On this page
The short version
- Google doesn't always show an AI Overview. Across 17 local questions checked daily, it showed none on 69 of 335 checks (21%). For "best electrician in Burnaby BC", none on 30 of 32. (The data)
- Comparing questions skip AI Overviews most. "Best electrician in…" type questions had no AI Overview 29% of the time. Ready-to-hire questions: 5%.
- When an AI Overview does appear, it links mostly to other businesses' websites (54%) and back to Google itself (21%). (What they cite)
- Your own site matters here far more than in ChatGPT. AI Overviews linked to our test business's site 160 times; ChatGPT, 12.
- Google says there's no special trick. Be indexed, be eligible for a snippet, write the clearest answer. (The playbook)
- No AI Overview isn't a loss. On the Burnaby question, Google's AI Mode named the business in 27 of 33 answers. (What to do instead)
"How do I get into AI Overviews?" is the question I get most from local business owners after ChatGPT. The second most common is quieter, and usually comes with a screenshot: "I searched my main keyword and there's no AI Overview at all. What am I doing wrong?"
Often, nothing. Google decides when to show one, and for a lot of local searches it shows a map instead. This article covers both jobs: how to rank in AI Overviews when they appear, and what to do when Google won't show one. It's built on a month of daily checks from our own tool, LLM Visibility Lens. I sell that tool, so I've kept every number traceable to the public demo.
How we measured AI Overviews
The short answer: 17 real customer questions, searched on Google every morning from the business's own city, with every AI Overview, and every missing one, recorded.
The business is Kato Electrical, a residential and commercial electrician in the Vancouver area, and our public demo account. Each morning the tool searches his customers' questions on Google, set to his city, and stores:
- whether Google showed an AI Overview at all,
- if it did, whether Kato was named in it, and whether his site was cited as a source,
- every link the AI Overview used.
The same questions go to Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini, so we can compare. The data here runs from late August to late September 2026: 343 AI Overview checks, of which 8 failed on our side and are left out. The full method is on the how it works page.
What this data can't tell you. It's one business, one trade, one metro area in Canada, over about a month. AI Overviews change daily, and your market may behave differently. Treat the patterns as a strong hint, and check your own.
How often Google showed an AI Overview
Out of 335 checks where Google returned a page, it showed an AI Overview on 266 and no AI Overview on 69 (21%).
That average hides a huge spread between questions:
The pattern surprised me. I expected the urgent, ready-to-hire questions ("my power is out in Coquitlam tonight, who can come quickly") to get a map and the research questions to get an AI Overview. It was closer to the opposite.
- Comparing questions ("best electrician in Burnaby", "who is the best electrician in Vancouver"): no AI Overview on 63 of 217 checks, 29%.
- Ready-to-hire questions ("who can install an EV charger at my house"): no AI Overview on 6 of 114, 5%.
"Best electrician in Burnaby BC" is the extreme: no AI Overview on 30 of 32 checks. Google showed a map pack of local businesses instead. That lines up with Google's own documentation on AI features and your website, which says AI Overviews are shown only when Google's systems think they add something beyond classic Search, and often don't trigger. For "who's the best local X", Google seems to think its map already does the job.
Want to know which of your customers' questions get an AI Overview? The question finder writes those questions from your website, free.
What AI Overviews cite
When an AI Overview did appear, it linked to 123 different websites, 4,649 times in total.
| Type of site | Links | Websites | Most-linked examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other businesses' own websites | 2,516 | 84 | kerrisdaleelectric.ca (212), careelectrical.ca (201), tdrelectric.ca (149) |
| Links back to google.com | 998 | 1 | google.com, in 67 answers |
| Directories, review and social sites | 422 | 26 | homestars.com (137), facebook.com (58), Yelp (50) |
| Utility, city and government sites | 413 | 10 | bchydro.com (280 incl. outage pages), coquitlam.ca (48) |
| Kato's own website | 160 | 1 | katoelectrical.com, in 53 answers |
| 140 | 1 | reddit.com, in 45 answers |
Three things stand out, especially next to what we found when we did the same count for ChatGPT in ChatGPT citations: the sites it cites for local businesses.
Google links to itself a lot. 998 links to google.com, spread over 67 answers. ChatGPT: zero. For local questions, Google's AI keeps pointing people back into Google's own results.
Business websites carry the most weight. More than half of all links went to local businesses' own sites. That includes Kato's: 160 links across 53 AI Overviews. ChatGPT linked to his site only 12 times.
The directories differ from ChatGPT's. AI Overviews used HomeStars heavily, as ChatGPT did, but also Yelp (50 links) and Facebook (58), which ChatGPT barely touched. Even Google's own two AI features rarely agree: Ahrefs found that AI Mode and AI Overviews cite different sources for the same query 87% of the time, as Search Engine Journal reported.
Named vs cited in AI Overviews
Being cited and being named are different things, and AI Overviews show the gap clearly.
Across 266 AI Overviews, Kato was named in 38 (14%) and his site was cited in 53. Those overlap less than you'd think:
- "Best licensed emergency electricians in Vancouver that locals recommend": cited in 21 AI Overviews, named in only 7. Google used his page as evidence and then recommended other firms.
- "Who is the best licensed electrician in Vancouver BC": named in 17 of 26, cited in 21. Here the page and the name went together.
- When an AI Overview linked to katoelectrical.com, it named him in 34 of those 53 answers (64%). When it linked to google.com instead, it named him in 1 of 67.
And 36 of his 38 mentions came from just three questions, all "best (licensed) electrician in Vancouver" variations. Across the other 14 questions he was named twice in total, and never on any Coquitlam, EV charger or panel-upgrade question.
Here's the part that matters for everyone else. Kato's site does have pages about Coquitlam, EV charger installation and panel upgrades. Google didn't cite any of them for those questions, not once. Having a page is not the same as having the page Google picks. I wrote about the Coquitlam gap from ChatGPT's side in We asked AI who to hire 80 times.
How to rank in AI Overviews: the playbook
Google's position is blunt: there are no additional requirements and no special optimisations for AI Overviews. Its guidance on optimizing for generative AI search and AI features comes down to good SEO. Our data agrees, with some local detail. Here's the order I'd work in.
- Be eligible. To be linked in an AI Overview, a page must be indexed and allowed to show a snippet. Check your robots.txt, and check that your CDN or firewall isn't blocking Googlebot. Google's page mentions both. Then check you haven't set
nosnippetor a tinymax-snippetby accident. Google's robots meta tag guide explains those preview controls, which also limit what AI features can show. - Skip the gimmicks. Google says you don't need AI text files, special markup or special schema for AI features. Your structured data should simply match what's on the page.
- Answer the question in the first lines. The panel-upgrade cost question got an AI Overview 30 times, and Kato was named and cited in none, even though his site has panel-upgrade pages. The page that wins a cost question leads with the cost: real local price ranges, what changes them, the permit, and who does the work. Google's guide to helpful, people-first content is the standard to write to.
- Cover the sub-questions. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode can use "query fan-out", running several related searches behind the scenes. A page that answers only the headline question misses the related searches. Cover the cost, the process, the permit, the timing and the area on the pages you control.
- Put your name next to the answer. If Google cites your page and names someone else, as with the emergency question (21 cited, 7 named), the page is missing a plain statement of who does the work, where. Say the business name, the service and the area near the top.
- Check the page you already have. Kato has Coquitlam, EV charger and panel-upgrade pages, and Google cited none of them. Search the exact question signed out, from the right city, and see where that page ranks in the normal results. Then compare it with the pages Google did cite: do they answer the question in the first lines, name the area, and show real local detail?
- Get on the directories Google's AI actually uses. For this business: HomeStars, Yelp and Facebook. Complete profiles, real reviews, the same details everywhere. BrightLocal's study of local AI citations is a good starting list for other countries.
- Keep your Business Profile current. Google's page lists up-to-date Business Profile information among the basics, and for the map-pack searches below it's the whole game.
None of this is a trick, and anyone selling a guaranteed AI Overview placement is selling something Google says doesn't exist.
When Google won't show one: why
Most of the time, it's not about you.
Google shows an AI Overview only when it thinks the overview adds to the normal results. For "best electrician in Burnaby BC" it decided, 30 times out of 32, that a map of local electricians was the better answer. You can't change that decision by editing your website. The same rule explains why the pattern shifts between very similar questions: "best electrician in Vancouver BC" got an AI Overview 25 times out of 32, and Burnaby got 2.
A missing AI Overview becomes your problem only in two cases:
- Google shows one for everyone else and you can't see it. Check you're signed out, in the right country and city. AI Overviews are location-sensitive, which is why our tool searches from the business's own city.
- It used to show and now doesn't. That's Google changing its mind about the query, not a penalty. Check the map pack and the organic results for the same search. That's where the traffic went.
What to do when there's no AI Overview
Four things, in order.
Win the map pack. If Google shows a map instead, the Google Business Profile is the ranking factor that matters. Correct categories, service areas, real photos, steady reviews, and replies to them. Google's guide to business details in Search covers what it reads.
Rank in the normal results. No AI Overview means classic results get more attention. Pew Research found people clicked a normal result on 15% of Google visits without an AI summary, against 8% with one, as their study of 900 US adults showed.
Check AI Mode. People who want an AI answer can still get one through Google's AI Mode, and it answered the same questions every time. On the Burnaby question, where the AI Overview almost never appeared, AI Mode named Kato in 27 of 33 answers.
Across all 17 questions, AI Mode named Kato in 105 of 348 answers (30%). AI Overviews: 38 of 266 (14%). Same company, same pages, same Google. So check the systems that did answer before you conclude you're invisible.
Check ChatGPT and Gemini too. They answer every question, every time, whatever Google decides. They also cite different sites, so they need their own checks. See how to rank in ChatGPT for the playbook there.
How to tell "no AI Overview" from "not named"
This distinction is where most AI visibility reports go wrong.
If a tool counts "Google showed no AI Overview" as "you weren't in the AI Overview", Kato's Burnaby question would read as 0 out of 32. That's a failing grade on a test Google never set. The honest record is "no AI Overview on 30 of 32 checks; named in 1 of the 2 that appeared". In our dashboard that's the ∅ mark, and it's left out of the score entirely.
Three different zeros, three different fixes. For more on why single-number AI reports mislead, see why there's no rank #1 in ChatGPT.
You can see the ∅ marks yourself: open the live demo, click any day, and look at the AI Overview column.
How to track AI Overviews
Search Console won't tell you. Google includes AI Overview and AI Mode clicks in the "Web" search type of the Performance report, mixed in with everything else. There's no filter for "shown in an AI Overview".
You can check by hand: search your customers' questions, signed out, from your city, every day for a few weeks, and note whether an AI Overview appeared, whether you were named, and whether you were cited. Answers change daily, so one search tells you very little. Our own identical checks once came back 13, 25, 18 and 20 on the same day.
Or let LLM Visibility Lens do it. It checks AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini every morning from your city, keeps every answer and link, marks the days Google showed no AI Overview, and turns it all into a monthly action plan.
Agencies can send the monthly report under their own name. It shows the score, its range and the answer counts behind it, with no-AI-Overview days kept separate. See the agency plan.
The plans start free. There's a plain comparison with Semrush's AI visibility tool, everything we ship is in the changelog, common questions are on the FAQ page, and data handling is on the security page. You can also find us on G2. If you'd like me to look at your own AI Overview results, get in touch.
Questions people ask
How do I rank in Google AI Overviews?
There's no separate ranking system to game. Make sure your pages are indexed and allowed to show snippets, answer your customers' questions clearly in the first lines, put your business name, service and area next to the answer, cover the related sub-questions, and keep your Business Profile and directory listings current. Google says no special markup or AI files are needed.
Why is there no AI Overview for my search?
Google shows AI Overviews only when it thinks they add something beyond the normal results. In our local data, comparing questions like "best electrician in Burnaby" had no AI Overview 29% of the time, and that one question had none on 30 of 32 checks. Google showed a map pack instead. It's a decision about the query, not a penalty on your site.
What should I do if Google won't show an AI Overview?
Work on what Google shows instead: the map pack (your Google Business Profile) and the normal results. Then check Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini, which answer every time. On the question where Google almost never showed an AI Overview, AI Mode named our test business in 27 of 33 answers.
What websites do AI Overviews cite for local businesses?
In our data, 54% of AI Overview links went to local businesses' own websites and 21% back to google.com. Directories and review sites such as HomeStars, Yelp and Facebook made up 9%, utility and government sites 9%, and Reddit 3%. The business's own site was linked 160 times, far more than ChatGPT linked it.
Is being cited in an AI Overview the same as being named?
No. Google often cites a page as evidence and recommends someone else. On one emergency-electrician question, our test business's page was cited in 21 AI Overviews but the business was named in only 7. Put a clear statement of who you are, what you do and where, near the top of the page.
Can I see AI Overview traffic in Search Console?
Not separately. Google counts AI Overview and AI Mode appearances and clicks inside the "Web" search type of the Performance report, mixed in with normal results. To know whether you appear in AI Overviews, you have to check the searches themselves, ideally daily, from the right location.
Do I need special schema or an llms.txt file for AI Overviews?
No. Google's documentation says there are no additional technical requirements and no special schema, AI text files or markup needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Structured data should simply match the visible content, as with any Google search result.
Harjeet Singh Bedi Founder, LLM Visibility Lens · SEO consultant, Bedi SEO
Harjeet is an SEO consultant who runs Bedi SEO and works hands-on with local businesses, online stores and agencies. He built LLM Visibility Lens after clients kept asking whether they showed up in ChatGPT and Google's AI and nobody could give them an honest, measured answer. Every figure in this article comes from answers his tool collected.