SEO glossary
AI Overviews
An AI Overview is the generated summary Google places above the organic results, written from several sources and shown with links to the pages it drew on.
For a site owner the important property is that it sits above everything you compete for. Ranking first below an overview means the first answer a searcher reads is not yours, even where your page is one of the sources feeding it — which is why impressions and average position can hold steady while clicks fall.
Being cited in one is not the same as ranking for the query. The links beside an overview do not simply mirror the top results, so a page at position six can be quoted while position one is not. That makes citation something to check rather than infer.
They do not appear on every query, and the pattern shifts. Informational and comparison queries attract them; navigational and transactional ones far less. The only reliable way to know is to record, per keyword, whether one was present — which is what a rank tracker that captures the feature is for.
Common question
- Can I stop my site appearing in AI Overviews?
- Only by restricting Google's crawling or indexing of the page, which removes it from ordinary search too. There is no setting that opts out of overviews while keeping normal rankings.
Check this on your own site
- Rank Tracking
Track positions on a schedule, with the cost quoted first
- GSC Insights
Search Console data, free on every plan
Definitions are the easy part
The free plan opens every tool with 500 credits and no card, so you can see these numbers on your own site rather than in an example.
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