Originally published March 2025. Refreshed March 2026 to reflect a full year of AI Overviews in the wild.

Google’s AI Overviews now appear across a huge range of search queries — and the businesses getting cited are seeing real brand visibility gains. Here are five practical ways to position your content for citation, plus how to measure whether it’s actually working.

When I first wrote about AI Overviews a year ago, Google had just rolled them out in New Zealand and upgraded to Gemini 2.0 as the engine behind them. At the time, plenty of people predicted search traffic would collapse.

That hasn’t happened. Google reported increased search activity after the rollout — not less. And during the March 2025 core update, BrightEdge data showed a massive 500%+ spike in queries triggering Overviews across travel, food, and entertainment topics. A year on, Overviews are now a standard part of how New Zealanders search.

The question has shifted from “should I worry about this?” to “how do I make sure my business shows up in them?”

What an AI Overview Actually Looks Like

If you haven’t paid close attention to these yet, here’s what one looks like in the wild:

A Google AI Overview appearing at the top of search results, showing a concise AI-generated summary with cited sources

When Google decides a summary would be helpful for a search query, it:

  1. Creates up to three concise paragraphs in conversational language.
  2. Embeds link cards or icons directly within the Overview, allowing users to click straight to cited websites.
  3. Updates those citations frequently — more often than traditional organic rankings shift.

Google emphasises that cited pages must demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust (E-E-A-T). In plain English? Google wants the best Kiwi sources, not just the loudest ones.

Five Ways to Get Your Business Cited (And Stay There)

Strengthen Your Entity Footprint

Think of Google’s language models like people at a party — they remember faces and names (entities) better than random facts. Here’s how to be memorable:

  • Add Organisation, LocalBusiness, Product and HowTo schema markup where it makes sense. These are bits of code added to your website that help Google understand exactly what your business does, where you’re located, and what products or services you offer.
  • Keep your NAP (name, address, phone) consistent everywhere — your site, Google Business Profile, and main directories.
  • Root your content in New Zealand with references to MBIE, Stats NZ or other trusted local sources.

Create Snippet-Friendly Content

Overviews love direct answers to direct questions — the kind your customers are already asking.

  • Turn your top five customer questions into headings (H2s/H3s) and answer each in 30–50 straightforward words.
  • Use Kiwi spelling and measurements (“GST”, “kilometres”, “Rotorua”) to signal local relevance.
  • Structure content with bullet points, step-by-step instructions, or brief definitions that the AI can easily quote.

Highlight Your First-Hand Experience

E-E-A-T starts with Experience — and for good reason. Google’s models are getting better at distinguishing genuine expertise from regurgitated content.

  • Include author bios that spell out real credentials (“Licensed builder with 20 years of Auckland renovation experience”).
  • Add photos or short videos of your team actually doing the work.
  • Date-stamp pages and refresh important content every six to twelve months.

Optimise for the Citation, Not Just the Click

A link card inside an Overview might bring fewer direct visits, but it’s like having your logo on a billboard that everyone sees — there’s real brand value in being cited even when people don’t click through.

  • Create meta-titles that read like trustworthy source labels (“NZ Building Code insulation R-values explained | ABC Insulation”).
  • Give every image clear alt text — visuals sometimes appear as standalone citations.
  • Focus on being the most complete, most credible answer to a specific question.

Monitor and Adapt Quickly

Overviews refresh faster than traditional rankings — they’re more like the stock market than real estate.

  • Use Search Console: Google added an “AI Overview” search appearance filter to the Performance report in 2025. You can now see exactly which queries are triggering Overviews that cite your pages, along with clicks and impressions. Check this fortnightly.
  • Manual spot checks: Search your key terms in incognito mode on both desktop and mobile. What you see in Search Console doesn’t always tell the full story.
  • Lost your citation? Compare your page to the new source and fill in any topical gaps within the same week.

Success Metrics Beyond Just Clicks

In this new world, clicks tell only part of the story. These three metrics give you a fuller picture of whether your AI Overview strategy is working:

Three key metrics for measuring AI Overview success: brand impressions in overviews, assisted conversions, and engaged time on page — with explanations of why each matters and how to track them

Here’s a practical tip: set up a GA4 scroll-depth event at 50% on pages optimised for Overviews. If that event count rises — even without clear referral data — it suggests people are remembering your brand and coming back.

What’s Changed Since Launch

Over the past year, several of Google’s early signals have materialised:

  • Follow-up question chips are now embedded directly in Overviews, letting users drill deeper without a new search. If your content answers the follow-up as well as the original question, you’re more likely to hold the citation.
  • Larger, more prominent link cards — Google expanded these in response to publisher concerns about traffic loss. Being cited now gives you more visual real estate than it did at launch.
  • Visual search integration — Circle to Search and Google Lens now feed into the same AI pipeline, meaning Overviews can be triggered by image queries, not just text. If your product images have strong alt text and structured data, they’re eligible.

The direction is clear: AI Overviews are expanding, not retreating. Investing in citation-worthy content now builds a moat that gets harder for competitors to cross later.

Your Next Steps

If you want to move on this:

  1. Run a schema audit — check for missing Organisation, LocalBusiness, HowTo or Product markup.
  2. Update your top five pages — add direct-answer content blocks and local New Zealand references.
  3. Set up your Search Console tracking — start monitoring the AI Overview filter so you have baseline data to measure against.

These tactics all connect to how we approach SEO for our clients — making sure your content is structured for both traditional search and AI-generated results. If you’d like help positioning your site for AI Overviews, complete the form below and we’ll take a look.

References

“AI Overviews in Google Search expanding to more than 100 countries.” Google Keyword Blog, Oct 2024

“Expanding AI Overviews and introducing AI Mode.” Google Keyword Blog, Mar 2025

“Introducing Gemini 2.0: our new AI model for the agentic era.” Google Keyword Blog, Dec 2024

“Google AI Overviews spiked during March 2025 core update.” Search Engine Land, Apr 2025

“Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content.” Google Search Central documentation (E-E-A-T guidance)