How to rank in AI Overviews on Google and beyond

Growing up, the only “top 10” I cared about was MTV’s Total Request Live (TRL). When I started working, that became the top 10 results in the Google SERP. Now, my eyes are set even higher as we marketers explore how to rank in AI Overviews.

According to Google, AI Overviews (aka position zero) now reach 1.5 billion monthly users across 200 countries, and it’s affecting both website traffic and marketing results.

The good news? This isn’t a reason to panic. AI Overviews reward clarity, structure, and genuine expertise. So, if your content is well-organized and delivers real value (as I would hope it does), you’re already halfway there.

Even if you aren’t, this guide breaks down exactly how AI Overviews work, what it takes to get your content cited in them, and how to measure your visibility in a world where a click isn’t always the right success metric.

Table of Contents

According to Google, AI Overviews do just that, helping users understand information from multiple sources rather than needing to click different links to maybe find what they need.

AI Overviews are most likely to appear for long-tail, educational queries than transactional or short keyword searches, but why exactly?

Well, longer queries usually mean the user needs a deeper explanation, comparison, or step-by-step guidance, which AI summaries can offer and traditional results cannot.

For example, searches like “how to film a music video” or “what is Total Request Live” are prime for AI Overviews. (Yes, I’m flying my millennial flag high right now.)

Think about it. If I search “how to film a music video,” I need detailed instructions to do it successfully, right? The AI Overview, which appears with the video and more, is necessary and appreciated. However, if I searched for something transactional, like “where to buy a CD,”— not so much.

TLDR: AI Overviews gives you what it believes is a direct, accurate answer to your question; traditional search gives you resources to find the answer yourself.

Why should marketers go after AI overviews?

Growth data shows just how impactful AI Overviews have been.

Recently, McKinsey found that half of Google’s results already feature AI-powered features like overviews, and trends predict that number will reach 75% by 2028. On top of that, Google announced at I/O 2025 that AI Overviews now reach 1.5 billion monthly users across 200 countries.

This has massive awareness and traffic implications, which we detail in “Is AI Killing Web Traffic? How AI Overviews Impact Organic Website Traffic” and “How AI is Impacting SEO.”

All this considered, marketing calling orders are pretty clear. If our marketing content isn’t structured to be understood and extracted by AI, our brands will be invisible to a massive and growing audience.

That’s where answer engine optimization (AEO) — sometimes called generative engine optimization — comes in.

Unsure how you’re performing in AI engines currently? Find out for free and how to improve with HubSpot’s AEO Grader.

Research finds that anywhere from 40–76% of AI Overview citations also appear in the top 10 search results. So, a healthy share of citations comes from pages outside the top 10. Google selects content based on how well it answers the query, not just on position.

Read: How to Use Google AI Search | SEO AI Trends

So what does Google look for when selecting content?

1. Clarity and Extractability

Content that answers a question directly and succinctly is far easier for AI systems to crawl and uncover for searchers. Google’s official guidance on AI search says the best approach is to create content that your readers will actually find useful, not content that merely technically covers a topic. In other words, offer real value and expertise.

If you’ve been a good content marketer all these years, this shouldn’t be a big shock.

2. Authority and Trust Signals

This is a mix of how established and comprehensive your coverage on a topic is, both on and off your own web properties. Think backlinks, brand mentions, and topical expertise.

3. Easy to Skim Structure

This means headings, lists, question-based subheadings, human authorship signals, and overall, clearly defined sections. Research from SE Ranking consistently finds that well-structured content performs better in AI Overview citations.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: A lot of this sounds like SEO, and I can’t disagree with you entirely.

But while the long, narrative-heavy content SEO promotes performs well in traditional rankings, if the actual answer to a query is buried three paragraphs in, it’s far less likely to be cited. AEO’s aim is to make sure it still does.

Pro Tip: Think of your page as a source document that Google is actively quoting. The more precisely your content answers a specific question and the easier it is to find that answer, the higher the chance it gets cited.

Tactics to Help You Show Up in AI Overviews

Ok, I’m going to be real with you: Nothing about AEO is set in stone.

Marketers old and new, and businesses big and small, are experimenting to figure out exactly what helps AI surface them. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but some tactics are strongly supported by research and even our own experience here at HubSpot.

This Q&A format works because it mirrors how AI systems find information. Meanwhile, studies show that dense paragraphs make it harder for AI to find what it needs, causing it to perform worse.

If you’re updating an existing article, start by changing key sections to answer questions first instead of creating new pages. It’s the highest-leverage edit you can make.

Pro Tip: Explore FAQ Schema. More on that shortly.

Long-tail Keywords and Conversational Phrasing

As we know, AI Overviews are more likely to appear for informational searches rather than transactional ones — 99.9% of informational keyword searches, to be exact. And, of those, 57.9% are question queries, and 46% are long-tail queries of seven or more words. Queries of eight or more words are 7x more likely to trigger an AI Overview than shorter searches.

That said, marketers need to first identify the long-tail, question-focused keywords that trigger AI Overviews and that they want to go after.

Start with questions that:

• Require explanation or synthesis
• Map to your core topics and existing content clusters
• Reflect real user intent (pull from People Also Ask, Google Autocomplete, and your own search console data)

Let’s say you sell a search SaaS tool, for example. Instead of targeting ‘AI SEO,‘ focus on queries like:

• “How to improve visibility in Google AI Overviews”
• “How do AI search optimization tools improve SERP rankings”
• “What is AI Overview SEO and how does it work”

Follow up with conversational language and phrasing to address the query fully and accurately. But don’t stop there.

Scannable Content Formatting

Formatting plays a much bigger role in AI Overviews SEO than most marketers realize.

SellersCommerce reports that 78% of AI Overview responses feature either ordered or unordered lists, and unordered lists appear in 61% of all AI Overviews.

In other words, Google’s AI systems are actively favoring scannable, list-based formats, so format your content accordingly.

The difference between good and poor formatting is stark: a good format leads with a direct answer, then supports it with bullets or numbered steps. A poor format buries the answer somewhere in a long opening paragraph.

Good format: Question → direct answer (1–2 sentences) → supporting bullets or numbered steps

Poor format: Long introductory paragraph that eventually works toward an answer buried in the middle

For AEO, your content needs to be scanned quickly, not read start to finish. Incorporate formatting like:

• H2 and H3 headings framed as questions, mirroring how users search and providing AI with clear extraction targets.
• Short paragraphs that answer the heading question directly, that are ideally 2–4 sentences, before expanding.
• Bullet points and numbered lists for supporting information, steps, and comparisons.

Crawlability and Page Experience

While AI Overviews are chosen separately from traditional search results, they run on the same technical foundation.

Google’s guidance on AI search says that everything Google has long recommended carries directly into the AI era. That means if your content isn’t crawlable, fast, and accessible, it won’t be considered at all.

Make sure you have:

• Fast page load times (aim for under 500ms server response time)
• Mobile-friendly design as the majority of Google searches happen on mobile
• Clean HTML structure with no crawl errors or indexing blocks
• Content that isn’t JavaScript-dependent for initial render

AI Overviews don’t replace the need for strong SEO, but build on it.

Entity Schema and Topic Clusters

At the Google Search Central Live conference in April 2025, John Mueller reinforced the importance of structured data in the AI search era. Schema markup that strengthens your entity relationships is a big part of this.

Google looks at how your topics, brand, and concepts connect across your whole site.

Relevant schema types that help clarify your content include:

• FAQ schema, which signals that your content answers specific questions; pages with FAQ schema are significantly more likely to be featured in AI Overviews.
• HowTo schema, which helps AI systems understand step-by-step content structures.
• Article and Organization schema, which communicates authorship, expertise, and brand entity recognition.

Pro Tip: Don’t try to game the system. Make sure your structured data matches the visible content on the page. Misalignment between schema markup and what users actually see hurts your credibility.

Beyond schema, topic clusters help Google understand the full breadth of your expertise.

When multiple pages consistently cover related entities and concepts, it builds a clearer picture of what your site is authoritative on. This is core to Google’s E-E-A-T framework, which is Google’s quality standard for AI search just as much as traditional search.

Brand mentions and backlinks also support authority and entity recognition. Pages cited in AI Overviews tend to have strong topical coverage, clear authorship signals, and real referring domains pointing to them.

Multimodal Content

Google is actively expanding its multimodal capabilities (meaning including more than just text) in AI Overviews. It includes images, videos, diagrams, and more as a part of the answer experience, creating more opportunities for brands and businesses to get cited.

Here’s what you can do:

• Create original images, labeled diagrams (not stock photos), and other unique visual assets eligible for inclusion in the image pack alongside AI Overviews.
• Add descriptive, keyword-aware alt text to every image.
• Include short videos that summarize key concepts — video in AI Overviews is predominantly sourced from YouTube, so hosting there increases discoverability.

In a study, SparkToro found that 58.5% of American Google searches end without a click to the open web, and that was before AI Overviews fully rolled out. Today, the zero-click share has only gone up.

AI Overview tracking should include visibility checks, click data, and branded search trends. Build a measurement framework that includes:

• Brand visibility within AI answers. Are you being cited for your target queries?
• SERP impressions and AI Overview appearances. Google Search Console tracks AI Overview data, though it’s currently blended with traditional search results under the ‘Web’ search type.
• Branded search volume trends. This is an indirect way to gauge whether your AI Overview appearances are driving brand awareness.
• Assisted conversions and multi-touch attribution. Look for patterns in how AI-exposed traffic behaves further down the funnel.

Tools for tracking AI Overviews

Tracking AI Overviews isn’t as clear-cut as traditional SEO quite yet, but there are several tools and tactics you can compile to analyze how you’re performing.

This includes:

• Manual SERP checks for high-priority queries
• SERP feature monitoring via platforms like Semrush, SE Ranking, or Ahrefs
• Google Search Console impression and click data (blended with traditional search, but still directionally useful)
• Brand mention tracking with apps like HubSpot’s Social Media tools to surface when your content is cited but not linked

There are also many new tools focused specifically on AI performance, like HubSpot AEO.

HubSpot AEO is a visibility and analytics platform that helps marketers track and understand how their brand appears across AI-generated answers, including platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. HubSpot AEO enables marketing teams to:

• Monitor where their content is cited or referenced in AI responses
• Measure share of voice in AI-generated answers
• Identify content gaps that competitors are filling in AI answers

This level of visibility matters because traditional rank tracking doesn’t tell you where your brand actually shows up in AI-generated answers.

According to research by Snezzi, pages with FAQ schema are 60% more likely to be featured in AI Overviews than those without structured data. The critical condition: structured data must perfectly match the visible on-page content. Mismatched schema can hurt rather than help.

What if AI Overviews summarize my content without linking to me?

Lack of attribution is a real concern with AI Overviews, especially for publishers whose revenue depends on traffic. However, there’s still measurable value in showing up in the answer, even without a click.

Seer Interactive found that when a brand is cited in an AI Overview, its organic click-through rate (CTR) is 35% higher. Being part of the answer builds familiarity and, over time, familiarity can transform into trust.

HubSpot AEO is built specifically for this emerging landscape. It helps marketing teams track and improve their presence in AI-generated answers by providing insights into where their brand shows up, how it’s represented, and where there are gaps compared to competitors. HubSpot AEO supports visibility measurement across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

If AI Overviews are where the shift is most visible in Google Search, AEO is how marketers are starting to respond to the bigger picture. In 2026, search isn’t just about ranking pages anymore; it’s about being part of the answer.