# AI Overviews

> Learn how AI Overviews change Google search and what your business can do to be cited as a source in AI-generated answers.

Synonyms: AI overview, Google AI Overviews, generative search results, AI answers in search, AI Mode

## What are AI Overviews?

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries Google places above the classic list of results. They answer the question directly, drawing on several websites, and link the sources they used alongside. The blue links move down the page — the answer is already there before anyone scrolls.

## How are they different from featured snippets?

A featured snippet lifted one passage from one page and showed it in that page's own words. An AI Overview writes a new answer from several sources at once. The practical difference: with a snippet you could recognise your own sentence. With an overview your content may shape the answer without a single phrase of yours surviving in it — and the only trace left is whether you are named among the sources.

## What changes for a business?

The logic of visibility shifts from position to citation. It is no longer only about where you stand in a list, but whether your content is used as a source for the answer. A page can rank well and never be cited — and a page can be cited without ranking first. Both are worth measuring, and they are not the same thing.

## Which pages get cited?

Ones a machine can take statements from without guessing: clearly worded sentences that stand on their own outside their page, unambiguous facts, and a clean, machine-readable structure. That is the core of GEO — optimisation for generative search systems.

## What can I actually do about it?

Three things, in this order. Make the facts about your business unambiguous and machine-readable. Write answers that survive being lifted out of their context — because that is exactly what happens to them. And check regularly whether AI systems name you, and with what.

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Source: https://btlabs.dev/en/glossary/ai-overviews
Last-Modified: 2026-08-29T20:56:55.027Z
Languages: [de](https://btlabs.dev/llms/de/glossary/ki-uebersichten) · [it](https://btlabs.dev/llms/it/glossary/ai-overview)
See also: [llms.txt](https://btlabs.dev/llms.txt) · [ai.txt (Policy)](https://btlabs.dev/ai.txt) · [identity.json](https://btlabs.dev/identity.json)