use different models and techniques, so the responses and links they show will vary.

Google describes two techniques behind these features:

• Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), also called grounding. The system uses core Search ranking to retrieve relevant, up-to-date pages from the Search index, reviews the specific information on those pages, and generates a response that links to the pages supporting it. See RAG and grounding.
• Query fan-out. The model issues several related searches at once to gather more information. Google’s own example: for “how to fix a lawn that’s full of weeds”, the fan-out queries might include “best herbicides for lawns”, “remove weeds without chemicals” and “how to prevent weeds in lawn”. See query fan-out.

What makes a page eligible

To be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet, which means meeting the normal Search technical requirements. Google lists no additional technical requirements. It also warns that meeting every requirement does not guarantee crawling, indexing or serving.

Google’s longer optimization guide adds that a site must be included in the generative AI features in Search Console to be eligible for display. Verify your site in Search Console and check that report rather than assuming.

What Google says to focus on

Content that isn’t a commodity. Google says unique, useful content will likely influence your presence in generative AI search more than anything else in its guide. It distinguishes commodity content, such as “7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers”, which is based on common knowledge and could originate from anyone, from non-commodity content that offers a first-hand or expert take. A first-hand review gives a perspective that a summary of existing material cannot. The guide’s advice is to bring in-depth experience and not recycle what others have already said or what a generative AI model could easily produce.

Content organized for readers. Paragraphs, sections and clear headings. Google presents this as writing for people, not as formatting for machines.

Images and video, where they help. Generative AI features can bring in images and video, so supporting your text with high-quality media creates more ways to appear.

A clear technical structure. The same technical SEO basics apply:

• Make sure crawling is allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure.
• Make content easy to find through internal links.
• Keep important content in textual form.
• Make sure structured data matches the visible text on the page.
• Follow JavaScript SEO best practices if you use JavaScript. Google can process JavaScript content as long as it isn’t blocked.
• Reduce duplicate content.
• Provide a good page experience across devices.

Business details, where they apply. Generative AI responses can include product listings and local business information. Keeping Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date helps those details appear.

Don’t write a page for every query variation. It can be tempting to create separate content for every fan-out query. Google says doing this primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses violates its scaled content abuse spam policy, and that a high quantity of pages doesn’t make a site more relevant. See scaled content abuse.

What you can ignore

Google’s guide has a “mythbusting” section listing things it says are not needed for Google Search:

• llms.txt and other special markup. You don’t need new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup. Google Search doesn’t use them. It is fine to maintain an llms.txt for other services that read it, and it will neither help nor harm your visibility in Google Search. See llms.txt.
• Chunking. There is no requirement to break content into tiny pieces. Google says its systems can understand multiple topics on one page, and there is no ideal page length.
• Rewriting content just for AI systems. AI systems understand synonyms and general meaning, so you don’t need to chase every long-tail variation.
• Seeking inauthentic mentions. Core ranking systems focus on high-quality content, and other systems block spam.
• Over-focusing on structured data. It isn’t required, and there is no special schema.org markup for AI features. It remains worthwhile for rich result eligibility.

The terms “AEO” (answer engine optimization) and “GEO” (generative engine optimization) are common online. From Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and so it is still SEO. Google advises evaluating third-party AEO or GEO advice against its official guidance, and notes that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.

Controlling how your content is used

Google says AI is built into Search, so the robots.txt control for Googlebot is the control for how your site is crawled for Search, including these features. To limit what is shown from your pages, use nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex.

To limit AI training and grounding in some of Google’s other systems, Google points to the Google-Extended control. It is a robots.txt token:

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

See Google-Extended, and the guide to allowing or blocking AI crawlers for what each bot does.

If you add preview controls and still see your content in AI features, check that the control is visible to Googlebot using the URL Inspection tool, and allow time for a recrawl. Crawling can take from several days to several months.

Measuring results

Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the overall Search traffic in Search Console, in the Performance report under the “Web” search type. Google’s optimization guide also points to a Generative AI performance report in Search Console that shows how your content performs in these features on Search and Discover.

Agentic experiences

Google’s guide ends with a short section on AI agents, such as browser agents that read a page the way a person’s browser does: analyzing screenshots, inspecting the DOM and interpreting the accessibility tree. If that is relevant to your business, Google points to its guide on agent-friendly website practices. This is optional and secondary to the fundamentals above.

Sources

• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide

Check your own site with the AI Crawler Access Checker.