Definition
An AI Overview is a generated summary at the top of a Google results page, composed from several sources and carrying links to them. Google began rolling them out to everyone in the United States on 14 May 2024. Our full guide covers what they did to clicks.
Example. You search a how-to question and read a written answer with three source links before you reach the first ordinary result.
You can check whether AI answers name your brand with the free AI Citation Monitor skill.
How is an AI Overview different from a featured snippet?
An AI Overview differs from a featured snippet because it composes an answer from several pages, while a featured snippet lifts one passage from one page. The old habit of calling the top slot position zero describes the snippet, not the overview.
| Featured snippet | AI Overview | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the words come from | Extracted from a single page | Generated from several sources |
| How many sites are credited | One | Several, as links |
| How Search Console counts it | A normal result position | One position shared by every link in it |
How does Search Console count AI Overviews?
Search Console counts an AI Overview as a single position shared by every link inside it, in Google's own words, and a click on a link out to an external page counts as a click. Ordinary impression rules apply, so the data is there, mixed into your normal Web search totals rather than broken out.
What do AI Overviews not promise?
- No guarantee of citation. Ranking well makes you eligible. Nothing makes you the source that gets named.
- No clean opt-out. The snippet controls that remove you from an AI Overview also remove your ordinary snippet.
- No separate click line. The dedicated generative AI report gives impressions only.
Mentioned in
Sources
- Google: Generative AI in Search, expanding to everyone in the US (14 May 2024)
- Search Console Help: Performance report, how data is counted
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website
Last checked against these sources on 22 September 2026.