What are Google AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are Google's AI-generated summaries shown above the traditional results for some searches.
They are built on Google's normal search index, which means Googlebot access governs them. Google-Extended, the agent that controls Gemini grounding and training, is separate and does not affect either Search or AI Overviews.
Because they sit above the links, they are a large part of why zero-click behaviour has increased: the answer is on the results page and the visit never happens.
Related
- Zero-click searchA zero-click search is one where the user gets what they needed from the results page or an assistant's answer and never visits a website.
- AI crawlerAn AI crawler is a bot operated by an AI company to fetch web pages for training, indexing, or answering a live question.
- CitationA citation is a source an AI assistant links or refers to in support of an answer it has given.
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