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AI Overviews

AI Overviews are short AI-generated answers that Google Search shows above the ordinary results, with links to the pages they draw on.

How it works

Google shows an overview only when its systems decide it adds to classic Search, so many searches show none. In 2023, Google tested AI answers as Search Generative Experience (SGE), an experiment in Search Labs. In May 2024, it began rolling AI Overviews out to everyone in the US.

Any indexed page eligible for a snippet can be a supporting link, unless its site is excluded with the Search generative AI control in Search Console. The page needs no special structured data.

Overviews also change where ads appear. Text and Shopping ads from Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns can show above or below an overview wherever overviews run, and inside it in fewer markets. Inside an overview, Google matches ads to both the search and the overview’s text. That needs broad match or targeting without keywords: Search with broad match or AI Max, Performance Max, Shopping or Dynamic Search Ads.

Our guide to Shopping ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode covers whether your ads already show there and what, if anything, to change.

Where you see it

  • Google Ads: ads inside an overview count as Top ads. They have no separate segment, and you can’t target this placement or opt out of it.
  • Search Console: the Search Generative AI performance report counts impressions of your pages in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Not to be confused with

  • AI Mode — a separate conversational mode that the person opens to ask follow-up questions. An overview sits on the ordinary results page.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Our Shopping ads in Czechia now show inside AI Overviews.” Right: in September 2026, ads inside overviews ran only in English, in 12 countries, and Czechia was not one of them. Elsewhere, ads show only above or below an overview.

Benchmarks

Benchmark according to Pew Research Center (browsing data of 900 US adults, March 2025): when a Google search showed an AI summary, people clicked a link to an ordinary result in 8% of visits, against 15% when there was none. This is an observation, not an experiment. Your niche may differ.

Sources