Google AI Overviews optimisation:
be cited above the rankings.

AI Overviews are the answers Google writes itself: AI-generated summaries assembled at the top of the results page for a growing share of searches, with a short list of cited sources. This programme targets that one surface. Our AEO service is the broader craft of being quotable by answer engines everywhere (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot), and GEO shapes the wider corpus of third-party pages generative engines retrieve from. The disciplines overlap, but the levers here are Google-specific: Google's index, Google's snippet controls, Google's ranking systems. If your question is why the AI box on Google never mentions you, this is the page. If it is assistants generally, start with AEO.

No, and we would encourage you to walk away from anyone who says yes. Whether an Overview appears at all is decided query by query inside Google's systems. Which sources it cites changes between users, locales and weeks, and Google adjusts the feature's behaviour continually. What we commit to contractually is the work that makes citation possible and likely: eligibility verified, one owning page per target question, citable passages shipped, schema validated, the underlying rankings worked, all reported monthly against a dated baseline. That is the honest version of this service, and the only version worth paying for.

Imperfectly, and we say so upfront rather than selling a dashboard of guesses. What can be tracked: whether an Overview appears on the queries we monitor and whether you are cited in it (recorded as scheduled snapshots, because presence is volatile and the same query can gain or lose its Overview between checks), movement in the classic rankings Overviews draw from, and organic performance overall. What cannot: Search Console folds Overview impressions and clicks into its ordinary totals with no separate report, Google publishes no citation logs, and results vary by locale, device and signed-in state. Every report separates the measured from the unmeasurable, explicitly.

You need the work; the only question is who does it. AI Overviews overwhelmingly cite pages Google already crawls confidently, ranks well and can snippet. Classic SEO is the foundation, and our own SEO retainers include this citation layer rather than selling it twice. A standalone engagement fits when search is handled in-house or by another agency and the Overview layer is the specific gap: we audit eligibility, restructure the owning pages, verify the controls, and hand your team a format they can keep applying without us. If the audit shows your existing programme already covers it, we will say so.

No, and this is the most common misconfiguration we find. Google-Extended governs the use of your content for Gemini training and grounding; it has no effect on AI Overviews, which are a Search feature built on the ordinary index. What actually controls Overview appearance are the classic snippet rules (nosnippet, max-snippet, data-nosnippet), and they cut both ways: restricting snippets removes you from Overviews and shrinks your normal listings too. For most commercial sites the citation, with its link, is worth having. We audit these controls so participation is a decision you have made deliberately, not an accident of a robots file.

Yes, clients now ask their agencies about "the AI box on Google" by name, and this programme ships under partner brands like every other service here: your reporting templates, your client calls, our delivery. It is NDA-backed, with a contractual commitment never to approach your clients and a 12-month post-engagement blackout. 100+ agencies work with us this way, and the average partnership runs past the two-year mark.

There is an order of work rather than a trick. First, make sure Google can crawl, index and snippet the page. Then give each target query one owning page whose opening passage answers it in a self-contained form. Keep the classic rankings strong, because Overviews overwhelmingly cite pages Google already ranks and trusts.