What Are Google AI Overviews and How Do They Work

Google AI Overviews are AI generated summaries that appear at the top of some Google search results, with links to the pages that support them. The bottom line: they began running regularly in May 2024, they now reach more than 2.5 billion people a month by Google's I/O 2026 figure, they appear on a minority of searches, they reduce clicks to traditional results, and Google's new reporting lets sites see their impressions, though not clicks, for the first time.

New to the term? What is answer engine optimization covers the basics.

What they are and how they differ from AI Mode

An AI Overview is a summary placed above the results for queries where Google's systems judge it would add value, with links to sources. AI Mode is a separate, conversational experience in Google Search that supports longer questions and follow ups. Google reported on its Q2 2026 earnings call that AI Mode has passed 1 billion monthly active users since expanding globally in October 2025, and that AI features send billions of clicks to websites every week. Third party summaries attribute the 2.5 billion monthly user figure for AI Overviews to Google I/O in May 2026.

When they appear

Google says AI Overviews are only shown when they are additive to classic Search and often do not trigger. Pew Research found that 18 percent of the Google searches in its March 2025 sample produced an AI summary. Whitespark's 2026 analysis, as reported by Elev8, found AI Overviews on about 68 percent of local business type queries, so the rate depends heavily on the kind of query.

What they do to clicks

Finding	Source
Users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without	Pew Research, 900 US adults, March 2025
Users clicked a link inside the summary in 1% of visits	Pew Research
Users ended their session after 26% of pages with a summary, against 16% without	Pew Research
Organic click through rate fell 61% on queries with AI Overviews, and brands cited in them earned 35% higher organic click through than uncited brands	Seer Interactive, via The Digital Bloom

Pew's sample was 900 adults and 68,879 searches, and Seer's was 3,119 informational queries across 42 organizations, so the exact numbers vary by query type. The direction is consistent: an AI Overview absorbs clicks, and being cited inside it is worth more than ranking below it.

How to see your own exposure

Open Search Console's generative AI features report. Google announced it on June 3, 2026. It reports impressions from AI features, not clicks, and covers data from May 18, 2026.
Check the queries that trigger overviews. Search your important queries in a fresh browser session.
Record whether an overview appears and which sources it links. Repeat several times, since an overview has about a 70 percent chance of changing between observations.
Confirm eligibility. Indexed, snippet eligible, crawlable.
Improve the pages that support your important topics. Clear, answer first, sourced.

Controls

Publishers who do not want content used can apply nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, or noindex. These affect how a page appears across Search, so weigh the trade off before using them.

Questions people ask