What changed on Google with the AI answer at the top, and what to do

What Google's AI Overview is

When someone asks Google a question, like "is Google Business Profile free", many searches now show a block of AI-written text first. It answers the question in a few lines, sometimes with a list, and shows a few pages it took the information from, next to it or below it. The usual links only come after that.

Google calls this block an AI Overview, and a lot of people just say AI summary. There's also AI Mode, which works differently. It sits in its own tab and works like a chat, where you ask one question after another.

According to Google's page on AI features and your website, AI Overviews only show up when its systems decide they add something to classic Search, so they often don't show up at all. The same page says the AI Overview runs several related searches behind the scenes, which is why it shows links that wouldn't always be on the first page.

That line about how often it appears made me check my own field. My count came out very different.

What I measured in 59 searches in my field

On October 2, 2026, I planned this blog around what people actually type into Google in Brazil. I took 31 search starters from the four topics I work with, like "Google Business Profile", "landing page", "WhatsApp customer service" and "online presence", all in Portuguese. For each one, I pulled Google's autocomplete suggestions with ten ways to start the question ("how", "how much", "is it worth it" and others) and with every letter of the alphabet after it. That added up to 1,147 autocomplete lookups.

That gave me 5,041 different searches. I removed the ones that have nothing to do with hiring a service, like login, download, jobs, courses and app downloads, and 4,655 were left. From those, I picked 59 that represent the four topics, from price questions to how-to questions, and had Apify open the first page of Google for each one and save everything on it. The searches ran on google.com.br, in Brazilian Portuguese, as a desktop computer in Brazil.

The two searches without an AI Overview were "how to delete a negative review on Google" and "website or Instagram". The other 57 had one, including very commercial searches like "how much does a website cost", "website for a lawyer" and "how much does a WhatsApp AI agent cost".

How I counted. Apify returns a field for the AI Overview on every search. An empty field counted as a search without one, and a field with text counted as a search with one. For sources, I counted every link Apify recorded in the AI Overview panel, which was up to three per search in this run, and grouped them by website.

Where the AI Overview got its sources

Of the 57 searches with an AI Overview, 55 had sources recorded, for a total of 150 links. In 9 of them Google hid the address behind a code, and I left those out of the count. That left 141 sources with a known address, spread across 65 websites.

YouTube showed up as a source on 27 of the 55 searches, almost half. Add Instagram, and one of the two was among the sources on 32 of them. On three searches, all three sources were YouTube videos, "how to add WhatsApp to a Google Business Profile", "landing page or website" and "what is a landing page".

Something else surprised me. Just over half of the sources, 74 of 141, weren't among the regular links on that same page. Of the 44 YouTube citations, only 4 were videos that also showed up in the list of links below. So the AI Overview reaches for sources beyond the first page, the way Google describes it, and a video of yours can be cited even when your website doesn't show up in the links.

Reddit shows the opposite. It was among the regular links on 36 of the 59 searches, more than any other website, and it was an AI Overview source only 3 times. Ranking well in the links didn't guarantee a spot in the AI Overview.

On more specific searches, the type of source changed. For "digital marketing for lawyers", the three sources were two state chapters of the Brazilian Bar Association and a legal software company. For "is Google Business Profile paid", both sources were Google's own pages. For "website for a psychologist", they were two online therapy platforms, with no psychologist's own website among them.

SEO, AEO and GEO, what each one does

AI Overviews brought new acronyms for work that shares the same foundation. It helps to know what each one means, because you'll hear all three from people selling the service.

AEO asks for the answer in the first lines of the page, and this article opens that way on purpose. GEO looks beyond your website, at YouTube, Instagram and reviews, because AI tools build their answer from what they find in many places.

Google itself says, on the AI features page, that no special optimization is needed to show up in AI Overviews and that SEO best practices still apply. So I use AEO and GEO as a reminder of what to check on each page and beyond it. How to show up when someone asks ChatGPT is in How to show up on ChatGPT.

What Google says a website needs to become a source

Google's page on AI features and your website is short and clear. To show up as a link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. There are no additional technical requirements. It also says you don't need a new AI file or any special structured data.

• Let Google's crawler in, in robots.txt and in any hosting or security service that sits in front of the website
• Link your pages to each other, so Google finds all of them
• A page that's easy to use, that loads fast and works on a phone
• Important content in text, instead of written inside an image
• Good images and video next to the text, when it makes sense
• Structured data that matches what's written on the page, if you use it
• An up-to-date Google Business Profile
• A website verified in Search Console, the free tool where Google shows you problems

In a May 2025 post on its official blog for website owners, Google repeats this list and asks for unique content that's different from what everyone else publishes. In that same post Google says that people who click a link from a results page with an AI Overview tend to spend more time on the website. That's Google's data, and I didn't measure clicks in my study.

What this changes for people who sell a service

Someone who asks "how much does a landing page cost" now reads a whole answer before seeing any link. Whoever clicks picks between the AI Overview sources and the links below, and in my count the source that showed up most was a YouTube video, with 44 of the 141 citations.

For a business that serves a local area, the map is still the part that brings in the most contact, and it follows your profile, your reviews and distance, as I explain in How to show up on Google. The AI Overview matters more on questions, where the person hasn't picked anyone yet and is still figuring out the topic. That's where your name can show up before the competition's.

Someone who saw your video cited in the AI Overview may search your name next, and then a complete profile and a website with the same answer get them to message you on WhatsApp. That whole path, from the search to the conversation, is in What is online presence.

What to do, in order

1. 1Check that your website is indexed. In Search Console, URL Inspection tells you whether each page is on Google. A page outside the index can't become a source
2. 2List the questions you answer every day on WhatsApp and at your front desk. How much it costs, how long it takes, who it's for, how it works. Those are the searches that get an AI Overview
3. 3Write one page or article for each question, with the direct answer in the first two sentences, in the words people use, and the details after
4. 4Record a short video for the same question and upload it to YouTube with the question as the title and the page link in the description. It was the source that showed up most in my count
5. 5Write the answer in your Instagram caption too, as text, because a caption is text that can be read and cited
6. 6Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current, with services, hours, photos and replies to reviews
7. 7Track it in Search Console. Visits from AI Overviews are counted in the Performance report together with regular search, under the Web search type

The limits of my count

• It was 59 searches, picked by me, from the four topics I work with. Almost all of them are questions, and I didn't measure searches like "dentist near me", which usually bring up the map
• It was one day, October 2, 2026, on a desktop computer, in Brazil. On October 14, 2026, I ran the same 59 searches as a phone, and the AI Overview showed up on all 59. That second run did not record the sources, so the source count only applies to desktop
• The sources are the ones Apify recorded, up to three per search. The AI Overview panel may show more when it's expanded
• 9 sources had no address and were left out of the count by website
• I didn't measure clicks. With this data, there's no way to say how many people read the AI Overview and left without clicking

Even with these limits, the count answers the question I cared about. On the questions people who sell a service get every day, the AI answer is already at the top, and the source it cites most today is video.