What is AI Overviews?

From SGE to AI Overviews

Google first brought generative AI into Search in May 2023 through SGE, the Search Generative Experience, an opt-in experiment in Search Labs. At launch it was US-only, English-only and limited to Chrome desktop and the Google app. On 14 May 2024 Google announced that the summaries, now called AI Overviews, were rolling out to everyone in the US, with other countries and languages following. People still search for "SGE", so the old name lingers as an alias.

How an overview is put together

Google's site-owner documentation describes AI Overviews as a way to get the gist of a complicated topic quickly, with links as a jumping-off point for further reading. They do not appear on every query: Google shows one only when its systems decide it is additive to classic results, and says that as a result they often do not trigger.

To build the response, the model may run several related searches across subtopics and data sources, a technique Google calls query fan-out. Retrieved pages come through Google's core ranking and quality systems, the summary is grounded in them, and supporting links are shown alongside or within the text. Because AI Overviews and AI Mode may use different models and techniques, the same question can produce different answers and a different set of links in each.

What it takes to be a supporting link

Google is explicit that there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations for appearing in AI Overviews. To be eligible as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet; meeting that bar does not guarantee it will be shown. You do not need new machine-readable files, "AI text files" or special schema.org markup. The usual fundamentals carry over: crawlable pages, sensible internal linking, important content available as text, and structured data that matches what is visible on the page.

Controls if you want less exposure

• Snippet controls: nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet limit how much of a page can be shown in Search, AI Overviews included. noindex removes the page from Search altogether.
• Search Console control: under Settings, the "Search generative AI" control lets you exclude a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. Inclusion is the default, and Google states the choice is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal elsewhere in Search. It reached all sites by 31 August 2026.
• Model training is a separate matter. None of the above governs it; Google-Extended is the token for limiting training and grounding use in some of Google's other systems.

Measuring it in Search Console

Traffic from AI Overviews is counted in the Performance report under the "Web" search type. An overview occupies a single position on the results page and every link inside it is assigned that position; clicking one of its external links counts as a click. The Generative AI performance report, announced in June 2026 and available to all sites from 31 August 2026, adds a dedicated view of impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, device and date. It reports impressions only, with no click metric, and data from Search Labs experiments is excluded everywhere.

Google says clicks from results pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, meaning visitors tend to spend more time on the site. That is Google's own assessment and worth testing against your analytics. Searches that end without any click because the overview already answered the question are covered under zero-click search. Current rules are maintained in Google Search Central.