Google's new AI Overviews search feature provides a summarized answer to a search query and links to more information. It activates when the user's intent is to quickly understand information tied to a task. The feature sources information from the web and Google's Knowledge Graph. Not just informational queries, but creators, ecommerce stores, and other businesses can also benefit from AI Overviews links.
AI Overviews uses Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), a system that sits between a large language model and a database of external information. This can be used to verify the information provided by a large language model or to show where to read more about the question being answered.
Inclusion in AI Overviews is automatic. Google's documentation states that following their guidelines for regular search ranking is all that's needed for ranking in AI Overviews. Google's "systems" determine what sites appear for the topics surfaced in AI Overviews.
Google has been matching webpages to concepts since 2015. This is part of determining what sites are ranked in AI Overviews. Google emphasizes the importance of Topic Targeting in SEO. The same optimizations described in their Search Essentials documentation for Google Search ranking apply to Google Overview ranking.
