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AI Overviews and SEO: what is changing and what to do now

Simon Tern

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Simon Tern

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Google increasingly answers by itself, at the top of the page, with an AI-generated summary. And many people ask ChatGPT instead of Google. Does that mean SEO is dead?

No. But it has moved the furniture around.

What is new

  • The answer comes before the links. Some people get an answer without clicking.
  • AI picks sources. Pages that get cited can gain traffic and trust, even if clicks are fewer.
  • More questions are asked as full sentences. People type the way they talk.

What has not changed

AI answers draw a lot from pages that already rank well in regular search. So the basics still apply: clear content, good structure, technology that works and a sender you can trust.

How it works in short

The AI service fetches pages or pieces of pages, puts together an answer and shows sources. That is why it is not enough for the whole page to be good. Every section has to stand on its own. A simple test: copy one paragraph and read it alone. Would a stranger understand what it is about? Then it has a chance of being cited.

Six things you can do now

  1. Answer directly. Put the question as a heading. Give the answer in the first paragraph. Expand after that.
  2. Use short, clear paragraphs. AI picks out sections. A paragraph with one idea is easy to cite.
  3. Show who is writing. Name, role and experience. It strengthens E-E-A-T.
  4. Add structured data. Organization, article, FAQ where it fits. It helps machines understand the page.
  5. Make sure the bots can get in. Check robots.txt. If you block AI crawlers by mistake, you will not show up there.
  6. Be concrete and be yourself. Numbers, examples and your own experience. What AI cannot make up on its own is what gets cited.

Control which AI bots can get in

There are two kinds of bots. Some fetch pages to answer a question right now, and can give you citations and visits. Others collect material to train models. In robots.txt you can allow or block them separately. Examples are OpenAI’s GPTBot for training and OAI-SearchBot for search, and Google-Extended, which controls whether Gemini may train on the page. It does not affect regular Google search. The names change, so check the current documentation. Make the decision on purpose instead of inheriting an old rule.

What we do not know

  • How much traffic AI answers take varies between studies and industries, and it changes fast. That is why I do not give percentages here.
  • Search Console does not show AI Overviews as its own row.
  • Being cited does not always bring clicks. Sometimes it only means your name is mentioned.

This is the state of things in November 2026. Read it as a snapshot.

What to be careful with

  • Mass-produced AI text. It looks the same everywhere. No reason to pick you.
  • Tricks to “fool” the models. What works today stops working tomorrow.
  • Trusting that the model is right. AI can be wrong and make up facts, known as hallucination. Check how you are described.

How to measure it

It is hard, and nobody has a perfect method. This is what I do:

  • Ask the ten most important questions in the client’s industry to several AI services, every month.
  • Note whether you are mentioned, and how.
  • Follow traffic from AI services as its own source in GA4.
  • Look at brand searches in Search Console. More people searching for the name is a good signal.

Conclusion

Write for people who have a real question. Then it works both on Google and in the chat. Want help seeing how you show up today? Read about SEO or get in touch.

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