What is AI Overviews?

When you search a question, Google may write an answer at the top of the page instead of only listing links. It builds that answer by summarising several pages and citing them alongside.

For a site owner this cuts both ways. Being cited puts your name above every ordinary result. Not being cited means the searcher can get their answer and never scroll, even if you rank first underneath.

Sources are drawn mostly from pages that already rank for the query, so conventional ranking work is still the entry ticket. What changes is format: pages that state the answer immediately, in self-contained sentences, are easier to quote than pages that build to a conclusion.