How to rank in Google’s AI Overviews
To rank in Google’s AI Overviews, your pages need to rank well in Google, and other ranking pages need to name your brand. In our study, about half of the pages AI Overviews linked to were in Google’s top 10. And 80.69% of the links next to brand mentions went to other websites, not the brand’s own site.
This guide covers how Google picks what goes into an AI Overview, what our data shows, and the steps to take. It ends with a short note on Google AI Mode.
What is an AI Overview?
An AI Overview is the short summary Google’s AI writes at the top of some search results. It answers the search in a few lines and shows links to the pages it used. For buying searches, like “best dog food for puppies”, it often names brands.
Ranking in an AI Overview can mean two things. Your brand is named in the summary, or one of your pages is in its links. The first matters most, because the brand names are what buyers read.
What triggers an AI Overview?
Google shows an AI Overview only when it thinks a summary adds something beyond the normal results. Many searches don’t get one. In our study of 10,000 AI answers, Google returned an AI Overview for 8,658 of 10,000 US keywords.
Even then, it isn’t fixed. We searched 1,000 keywords three times each. An AI Overview showed all three times for 82.7% of them. For the rest, it showed on only some of the runs, or on none.
How does Google pick the pages in an AI Overview?
There is no special code, file or schema that gets you into an AI Overview. To be one of its links, a page must be indexed by Google and allowed to show a snippet. A snippet is the short text under a search result. After that, it comes down to the same things that help a page rank.
Google also often runs several related searches behind the scenes, on subtopics of the question. This is called query fan-out. It means a page that answers a follow-up question well can be picked, even if it doesn’t rank for the main search.
Our data shows how closely AI Overviews follow Google’s normal results. About half (49.83%) of the pages AI Overviews linked to were in Google’s top 10 for the same search. Almost three in four (74.44%) were in the top 100. When a linked page ranked, its typical (median) spot was #6.
Source: Web Asset Builders study of 10,000 US keywords, August–September 2026.
Higher-ranking results were linked more often:
| Google rank of a result | Share of those results linked in the AI Overview |
|---|---|
| #1 | 49.19% |
| #10 | 9.83% |
| #20 | 3.05% |
So ranking high still matters. You don’t need to be #1, but the higher you rank, the better your odds.
Why other websites matter more than your own
When an AI Overview named a brand, the link next to it went to another website 80.69% of the time. Only 19.31% went to the brand’s own site. In other words, AI Overviews mostly name you because other pages name you: review sites, “best of” lists, news stories, forums and videos.
- Other websites 80.69%
- The brand’s own site 19.31%
Links next to brand mentions in Google’s AI Overviews. Source: Web Asset Builders study of 10,000 US keywords, August–September 2026.
AI Overviews also draw from very different pages than ChatGPT does. Reddit showed up in 49.87% of AI Overviews and YouTube in 50.81%. In ChatGPT, each appeared in less than 1% of answers. On average, the two AIs shared only 3.33% of the pages they linked to. That’s why how to get recommended by ChatGPT needs its own plan.
Even Reddit pages had to rank well: in our study, Reddit pages in Google’s top 3 were linked in the AI Overview 59.93% of the time, but only 2.10% of the time at #11 to #20.
Share of Reddit pages linked in the same search’s AI Overview, by Google rank. Source: Web Asset Builders study of 10,000 US keywords, August–September 2026.
How to rank in AI Overviews, step by step
1. List the searches your buyers make
Think about each step of buying: learning about the problem, comparing options, and choosing. Write down the searches your buyers make, in their words. Then search each one and note which ones show an AI Overview.
Buyers search in different ways by business. A homeowner looks for a roofer near them. A shopper compares products. A software buyer reads reviews and comparisons. See how this works in AI SEO for contractors, AI SEO for ecommerce and AI SEO for SaaS.
2. Study the AI Overview and the top 10
For each search, write down the brands the AI Overview names and the pages it links to. Also note the top 10 Google results, since about half the links come from there. These pages are your target list.
If you’d rather not do this by hand, start with our free AI visibility audit. It shows whether AI recommends you or your competitors, and what your buyers ask AI.
3. Get your brand named on the pages that rank
Work to get your brand onto the pages from step 2, and onto pages like them. That can mean reviews, comparisons, “best of” lists, industry news and trusted directories. The mention should be accurate and fit the page’s topic.
Buying guest posts isn’t a shortcut. In our study, only 2% of the websites AI Overviews linked to were in our catalog of sites that sell guest posts.
4. Make your own pages rank
Only 19.31% of the links next to brand mentions went to the brand’s own site. But your pages still need to rank, because ranking pages are what AI Overviews draw from. The basics:
- Let Google crawl and index your pages. Check your robots.txt file and your host settings.
- Don’t block snippets. Tags like nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex limit how your content can appear in AI Overviews.
- Put the answer first, in plain text, under clear headings.
- Link your pages to each other so Google can find them.
- If you use structured data (code that labels facts on a page), make sure it matches what the page shows.
- Keep your Google Business Profile and Merchant Center details up to date, if you use them.
This is also why the question of whether SEO still matters has a simple answer. It does.
5. Answer the follow-up questions
Because of query fan-out, Google looks at the questions around your main topic, too. Cover them on your site: costs, comparisons, how-tos and common problems. Each one is another chance to be picked.
6. Check more than once
AI Overviews change. When we ran the same searches three times, the brands named overlapped only 60.06% on average across the three runs. One check can fool you into thinking you’re in, or out. Here is how to track your brand in AI.
What about Google AI Mode?
AI Mode is Google’s chat-style search. People use it to ask longer questions, compare options and ask follow-ups. It can also use query fan-out. It may use a different model than AI Overviews, so the links and brands it shows can differ. Our study measured AI Overviews, not AI Mode.
The same basics apply to both. Your pages need to be indexed and able to show a snippet. They need to rank. And your brand needs to be named on the pages Google trusts. In Google Search Console, clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted with your normal web search data.
Get your free AI visibility audit
Want to know if Google’s AI Overviews name your brand, or your competitors? Our free AI visibility audit shows where you stand in AI, what your buyers ask AI, and how to close the gap.
