What are AI Features in Search? #
Google now includes AI-powered elements like AI Overviews and AI Mode to help users get quick summaries or deeper, conversational answers on complex topics. These features:
- Surface relevant links to trusted websites.
- Help users explore topics more thoroughly.
- Use advanced models and multiple queries (“query fan-out”) to find the best supporting content.
- Display different but complementary info compared to classic Search results.
How to Get Your Site Included in AI Features #
Good news: There’s no special or additional SEO required beyond what you already do for Google Search!
- Your page must be indexed and eligible to show in regular Google Search.
- Follow general SEO best practices—like quality content, crawlability, and good user experience.
- No extra AI-specific markup, schema, or files needed.
- No guarantees your pages will appear, but good SEO increases chances.
SEO Best Practices for AI Features #
- Allow Google to crawl your site (no blocking via robots.txt or hosting setups).
- Use clear, helpful, people-first content that answers questions well.
- Make important content textual and easy to read (not just images or videos).
- Support your content with high-quality images and videos when relevant.
- Keep your structured data accurate and consistent with visible page content.
- Keep business info (Merchant Center, Business Profile) updated.
- Verify your site in Search Console to quickly spot and fix technical issues.
Measuring Performance in AI Features #
- AI feature clicks count as regular Web search traffic in Search Console’s Performance report.
- You can combine Search Console data with Google Analytics to track engagement like time on site and conversions.
- Clicks from AI-powered results tend to be higher quality, with users spending more time on the site.
Controlling Your Content in AI Features #
- Use standard robots meta tags like nosnippet, data-nosnippet, or noindex if you want to control what appears in Search snippets or AI-generated previews.
- Google’s main control point for content inclusion remains robots.txt for crawling permissions.
- If you want to limit AI training data usage (beyond Search), check Google-Extended policies separately.
Troubleshooting Tips #
- If changes to snippet controls aren’t reflected yet, check your page with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to see what Googlebot actually sees.
- Allow time for Google to recrawl and update (could take days to months).
- You can request recrawling via Search Console to speed up the process.
Bottom line:
Treat AI features as an extension of Google Search. Keep focusing on solid SEO, great content, and technical health—your site’s chances of being featured and driving quality traffic will follow naturally.