How to Rank in AI Overviews (What AEO Actually Means)

Do you know about this big change that hurt thousands of businesses?

SEO is an ever-changing marketing channel, yet AI has brought another complication you must consider.

At the top of the results page now sits a block of AI-generated text that answers the searcher's question before they click on anything. It is called an AI Overview.

The AI Overview collects information from multiple sources, presents a direct answer, and cites the pages it drew from in a collapsible panel that most users never open.

This is one of the biggest changes to how people search on the internet, if not the biggest. And it has several consequences for how SEO works and how organic traffic is measured.

Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring your content so that AI systems can read, understand, and cite it.

If you want to know how to ride the wave, adapt to current search trends, and learn the top tips to gain an advantage over your competitors, keep reading.

What an AI Overview Actually Is

An AI Overview is a block of AI-generated text that appears at the very top of certain Google search results pages above the ads and organic listings.

Google generates it by reading multiple sources, synthesising their content, and producing a direct answer to the query.

Beneath the generated text is a panel of cited sources. That panel is collapsed by default, and most users never expand it.

AI Overviews tend to appear on informational and how-to queries.

That is, searches where the user is looking for an explanation, a process, a definition, or a recommendation.

They are less common on transactional queries where the user is ready to buy. But that boundary is shifting.

The position matters because it sits above everything else on the page.

Organic position 1 was the place to be.

On many queries, it now means you appear first beneath an AI-generated block that has already answered the question, with your page listed as one of several citations.

Our PPC page ranks in position 2 for "PPC management services" and generates 4,073 impressions.

The click-through rate is 0.05%, which is two clicks from over four thousand impressions.

An AI Overview owns the entire first screen on that query, and that is the zero-click reality.

So, What Changes?

AEO is not a replacement for SEO. Instead, it is better to understand both as overlapping disciplines, and the fundamentals of one largely serve the other.

Google's AI Overviews draw from pages that rank well organically.

A site with no domain authority, quality content, original content, or technical foundations does not appear in AI Overviews just because it has structured its answers clearly.

You still need a fast, quality website, structured content, and a strong topical authority.

The key difference is that traditional SEO optimises for a human reader arriving on a page and reading it.

AEO optimises for a machine scanning the page and citing or quoting in a generalised context.

Google's own guidance is that this is still SEO: it says to make pages for people, not just for AI search, and the same clear structure serves both.

The Structure Answer Engines Lift

Of course, AI systems do not read a page the way a person does.

They scan for passages to answer a question and match the structure of a reliable reference.

This means clear structure helps your content get cited, once what it says is worth citing.

Here are several structural signals that increase the likelihood of citation:

Clear, direct answers immediately following a question or heading

If a heading poses a question, the first sentence beneath it should answer it. Always answer first.

Self-contained summaries

This is the single most important practical rule in AEO.

When an AI system lifts a sentence from your content, that sentence needs to make sense in isolation.

For example, "PPC management on a daily-reviewed account reduces wasted ad spend by eliminating irrelevant clicks before they cost anything" can be quoted alone.

Every summary point needs to survive being read without the paragraphs around it.

FAQ sections with direct answer formatting

A question followed immediately by a clear, specific answer is structurally identical to what an AI Overview is trying to produce.

If you want to appear in AI search, you may want to consider this structure.

Structured data

Google says structured data is not required for AI Overviews, and there is no special schema to add.

It is still worth using as part of your wider SEO, because it keeps your pages eligible for rich results.

Clear heading hierarchy

H2s and H3s that describe each section help AI systems understand the page structure and identify which sections are relevant to a query.

Why Ranking Number One No Longer Guarantees Clicks

An AI Overview citation registers as an impression at a high position even when the source panel stays collapsed, and nobody ever sees your name.

Google Search Console will show your page generating impressions at an average position of 1 or 2. It will not tell you how many of those impressions came from AI Overview citations versus ordinary organic listings.

There is no Search Appearance filter for AI Overviews, and the data is blended.

This matters for measurement.

If your impressions rise but clicks and click-through rates fall, an AI Overview may have appeared on queries where you previously received traffic.

This means clicks go down because the Overview answered the question before anyone clicked through.

Most articles on AEO gloss over this measurement problem.

You cannot currently separate AI Overview impressions from standard organic impressions in Search Console.

Yes, you can observe the pattern, but you cannot get a clean breakdown.

Third-party tools attempt to fill this gap with varying accuracy. But for now, measurement requires inference rather than direct reporting.

The commercial implication is that traditional traffic metrics become less reliable as a measure of SEO performance on informational queries.

What Can You Do?

This is what a practically useful AEO strategy looks like.

Start with content structure.

Audit your most important informational pages and check whether your key points read in isolation.

If a sentence needs additional context to make sense, rewrite it to be self-contained.

Our experts find this to be the highest-return single change most content can make.

Add FAQ sections to pages covering topics where AI Overviews are appearing.

Write the questions as your target customer would type them. Answer each one directly in the first sentence.

Review your heading structure.

Headings should describe the section that follows them with enough specificity that someone reading only the headings could understand what the page covers.

Do not try to be clever; fancy titles do not help AI systems understand the structure.

Write summaries at the start of long sections. A two-sentence summary of what the section covers gives the AI system a concise passage to lift while also helping human readers navigate.

Publish content to answer the specific questions your audience is asking, at a level of detail that goes beyond what a synthesised overview can provide.

AI systems cannot replicate proprietary data, case study results, named client examples, and direct practitioner experience.

How We Structure Our Own Articles for This

We have first-hand experience of what performs in AI Overviews and what does not, because we track it across our own content.

Our AI content article reaches the top of the results, in the AI Overview or the first organic spot, for three of the searches we track. We:

• give a direct answer in the opening section
• label H2s to describe what each section addresses
• include FAQ sections at the end
• write summary sentences at the start of each section to be read in isolation

We also include our own campaign data, named client results, and specific examples from accounts we manage.

Of course, AI cannot replicate this.

Our PPC page's 0.05% CTR with 4,073 impressions for "PPC management services" is a unique data point.

It is also the kind of specific evidence that increases the likelihood of citation. Other sources cannot generate this.

It is original.

What to Do About It Commercially

The zero-click reality raises a significant commercial question. If AI Overviews answer the question before anyone clicks, what is the point of ranking in them?

Being cited in AI Overviews builds brand presence at the top of the page even when it does not drive immediate traffic.

A user who sees your brand name cited repeatedly in authoritative AI-generated responses builds familiarity with your business across multiple touchpoints.

The more practical response is to build content that competes on what an AI Overview cannot deliver.

A generated text block cannot run a calculation for a specific set of inputs, show live pricing, or display client results with named businesses and verified numbers.

It cannot offer an interactive tool or a consultation.

Calculators, comparison tools, proprietary data, real case studies with specific numbers, and content that requires interaction to deliver its value are the appropriate response.

For purely informational content, accept that some of it will generate brand presence rather than traffic, and measure accordingly.

For commercial content, build in elements to raise user engagement.

A Note on AI-Generated Content and AEO

If AI Overviews look for direct answers and clear structure, could you simply use AI to generate that content at scale?

The short answer is that it is the wrong approach, and not for ethical reasons alone.

AI-generated content that synthesises existing sources produces text that an AI Overview can already generate.

It does not add proprietary data, practitioner experience, or the specific named examples that distinguish citable sources from generic ones.

If you want to know more about how this could affect your content strategy, the article Should I Use AI For The Content On My Website covers the trade-offs in full.

How to Measure It (and Why That Is Harder Than It Sounds)

Track impressions, CTR, and average position in Search Console, segmented by query type.

For queries where an AI Overview appears, expect high impressions and low CTR.

Use Search Console's query data to identify which terms generate impressions at 1 to 3 with unusually low CTR.

Cross-reference with manual searches to see whether an AI Overview is present.

Track brand searches over time. A rising volume of branded searches alongside high AI Overview impressions suggests the citation is building awareness without clicks.

If you are weighing up whether this work is worth funding, our SEO costs article sets out what an SEO campaign costs and the return it delivers.

At the time of writing, today's tools cannot handle this.

You can infer, observe patterns, and draw reasonable conclusions.

But you cannot currently get a clean, direct breakdown of AI Overview performance in any Google-native reporting.

Our experts suggest that you work with the data you have and treat suspiciously low CTR on high-impression informational queries as the clearest signal.

Ready to Appear in the New AI Overview?

Have your click-through rates hit a new low? AI Overviews may be part of the explanation.

Our SEO experts create up-to-date strategies that put you in front of potential customers in the new AI search era.

Get in touch with the CreateTheWeb team for a FREE enquiry to discover where your content stands and how you can increase your brand presence in search.