AI Overviews: An Action Plan for Marketing Managers to Get Ahead
Google now answers many of your customers' questions before they see a single search result. This guide explains what Google AI Overviews are, where they are heading, what your reporting is missing, and the five things you should be reporting on to the boss.
See how often your business appears when Google answers your customers' questions. Five categories, one number.
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Why Google AI Overviews matter now
Google AI Overviews are the AI-written answers that now sit at the top of many Google search results, above the ads and above the first link. When one of your customers asks Google a question about the service you provide, there is a good chance Google answers it in a paragraph before they scroll anywhere. Your business is either in that paragraph, or it is not.
This guide is written for Marketing Managers who are under pressure to deliver in an AI-search world, but don't know where to start. It covers what Google AI Overviews are and where Google is taking them, plus why your current reporting almost certainly does not show them.
Crucially, you'll learn the five things worth reporting on, with the key reason each one matters to your role and to your business.
Are you in AI Overviews when people are buying?
The Scorecard puts up to nine buying questions to Google and scores what comes back.
Why you need to be in AI Search
In 2025, Google added AI Mode, a separate tab where the whole search page becomes a conversation with Google's AI rather than a list of links. It launched in New Zealand on 22 August 2025, and at its developer conference in May 2026, Google said more than a billion people were using it every month. Google has said AI Mode is not the default search experience, and it now places ads inside both Google AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The direction is clear enough to plan around. More questions will be answered on the results page. Fewer clicks will reach websites, and the clicks that do arrive will come from people who have already read an answer. Google has also begun completing tasks inside AI Mode, such as booking a restaurant table, and that has been switched on in New Zealand.
For a business that customers find through Google, the paragraph at the top of the page is becoming the front door. Instead of viewing this as a threat, think of it as an opportunity to deliver growth.
This is changing every few months, and it will not wait for the next annual planning round. Somebody in the business needs to understand it well enough to explain it upward in one minute and to ask the right question of your website or SEO provider.
Where your business appears when a customer asks a question is now decided partly by an answer engine, and partly by whether your website gives it something it can use. Both of those are things marketing can influence and report on.
What happens to clicks when a Google AI Overview appears
The results below are aggregated from three studies. They illustrate the impact of AI Overviews based on US or global data; there is no New Zealand-specific study yet. That's why we wanted to pull the AI Scorecard together.
Organic click-through rate before and after a Google AI Overview is present.
Source: Seer Interactive, April 2026
Share of visits dropping when an AI summary is on the page.
Source: Pew Research Center, July 2025
More organic clicks for brands cited inside the Google AI Overview than for brands not cited.
Source: Seer Interactive, April 2026
What your current reporting misses
Most marketing reports built in the last few years are good at traditional SEO: rankings, impressions, clicks, sessions from organic search, and which pages are growing. Google Search Console, GA4 and your SEO tools all speak that language.
None of those tools tells you whether your business is in a Google AI Overview.
Since June 2026, Search Console has had a Generative AI report. It shows how often a link to your site appeared inside a Google AI Overview or AI Mode answer. But it does not show:
• Which questions triggered it
• Whether you were named in the answer or cited underneath it
• What the answer says about you
• Which competitor was named.
So the usual report has a gap and it's exactly where more of your customers are looking.
The question used to be: Are we on the first page?
The question now is: Are we in the answer?
As AI Overviews and LLMs take centre stage, you should be the one presenting to the Boardroom about what's impacting your traffic and leads.
Effort and budget go where the report points, and right now, it needs to be pointed towards what is making an impact on your digital presence.
Add five lines to your next report
Everything in this guide, scored for your business, in the shape the board can read at a glance.
The five things to report on
These five categories are the ones that decide whether your business is in Google's answer. Together they replace a page of SEO data with a handful of numbers we can read at a glance. Each category has:
• what it is
• what it means
• why it matters to your role
• why it matters to the business.
1. Presence: How often your business appears in the answer
What it is. For the buying questions your customers ask, presence reports whether a Google AI Overview appears or not. When one appears, is your business in it? Presence is the count of both. For a business with several locations, it is counted per location, because Google writes a different answer for Hamilton than it does for Tauranga.
What it means. A low count means the customer is reading about someone else. A high count means Google already treats your website as a source it trusts for that question. A count of zero where no overview appeared at all is worth knowing too: for some local searches Google still shows a map and a list, which means your Google Business Profile and your ordinary ranking are still doing the work.
This is the one number to lead with. "We appear in three of the nine answers our customers are getting" is a sentence everyone can repeat without asking what it means.
Presence is the nearest thing you have to a market share figure for the new front door. If it is low in one location, that location is quietly losing customers to whoever is in the answer.
2. Answer or link: Whether you are named or only cited
What it is. Google can include your business in the answer in two ways. A mention is your business named inside the paragraph, where the customer reads it. A citation is your website linked underneath the paragraph as a source. Many businesses that appear at all appear as a citation only.
What it means. A citation means Google trusts your page enough to draw from it, but the paragraph names somebody else. That usually points to one cause: the page Google is reading does not say plainly who you are, where you are and what you do, so the answer engine takes the facts and leaves out the name.
The Boardroom will ask whether the business is in the answer or in the footnotes. Being able to say which, per location, and what the fix is, turns a vague worry into a briefable job.
Being cited without being named is the worst of both: your content is doing the work and a competitor is getting the customer.
3. Accuracy: Whether what Google says about you is true
What it is. When a Google AI Overview describes your business, it repeats what it found on your website, your Google Business Profile and other pages about you. If those disagree with each other, or with reality, the customer is told the wrong thing.
What it means. Old hours on one page, a service you stopped offering, a branch that closed, a price that has since moved. Any of these can end up in the answer, stated with complete confidence.
A wrong fact in Google's answer costs bookings. We want you to be finding & fixing it first. Something to help on those Mondays.
Accuracy is the one category everyone understands instantly. It is about whether customers are getting accurate information. It's also usually the cheapest to fix.
4. Who is named instead: Which competitor is in your seat
What it is. Where your business is not in the answer, another business is. This category lists who, by location, taken from the sources Google cited when it wrote the answer.
What it means. The competitors Google names are the ones it currently trusts for your customers' questions.
This is the line that makes a leadership team sit up. "In Hamilton, a competitor is named in every answer our customers are getting."
It shows the boss's office exactly who is winning the first question in each place, and it gives the business a named target rather than a general sense of falling behind.
5. Coverage: Which kinds of question you are missing
What it is. We've covered off the three most common types of buying questions. Google writes different AI answers for each. Coverage is about whether you appear in the answers. Example: You're a dental practice in Tauranga, and a service line is teeth whitening. Our AI would write queries like:
• "Best teeth whitening in Tauranga"
• "How much does teeth whitening cost"
• "Teeth whitening practices near me"
If you appear for one of them, you would score 1 / 3. If you appear for all three (amazing), you would score 3 / 3 for that location.
What it means. It is common for a business to appear for one kind of question and not the others. The pattern tells you what is missing from your website. A business that appears for "best in" but never for "how much" usually has no clear page about pricing. A business that appears for neither "near me" nor a location name usually has a thin or shared location page.
Coverage tells you where the fix is, and it is usually one page, not a strategy. That is a job you can brief in a sentence and report on next month.
The buying questions are the ones people ask right before they book. Being visible to people comparing and invisible to people ready to buy is a revenue problem, and this is the category that shows it.
Keeping up, and taking it upstairs
Three things to take from what you've read so far.
1. Rate of change - Google AI Overviews went from an experiment to more than 200 countries in two years. Unfortunately, it's another thing we need to keep up with. We need to start measuring now.
2. Staying informed is now part of the role - Not every announcement, but the handful that change what your customers see when they ask a question. The definitions below will get you through most of what you will read this year, and the Scorecard will tell you whether any of it has reached your business yet.
3. Translating before you take it upstairs - AI optimisation will be all the rage but the reports are overwhelming. This gives you the chance to move forward with a clear action plan that will drive tangible results. Five categories, one number each, and a fix order.
Walk in with a number
You have read what decides whether a business is in Google's answer. The Scorecard tells you whether your business appears, who is named instead, and the one thing to fix first. The email version is written for the boardroom. Feel free to forward as is.
Glossary in plain English
This section defines the terms used in this guide and the ones you will meet most often when reading about AI search. They are written so you can read them quickly and repeat them in a meeting.
The AI-written answer Google shows at the top of the results page for many searches. It is generated for that question, in that location, from a handful of websites Google decides to trust, and it appears above the ads and above the first ordinary result.
A separate tab in Google Search where the whole page is a conversation with Google's AI rather than a list of links. It uses the same index as Google AI Overviews. Google has said it is not the default search experience, and it now carries ads.
Any tool that gives the customer a written answer instead of a list of links. Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot are all answer engines. Google's are the ones most New Zealand customers meet first, because they are on the page people were already using.
The long-standing work of getting your website to rank in the list of links on a search results page. Still necessary. No longer sufficient on its own, because the answer now sits above the list.
The work of getting your business named or cited inside AI-written answers. Traditional SEO gets you ranked underneath the answer. AEO gets you into it.
The same idea as AEO, used more often for ChatGPT, Perplexity and the AI tools outside Google. You will see the two terms used interchangeably. For a leadership conversation the difference does not matter; what matters is whether you are in the answer.
The technology underneath every answer engine. It writes the paragraph. It is not a search engine on its own, which is why it needs websites to draw from, and why yours needs to be one of them.
Two different things. A mention is your business named inside the answer, where the customer reads it. A citation is your website linked underneath the answer as a source, where most customers never click. You can be cited without being mentioned.
The Google listing that powers your map pin, hours, reviews and photos. For any business customers visit in person, it is one of the sources Google leans on most when it writes an answer about a location.
A short block of code on a web page that tells Google in plain terms what the page is about: a business, an address, opening hours, a price, a service. Invisible to customers, and one of the clearest signals an answer engine can read.
The map and short list of businesses Google shows for many location searches. When no Google AI Overview appears, this is usually what appears instead, and it is fed largely by your Google Business Profile.
Frequently asked questions
For some questions, almost certainly. For others, not yet. The only way to know is to check the questions your customers are asking.
Yes. Google writes an answer for your town the same way it does for a business with five branches, and the check works for one location. The fixes are usually the same too: one clear page about the business and a complete Google Business Profile.
Ranking first in the list of links and being named inside the answer above it are different outcomes, and the second is increasingly the one customers act on. It is common to have one without the other.
Ask them what they are reporting on Google AI Overviews today. If the answer is nothing, it is a fair question to put to them, with evidence.
Then you've found it before the boss did, with a fix. That is a better position than the alternative.
No. Gemini is Google's chatbot. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode are inside Google Search, and they draw on the search index for that question in that location. The sources they cite are often different from what Gemini would give you for the same question.
In Sight: AI Overview Scorecard is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google. The example business and competitors shown above are fictional.