Wondering how to optimize for AI Overviews and still rank in Google? Learn what they are, how they work, and how bloggers can adapt, stay visible, and even benefit from this new search feature.
AI Overviews – a Google Search feature – have been around for a while, but they have now become quite a common thing to see on top of the search results.
Naturally, as a blogger, you might wonder what they are exactly, why they’re pushing the actual results down the page, what that means for you and your traffic, and whether you can benefit from this instead of seeing it as the enemy.
So in today’s post, I’ll share a bit more about them, how they work, and how to make the most of them as bloggers.
What are AI Overviews?
They are AI-generated summaries of the search results. They get information from different sources and give you a summary, often on top of the search results page, and this eliminates the need to click anything or go to any website to learn more.
This feature uses generative AI to give you short summaries of topics (and the links to the sources in case you want to learn more) in response to your search queries.
This is helpful because you usually see exactly the answer you need and can save time, unless you want to dig deeper.
The results appear at the top and that makes it convenient. Their position in the SERPs is even referred to as ‘position zero’ as they are placed before anything else.
That raises some concerns among bloggers, website owners, businesses and publishers in general.
And here are some interesting facts.
According to this study, ‘47% of organic searches now have AI Overviews. AI Overviews take up 42% of the screen on desktop, 48% on mobile.’
As Google announced recently, ‘AI Overviews are now available in more than 200 countries and territories and in more than 40 languages’.
And during the March 2025 core update, it spiked in 3 specific industries – entertainment, restaurants, and travel.
Updates with it are happening constantly, and its popularity is only increasing, so this is definitely not all. We probably can’t predict how exactly it will change search as we know it, and how that will affect bloggers.
The best way to understand what this feature looks like is to see an example of it.
I just searched this earlier today, and my result was from AI Overviews.
When you click ‘Show More’, you see a summary of the topic, with the main points organized well. On the right, you also see the main sources that were used and can go to any of them.
But would you really want to?
Depends on your goal. Most people use Google for quick answers (especially if they are not in business) and this is plenty. Even for me, it sort of answered my question because I already knew enough about it and just wanted a quick reminder.
For bloggers and other publishers, however, there are both pros and cons. let’s dive into them, before we talk about how to optimize for AI Overviews.
The Pros and Cons
AI Overviews is the future of search, and we need to embrace it.
It can be pretty awesome for users who are getting more used to using ChatGPT as their search engine. So any attempt to still use Google is a win.
However, that might not be very beneficial to bloggers. Here’s why.
For a start, it’s pretty hard to rank high these days anyways. And with one more thing pushing our pages down the search results, we can barely make it on the first page.
As you probably know, any other page isn’t really getting any traction.
People are also getting used to AI Overviews and seeing it as more than enough.
In fact, ‘Thanks to AI overviews, 60% of searches are now complete without users clicking through to other websites.’ (Source)
And here’s what the Director of Content and SEO at WordStream says:
“The SERP has been getting more competitive and challenging for years, forcing businesses to increase their ad budgets to get people to their sites…But AI Overviews are going to reduce clicks to organic links even more dramatically than ad-heavy SERPs did. I’ve seen SERPs where the full screen above the fold was dominated by ads, followed by a full screen of an AI Overview, before you even get to the rest of the results.”
The way the text is structured also makes it unnecessary to research further, go to sites, or invest more time.
We’re all short on time so we value anything that’s to the point and only gives us what we need. AI Overviews seems to be doing just that.
They also make the information accessible to the public. Some people weren’t using Google well in the first place, and didn’t know how to actually find what they are looking for, so now that process is simplified for them, and it happens in a matter of seconds.
It also requires less (or no) thinking on their end. And with the short attention spam of users and the many distractions we all have, that’s another benefit.
Some other disadvantages are that there may be inaccuracy in the answers (and people who know that still browse the old way). Add to that the fact that relying only on AI Overviews can become a habit, which takes people away from browsing sites, exploring the Web, researching a topic further, and finding new blogs and signing up for their newsletters.
Sometimes queries can be misinterpreted too, but that might improve over time. AI Overviews have gone wrong multiple times and that led to some crazy information being recommended by Google.
Some predictions regarding this are that Google’s reputation and industry dominance are at risk, organic traffic to sites will keep declining, and with that the SEO best practices are changing too.
In addition, AI can copy content and use it without giving proper credit.
And remember, it’s not just you suffering, but all businesses, even those with a big budget and who were relying on paid ads to show up in the search results.
Now that you have an idea of what’s going on, let’s see whether there’s any hope for us, and if there’s anything to gain here.
If you know me, you know my way of thinking about this – with anything new that seems like a threat, there are also opportunities, gaps to fill, ways to adjust, and even ways to thrive as a result of it.
So let’s see how that can happen:
How to Optimize for AI Overviews
You might be wondering how links appear in the AI summary.
Here’s what Google says:
“Google’s systems automatically determine which links appear. There is nothing special for creators to do to be considered other than to follow our regular guidance for appearing in search, as covered in Google Search Essentials.”
But there must be more to it.Our new goal here can become to rank in AI Overviews and increase our chances of website visits. And while this is changing rapidly with every next core update, here are some things we can do to make it happen:
For a start, you can use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to see which keywords trigger AI Overviews and how often your pages appear in that section.
I, personally, don’t use SEO tools like that, and know many of you don’t either, so we can skip that step.
Also, needless to say you should be creating high-quality, helpful and original content. Be the authority on your subject. This helps you rank on any section in Google.
Here are the other tips:
Satisfy user intent.
Or in other words, create content for people, not search engines.
AI Overviews exist to make users’ lives easier, give them the exact answer they need in the shortest time possible.
So why not do that with your content?
Of course, you will still aim to write longer and detailed blog posts, but choosing the exact topics as well as structuring your content can be based on user intent.
Think about all the questions your audience has asked you and answer them with your next blog posts.
Keep in mind that the different types of user intent are informational, navigational, transactional, and commercial. So for each query you target, define the intent behind it, and write with that in mind.
Also, get a better understand of the way people search, the language they use and why they need help with that topic in the first place.
Create the content people need, not the content you want (at least most of the time).
Satisfy their needs. Most bloggers are teaching something, so we can assume the intent of most of your visitors will be informational. They want educational content, answers to questions, how to guides, to know the what, why, when or where of something.
Your content must answer that.
If you need help with content creation and creating your content marketing strategy, you can check out my course Fearless Content.
Check the ‘People also search for’ section.
It currently appears at the end of the first page on Google and contains questions people type related to your query.
I just Googled ‘what is user intent’, scrolled to the bottom, and this is what I see:
If you decide to write a detailed guide on the topic, make sure you add these sections and naturally include the questions and their answers.
Or if it’s directly related to your niche, you can have a couple posts on this, and use some of the questions as titles for some.
Organize your content well.
The blog post needs to be organized well, with clear points and subheadings, bullet points and short paragraphs.
Include sections in your content that are answers to actual questions. A Q&A section works well. Listicles too.
In fact, AI overviews contain lists in 78% of the cases.
A table of content works well for users and search engines.
The goal is to organize the information on the page so well that users can go through it easily, and AI Overviews will actually pick it for their summary.
Help Google understand your site.
Interlink your posts well.
Use schema markup.
Target informational keywords.
Check Google Search Console to see any indexing issues or other errors, and do something about them.
Become an authority in your niche and build your presence on multiple platforms. Google cares about your brand, not just your site and content. It values authority above many other things.
What else can we do?
We can focus on other traffic sources, such as socials, podcasting, YouTube, forums like Reddit and Quora, platforms like Flipboard, Pinterest, your email list, an online community, etc.
I hope you enjoyed this guide on how to optimize for AI Overviews.
In any case, fear won’t get us anywhere.
Times of so much change are the end of many chapters, but also the beginning of many new things. Innovators get to test things that have never been tested before and make it work in totally new ways, which can bring more blog traffic and income than ever. I’m trying to keep an open mind about this and not see the current situation as final.
