AI Overviews are dominating the search landscape

The search landscape is changing rapidly. AI Overviews now appear for over 20% of all searches, and for question-based queries, this rises to nearly 60%.

For many marketers, this feels like a threat. Research from Ahrefs shows that AI Overviews can lead to a 34.5% drop in click-through rates, while Seer Interactive reports drops as high as 61%.

But here's the reality: AI Overviews are here to stay in the search landscape. The choice isn't whether we engage with them, but how we adapt.

Today, SERP visibility is more about **brand awareness** and less about pure traffic.

If you don't rank in an AI Overview, you simply don't get seen. Period.

What does "ranking" in AI Overviews mean?

When your page is cited within the AI search response—usually at the top of the SERPs—you're effectively "ranking" in an AI Overview.

The top cited URL is directly visible to searchers on desktop without any interaction. The top three URLs become visible when users click "Show more", and all cited sources become visible when someone specifically expands the full list.

Important to understand: these "rankings" aren't final. Google's AI summaries are non-deterministic, meaning they change with every refresh—and so do the URLs they cite.

Here's what we know about ranking in AI Overviews, based on data.

1. Focus on informational, question-based queries

An analysis of 146 million SERPs shows that AI Overviews trigger on 21% of all keywords—but certain query types trigger them much more often.

AI Overviews appear in:

Additionally, 99.9% of all AI Overview keywords are purely informational in nature.

**Why is this important?** Because understanding which queries trigger AI Overviews helps you determine which content types and topics to target.

If your focus topics are all informational, you'll face more AI Overview competition—but you'll also have more opportunities to get cited.

Practical advice:

2. Make sure you rank in traditional SERPs

If you're not visible in traditional search results, you're unlikely to appear in AI Overviews.

Analysis of 1.9 million AI Overview citations found that 76% also rank in the top 10, with the top cited URLs having a median position of 2.

This makes sense given how AI systems work. They use Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), pulling from search engine indexes to supplement their training data.

If Google doesn't pick up your content in traditional search results, AI Overviews likely won't either.

Practical advice:

3. Focus on search intent, not content length

AI Overviews don't care how long your blog is—they care how well your content answers the query.

Research shows near-zero correlation (~0.04) between word count and AI citations.

Your main goal should be to answer the user's query directly and early—burying the lede only delays a Large Language Model's (LLM's) semantic understanding of your content.

**An important insight:** More content isn't always better. Research from Dan Petrovic shows that "grounding" (the SERP content Google uses as source material for AI Overviews) plateaus at around 540 words. Pages over 2,000 words see diminishing returns.

His conclusion: *"Density beats length. Focus on being the most relevant source for a query, not the longest."*

Practical advice:

4. Optimize for fan-out queries to own topics

Research suggests you can improve your ranking in AI Overviews by showing up more often in "fan-out query" SERPs.

What is a fan-out query? According to Google's official documentation, whenever a user searches and AI is triggered, the system performs a "Query fan-out", breaking a single query into multiple related sub-queries.

This enables Gemini—the model behind AI Overviews—to explore different facets of a topic and retrieve passages from multiple sites to construct an answer.

**The crucial insight:** Pages that rank across these fan-out queries are 161% more likely to be cited in the final AI Overview than pages that only rank for the primary search term.

The Spearman correlation between ranking for fan-out queries and being cited in an AI Overview is 0.77—very strong.

**Conclusion:** Ranking in AI Overviews is about building deep topical authority. Don't over-focus on individual keywords or isolated citations. Write content that covers multiple aspects of your target topic.

Practical advice:

5. Build positive brand mentions across multiple properties

AI Overviews favor brands with widespread recognition across articles, videos, and forums across the web.

This is why "surround sound SEO" matters—maximizing your "real estate" on high-intent search results pages (SERPs).

The more properties referencing your brand, the more chance you have of being mentioned or cited in an AI Overview.

Own research shows that **brand mentions are the number one correlating factor** with AI Overview visibility.

How can you proactively build off-site brand mentions?

Outreach for mentions in "best lists"

Google AI Overviews clearly favor "best" posts, with nearly 50% of all AIO citations falling into this category.

But be selective when doing outreach for visibility on these lists. When possible, offer writers a demo or short-term trial (fully disclosed) so they can give an honest review.

Instead of pitching your brand for existing articles, target authoritative sites in your niche that haven't written a "best X products" article yet.

Partner with YouTube creators for product features

YouTube mentions show the strongest correlation with AI Overview visibility. This makes sense as YouTube is the number one cited domain in AI Overviews.

How to build partnerships on YouTube:

Important: find YouTubers that already appear in AI Overviews. If they mention your brand—even better!

6. Get mentioned on authoritative, highly-linked pages

Analysis of the top 50 websites mentioned across 76.7 million AI Overviews found a strong correlation (0.70) between being mentioned on highly-linked pages and AI Overview visibility.

Pages that other websites deem worthy of linking to carry more weight—when your brand appears on these authoritative sources, AI Overviews are significantly more likely to mention you.

The key is earning mentions on pages that already have strong backlink profiles, not just any mention.

Practical advice:

7. Optimize your content with structured data

There's a widely held belief that structured data can help you show up more often in AI search. However, the jury is still out on the extent to which schema is recognized by Google's AI model, Gemini.

LLMs turn words into numerical representations during training, so the schema markup within content essentially gets randomized.

Additionally, many AI crawlers can't access schema data if it's client-side rendered (e.g., via Javascript)—even though many sites rely on this setup.

But structured data is still said to have an indirect impact on AI search visibility.

During the Google Search Central Live conference, Senior Search Analyst John Mueller explicitly confirmed that structured data is critical for AI search.

This is because AI visibility hinges on search visibility, due to the RAG process (retrieval augmented generation).

Unlike AI crawlers, structured data is much better handled by Google's search engine bots. It's also crucial for search visibility, since it contributes to the knowledge graphs that search engines are built on.

In other words: structured data means you're more likely to be included in the SERPs, which in turn puts you in the selection pool for AI Overviews during RAG.

While we don't have definitive proof that schema markup helps you rank in AI Overviews, both Google and Microsoft have confirmed that structured data helps AI systems interpret content correctly.

Practical advice:

Conclusion

AI Overviews aren't going anywhere, and the rules for ranking in them are still being written.

Every strategy we've covered—from building topical authority to better matching searcher intent—is grounded in analysis of millions of AI responses, trusted third-party research, and direct guidance from Google, not speculation.

Start with topic-level optimization and genuine brand mentions, then layer in the technical improvements as you go.

Need help optimizing for AI Overviews?

At Niblah, we help companies with:

[Get in touch](/work-with-me) to discuss how we can help you rank in the AI future of search.