Google AI Overviews: a guide for Marketing Managers
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 probably missing, and the five things you should be reporting on to the CE's office.
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 to you 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.
If you run marketing for your business, this is now yours to own. Nobody handed it to you. It is yours because nobody above you has the time to follow how fast it is moving, and nobody below you has the standing to raise it in the Boardroom.
This guide is written for Marketing Managers. It covers what Google AI Overviews are and where Google is taking them, why your current reporting almost certainly does not show them, and the five things worth reporting on, with the plain reason each one matters to your role and to the business. Terms are defined at the bottom, and every term is linked the first time it appears.
Find out if your business is in the answer
The Scorecard puts nine real customer questions to Google, as if standing in each of your locations, and scores what comes back.
A short history, and where it is heading
Google first showed AI-written answers in search in May 2023, as an experiment called Search Generative Experience. In May 2024 it launched them properly in the United States under the name Google AI Overviews. By late 2024 they were switched on in more than 100 countries, New Zealand included, and by May 2025 in more than 200.
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 customers find through Google, the paragraph at the top of the page is becoming the front door.
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. That somebody is you.
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. Neither shows up in the numbers the business is used to seeing.
What happens to clicks when a Google AI Overview appears
Three studies, none of them ours. All are US or global data; there is no New Zealand-specific study yet, which is part of why the Scorecard exists.
Ahrefs, May 2026. 300,000 keywords, Google Search Console data, December 2023 compared with December 2025. The position 1 figure was 34.5% in Ahrefs' April 2025 study.
Organic click-through rate before and after a Google AI Overview is present. Seer Interactive, June 2024 to September 2025, 3,119 queries across 42 organisations.
Share of visits where the person clicked a result, with an AI summary on the page versus without. Pew Research Center, July 2025, browsing data from 900 US adults.
More organic clicks for brands cited inside the Google AI Overview than for brands not cited. Seer Interactive, same study.
What your reporting probably shows, and what it 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 tool all speak that language, and it is the language your report is written in.
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, and it helps: it shows how often a link to your site appeared inside a Google AI Overview or AI Mode answer. It does not show which questions triggered it, whether you were named in the answer or only linked underneath it, what the answer said about you, or who was named instead. Your rank tracker tells you which position you hold in the list of links, and nothing about the paragraph above it.
So the usual report has a gap in it, and the gap is exactly where more of your customers are looking. The question from the CE's office used to be "are we on the first page". The question now is "are we in the answer". Most reports cannot answer it yet.
You are the one who presents the report. If the first time the Boardroom hears the phrase "Google AI Overview" is from a competitor's case study, the question that follows is why marketing did not raise it. Raising it first, with a number, is the opposite of that conversation.
Effort and budget go where the report points. A report that only measures the list of links keeps optimising for the list of links, while the answer above it is written from somebody else's website.
Add five lines to your next report
Everything in this guide, scored for your business, in the shape your CE 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, and they are the five lines worth adding to your report. Together they replace a page of SEO data with a handful of numbers a CE can read at a glance. Each one below has the same shape: what it is, what it means, why it matters to your role, and why it matters to the business.
1. Presence: how often your business appears in the answer
What it is. For the questions your customers ask, in the places they ask them, a Google AI Overview either appears or it does not. When one appears, your business is either in it or it is not. 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 a CE can repeat without asking what it means.
Presence is the nearest thing you have to a share-of-answer 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, and no existing report would show it.
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 quietly, and the blame usually lands on marketing. Finding it first, and reporting it as something you found and fixed, with the date, is a far better week than having the front desk raise it.
Accuracy is the one category a CE understands instantly, because it is about whether customers are being told the truth about the business. It is 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. That is a different list from the competitors your sales team worries about, and it is often a shorter one.
This is the line that makes a leadership team sit up. "In Hamilton, a competitor is named in every answer our customers are getting" moves the conversation from marketing performance to a decision about a location.
It shows the CE'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. Customers ask three different kinds of question, and Google writes three different answers. "Best in Tauranga" is a comparison question. "How much does it cost" is a buying question. "Near me" is a location question. Coverage is which of these your business appears for.
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 this guide.
The rate of change is the point. Google AI Overviews went from an experiment to more than 200 countries in two years, and AI Mode reached a billion people in a little over one. Whatever your report says today, it will need to say something different next year. That is a reason to start measuring now, not a reason to wait for it to settle.
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.
Translate it before you take it upstairs. The CE's office does not need to hear "generative engine optimisation". It needs to hear that customers are asking Google a question, that Google is answering it in a paragraph, that the business is or is not in that paragraph, and what it would take to change that. Five categories, one number each, and a fix order. That is a report that gets a decision.
Finish with fewer things to do than you started with. Of the five categories, one will be the first job. Report that one, fix it, and measure again.
Walk in with a number
You have read what decides whether a business is in Google's answer. The Scorecard tells you whether yours is, who is named instead, and the one thing to fix first. The email version is written for your CE. Forward it as is.
The terms, 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. Each term above links here on first use.
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 actually ask, in the places they ask them.
Yes. Google writes an answer for your town the same way it does for a city 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 have found it before the CE's office did, with a fix order and a sentence you can repeat. 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.