Google Releases Official Documentation on AI Overviews in Search Central

Google has published official documentation on AI Overviews in the Search Central. The information is categorized into four sections:

1. What are AI Overviews: AI Overviews appear in Google Search results when algorithms determine that generative responses can be beneficial, especially when users want to quickly understand information from various sources, including the web and Google's Knowledge Graph.

2. How do links appear in AI Overviews: AI Overviews display links to resources that support the information in the snapshot and delve into the topic further. This enables users to explore a diverse range of content from various sources. Google's systems automatically decide which links to display.

3. How to prevent content from appearing in AI Overviews: Use the nosnippet meta tag to prevent Google from displaying a snippet of your page in search results. The max-snippet:[number] meta tag can be used to specify the maximum length for your snippets. The data-nosnippet attribute can prevent certain parts of the page from being shown in a snippet. Google-Extended is not a method for managing how your content appears in Google Search. Use other methods like robots.txt or other robot controls.

4. Troubleshooting preview controls: If your content still appears in AI Overviews after implementing preview controls, ensure that Googlebot can see your implementation, use the URL Inspection tool to check the crawled HTML, and remember that recrawling can take time. You can request a recrawl to speed up the process.

Publishers don't need to take any action to benefit from AI Overviews, and creators need to follow the regular guidance for appearing in search, as covered in Google Search Essentials. Websites must adhere to the usual technical requirements, spam policies, and key best practices, such as prioritizing helpful, reliable, people-first content and making the site crawlable.

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