Google has changed search. Again.

Their relatively new feature, the AI Overview, sits at the top of certain results pages, summarizing content from various websites. It gives users quick answers—often without needing to click. For businesses, that shift is significant.

We found how to get into that overview.

It’s an AI-generated summary that pulls information from indexed pages. You’ll usually see it on queries with informational intent—questions, not products. Think “how does wind energy work” rather than “buy hiking boots.”

The short answer? Rank high.

But we wanted the full answer, so we ran the numbers.

This is the part of the overview you see immediately.

• 50% of sources here ranked in the top 3 organic results for the searched keyword.
• 86% ranked in the top 10.
• 11% were ranked outside the top 10 (but within the top 100). Half of these were YouTube links.
• 3% came from unranked sites.

These sources appear when users click into specific sections of the overview for more detail.

• 38% were in the top 3.
• 72% in the top 10.
• 23% came from positions outside the top 10 (but inside the top 100). When excluding YouTube and Wikipedia, that number drops to 20.5%.
• 5% were unranked.

When looking at all referenced pages:

• Top 3: 40%
• Top 10: 75%
• Outside Top 10 (inside top 100): 21%
  (17.6% without YouTube/Wikipedia)
• Unranked: 4%

Because the AI Overview is mostly for informational intent searches, most businesses selling products or services will likely see a dip in traffic, but leads shouldn’t be impacted by it. Information-based websites will be harmed by this, since some users will get all the info they need from the overview and not click into any websites.

If users want more information than just the snippet provided, they will likely click into one of the referenced sources in the overview or one of the top organic results, like normal, so either way, the best practice for your business is to focus on growing your organic rankings.

Reach out to us to increase your organic rankings and appear in Google’s AI Overview.

Update July 24, 2025:

Google’s Gary Illyes confirmed that AI Search doesn’t require specialized optimization and that standard SEO is all that is needed to appear in AI results.