How to rank in AI Overviews and AI Mode, beyond Google's advice

Start with good SEO, because Google says its AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking systems. Just don't stop there, as only 38% of the pages AI Overviews cite also rank in the top 10.

What does Google tell you to do?

Google's newest guide says SEO best practices are still relevant, because its AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems.

A page must be indexed and able to show in Google Search with a snippet. Your site must also be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console.

Above all, Google says unique, compelling and useful content will likely do more for your place in AI search than anything else in its guide.

Which AEO and GEO tactics does Google say to ignore?

Google goes further, saying many of the AEO and GEO hacks suggested online don't work, or aren't supported by how its Search actually works.

That covers llms.txt and other AI text files, chopping content into tiny pieces, and special schema markup, none of which Google says you need.

It also says chasing inauthentic mentions across the web is not as helpful as it might seem, and the data below puts that to the test.

Does ranking on Google get you cited?

Ranking matters less than it did. Ahrefs found AI Overviews taking far fewer pages straight from the original results, about 76% in July 2025 and about 38% now.

AI Mode strays even further from the rankings, with Semrush finding its citations matched Google's top 10 at about 54% of domains and 35% of URLs.

SE Ranking, looking at the organic top 10, put the overlap lower still, at 14% of URLs and 21.9% of domains.

Ahrefs puts the gap down to query fan-out, which Google itself describes. Your buyer's question becomes several related searches, and the pages that turn up most often across them get cited.

Do AI Mode and AI Overviews pick the same sources?

Mostly they don't: when Ahrefs compared answers to the same queries, only 13.7% of the citations overlapped.

SE Ranking found much the same across 10,000 keywords, with just 10.7% of URLs and 16% of domains in common.

AI Mode also casts a wider net, citing 7 sites per answer on average where AI Overviews cite three, Semrush found.

Yet the answers themselves usually land in the same place, agreeing on what to say nine times out of ten, in different words and from different sources.

Google says as much: AI Mode and AI Overviews may use different models and techniques, so the links they show will vary.

There is some carry-over, though, because if an AI Overview names your business, there's a 61% chance AI Mode does too.

Does AI Mode give the same answer twice?

AI Mode often changes its sources when you ask the same thing several times on the same day. Across three runs, only 9.2% of URLs matched.

Does being cited mean being chosen?

Being cited and being chosen are not the same, and YouTube shows why: Ahrefs found it is the most cited source in AI Overviews.

But in our own study of 6,517 AI answers, YouTube was cited constantly on Google AI Overviews and decided nothing.

What gets a business named?

What gets you named is being talked about, for real. Across 75,000 brands Ahrefs studied, web mentions correlated strongly with AI visibility, at 0.66 to 0.71.

So Google is right that fake mentions are a poor bet, but the data says real ones count for a great deal.

Links and page counts, by contrast, barely registered, with very weak correlations for link metrics and almost no relationship with how many pages a site has.

AI Mode leans hardest towards names people know and search for, which Ahrefs says makes it the hardest for a newer name to break into.

Ahrefs is careful to add that this is correlation, not causation.

How do you rank in AI Overviews and AI Mode, then?

So Google is right that SEO comes first, and the data shows it is no longer the whole job.

Keep doing the SEO first, because Google's AI features won't link to a page unless it's indexed and eligible for a snippet.

But stop treating a single keyword as the job. AI Overviews build answers from several related searches, so answer the related questions your buyers ask too.

Get your name talked about on many sites too, because web mentions track AI visibility far more closely than links do.

And track AI Overviews and AI Mode separately, because for the same question they cite different sources. Google's Generative AI performance report in Search Console is the place to start.

There's a difference between showing up and being recommended.