Short answer
How do I appear in AI Overviews?
Google AI Overviews builds its answer from passages of pages it selects out of its own index. To be cited, a page first has to be in that classic index, and then has to carry a self-contained passage that answers the query directly. There is no separate markup or submission — Googlebot access and passage structure are what decide it.
Key takeaways
- AI Overviews does not use a separate index: a page missing from the classic Google index cannot appear in the answer either.
- Blocking Google-Extended does not remove you from AI Overviews — that token governs training, while Googlebot feeds search.
- What cited pages have in common is a short, self-contained passage that answers the query directly.
Where does AI Overviews pick its sources from?
AI Overviews does not build a separate crawling stack; it uses Google's existing index. That means all of classic technical SEO is still a precondition: crawlability, indexability, canonical hygiene and page speed.
The difference starts after selection. Ranking judges a page as a whole, while answer assembly picks the passage to lift out of it. Being in the index is therefore necessary but not sufficient.
Frequently asked
If I block Google-Extended, do I disappear from AI Overviews?
- No. Google-Extended is a separate token governing whether your content is used to train generative models such as Gemini. The crawler that feeds the search index — and therefore visibility in AI Overviews — is Googlebot. Confusing the two means trying to opt out of search when you meant to opt out of training.
Sources
- 01Google common crawlers, including Google-Extended — Google Search Central, 2026
Queries this page answers
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