How to Get Cited in Google AI Overviews: Own a Criterion

Google AI Overviews (AIOs) are what Google has always tried to do:

Get the user from question to answer faster.

Same job. New interface.

For users, that’s helpful. Quicker answers, less cognitive load, and fewer tabs.

For brands, it’s messier.

Semrush data shows zero-click searches now account for almost 60% of queries.

And a Define Media Group analysis of a 64-site publisher panel found organic search clicks down by 42%.

Plus, Google is keeping more of the buyer journey inside its own ecosystem. From AI Overviews and AI Mode to YouTube and Ask Maps.

But plummeting traffic is not the whole story.

Semrush data shows that when AI Overviews appeared in transactional and navigational searches that previously had none, zero-click rates actually decreased. From 33.75% to 31.53%.

So, people are still clicking. They still visit sites to compare, validate, buy, and go deeper.

The question is: How do you make AIO recommend your site?

That’s what I’ll talk about in this article.

How AI Overviews organize answers. Why certain brands make the cut. And why owning a clear criterion is the most underrated move in AI search.

Let’s dive in.

What Are AI Overviews (And What Their Structure Reveals)

Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries in Google Search results. They synthesize information from multiple sources into a structured answer

They can appear in different parts of the search results page.

Sometimes, they’re near the top at position zero. Like featured snippets.

Other times, they show below paid ads, below or above the local map pack, or alongside features like People Also Ask (PAA).

The answer varies, too.

A short paragraph for simpler queries. Or more structured with bullets, comparison tables, images, numbered steps, or videos.

What’s more revealing than where they appear is how they structure information around search intent.

Search “best project management tools,” for example.

The AI summary doesn’t just give a list.

It also groups features, assigns brand slots, and steers the buyer toward a decision.

That same organizing logic applies to every query type I’ve seen, just with different structures.

“Why don’t Italians break spaghetti” gets reasons.

“Technical SEO in digital marketing” gets why it matters and core components.

And commercial queries — the ones with buying intent — get a ranked category with brands pre-selected.

That organizing logic is what the optimization strategy below is based on.

How AI Overviews Work

Google AI Overviews use a customized Gemini 3 model inside Google Search. It works in tandem with Google’s core ranking systems and the Knowledge Graph.

Google hasn’t published the full mechanics, but a key part is what it calls query fan-out.

One search triggers several smaller searches behind the scenes, each helping the system build a more complete answer.

For example, when you search for “best mattress for side sleepers,” the system is also asking:

• What does “best” mean for this specific use case?
• Which criteria do people use to compare options? Firmness, foam, pressure relief, cooling mechanism?
• Which brands are repeatedly associated with those criteria?
• Which sources seem strong enough to support the answer?

To answer those questions, the AI looks for patterns in its training data.

Plus live signals retrieved through search, including reviews, editorial coverage, brand pages, and user discussions.

Gemini then synthesizes that information, deciding how to structure the answer and which sources to link to.

When it synthesizes, it organizes the answer around distinct criteria.

Each one mapped to a different brand or source.

For example, for “best mattress for side sleepers,” it surfaces:

• Helix Midnight Luxe: Best overall choice
• Nectar Premier Memory Foam: Best overall memory foam
• Saatva Classic: Best hybrid

Here’s what that means for your business.

When the AI decides what to emphasize and which sources to surface, it’s also making an implicit recommendation about what matters in your category.

That shapes how users see your brand and how they compare you with alternatives. Or whether they consider you at all.

AI Overviews Are Coming for Your Money Keywords

AI Overviews used to appear largely on informational queries.

But a Semrush study found they are increasingly appearing in queries with commercial intent. Such as product comparisons, best-of searches, and category-level buying decisions.

That means they’re steering buyers toward where to go, what to buy, and who to contact.

That makes AI Overviews the new gatekeeper between your brand and your revenue.

And there isn’t much room.

Most answers only surface a handful of brands per query.

The brands that fill those spots?

They tend to have one thing in common:

They own a criterion that the AI can solidly associate with the brand.

Which means the highest-impact move is to get clear on one.

Brand Authority and the AI Overviews Reputation Game

Getting cited in AI Overviews is largely a result of reputation building.

The brands AIO cites have already earned their place in the category and are associated with a criterion the AI can recognize with confidence.

Which means you can’t page-level-optimize your way into that visibility.

You have to build the foundation beneath it:

Reinforce the criterion you want to own. Earn trust. Make your brand recognizable in the category. And get validated all over the web.

AI Overviews is just the side effect, the place where all that work gets recognized.

Look at Trade Coffee.

When I search “best coffee subscriptions,” they show up as Best Overall and described as the most tailored option, matching customers to beans from hundreds of craft roasters.

AI didn’t pluck that out of nowhere.

First, Trade Coffee got clear on what they stand for. That’s personalized taste matching and multi-roaster discovery.

Then they articulate that consistently on every page of their website.

Plus, wherever they appear on the wider web, they have to reinforce that same position.

Over and over. Until that identity became embedded in their corner of the market.

That’s brand building and reputation management.

And the accumulated assets you build through that work are what AI systems draw on.

The steps below show you how to build that intentionally.

How to Improve Visibility in Google AI Overviews

Most advice on improving visibility in AI Overviews focuses on content structure and technical signals.

Those are real, and you totally need to get them right.

But one of the most foundational factors — the one that gets the least attention because it doesn’t feel like an SEO problem — is brand.

Specifically, whether AI can clearly associate your brand with a criterion that buyers actually use.

Without it, everything else is harder.

Your content has no anchor, outside sources have nothing consistent to corroborate, and your team has no shared north star to work toward.

That’s the focus of the steps below.

Step 1: Define Your Criterion

Before you try to improve your visibility in AI Overviews, define the criterion you want AI to associate with you.

A criterion is the specific decision driver buyers use to compare options in your category AND the slot you want your brand, product, or service to occupy.

Those decision drivers vary by market as buyers in different categories compare options differently, as the table below shows.

For each of those decision drivers, a brand can occupy the slot.

Choosing your criterion means deciding which slot you want to go after.

That criterion becomes the anchor for everything that follows: your messaging, your content, your proof points, your PR, and the language you repeat all over the web.

The more consistently it shows up in credible places, the easier it is for AI to map your brand to it.

Validate What You Want to Own

Not every criterion is yours to own. The right one depends on where you are in the market.

If you’re established, start with what the market already says about you.

Go to your reviews, third-party coverage, and current AI Overview appearances and ask:

• What decision drivers keep coming up?
• What do outside sources already connect you to?
• When buyers compare you to competitors, what do they compare you on first?
• When customers choose you over a competitor, what reason do they give?

Your criterion is likely already there. Identify it and sharpen it.

If you’re newer, work from the inside out.

Start with what makes your brand, product, or service different. Something you can credibly claim that an established competitor can’t or won’t.

Then look at what that difference means to buyers.

For example, sourcing from hundreds of roasters speaks to variety and discovery.

Or a faster onboarding process speaks to simplicity.

To check criterion viability, run these four checks:

• Credible: Can your brand genuinely claim it, or is it a stretch?
• Evidenced: Do you have proof to back it up, or a clear path to building it?
• Available: Is it already locked up by a dominant incumbent?
• Buyer-relevant: Do buyers actually use this dimension to compare options?

If it doesn’t clear all four, go back and find a sharper angle.

A criterion that fails any of these checks will be difficult to build a signal around, which makes it harder for AI to confidently assign to your brand.

This is where AI tools can help.

The Semrush AI Brand Narrative Tracking Tool shows you the decision drivers that the top brands in your category are already known for.

That gives you a map of what’s claimed and what isn’t.

For example, when I searched for Trade Coffee, I found that AI already strongly associates it with “multi-roaster discovery access” and “personalized taste matching.”

But signals around “ethical & sustainable sourcing” and “freshness” were noticeably weaker for most brands.

That’s worth investigating. If either maps to a criterion you can credibly own, it could be an opening.

Write Your Criterion Statement

Once you’re clear on the criterion you want to own, write down your criterion statement.

This gives everyone on your team a shared language to use when talking about your brand, product, or service.

Your criterion statement should include your criterion, the top reasons why, and language that mirrors how your audience talks about and searches for what you do.

For example, Trade Coffee might be:

Trade Coffee is a fresh coffee subscription that connects people with small-batch beans from independent specialty roasters. Every bag is roasted to order and shipped directly from the roaster, so the coffee arrives fresh, not sitting in a warehouse.

Here are two more examples:

Your criterion statement doesn’t have to appear word-for-word every time you use it.

But the core idea should be consistent that someone reading three different sources about you would associate you with the same thing.

Map the AI Overviews Landscape

With your criterion chosen, pressure-test it against the AI Overviews summary.

Search your most important queries for each stage of customer journey.

Include branded and non-branded, informational and commercial, and early and late-stage.

For a coffee subscription brand:

• How can I make good coffee at home?
• Best coffee subscription service
• Coffee subscription for beginners
• Trade Coffee vs Atlas Coffee Club

For each query, note what the AI Overview surfaces.

Which decision drivers is it using to organize the answer? Which brands keep appearing, and what are they consistently connected to? Where do you show up, if at all? Which sources seem to be driving those associations?

Then use the Criterion Ownership Matrix to figure out what it would take to own your chosen slot:

Step 2: Map the Sources That Control Your Criterion

Every AI Overview includes a citation panel or links within the answer.

These are the sources that keep appearing for various queries. We call them your Citation Core.

They are the heavyweight sources AI Overviews repeatedly pull from when answering questions in your category.

They help shape which brands get surfaced, which content formats carry authority, and how AI frames the answer.

If these heavyweights aren’t connecting your brand to the criterion you want to own, it doesn’t matter how well you’ve defined it internally or on your site.

To find the citation core in your category, run a set of queries and look for repeated patterns:

• Which sites keep appearing?
• Which platforms are cited most often?
• Which formats keep showing up?

From my experience, an observable pattern usually emerges quickly.

For example, in coffee subscriptions, I consistently see the same mix:

Publications like Wired or The Kitchn, YouTube reviewers, Reddit threads, and niche subscription review sites.

For finance queries, the citation core includes YouTube, Yahoo Finance, Reddit’s r/banking, and blogs like NerdWallet.

And in B2B software, different again.

G2, Gartner, Clutch, and industry-specific review platforms and product explainers.

Understand How the Answer Is Constructed

Don’t stop at identifying the sources.

Also, figure out what they reveal about how AI Overviews are organizing your category.

I usually start with the AI Overview format.

Is it a list? A comparison table? A recommendation organized by criteria?

That structure tells me how the AI thinks this query should be resolved.

And what kind of source it’s treating as credible for that query.

Then, I look at how brands are positioned within it.

• Which brands appear inside the AI Overview?
• Which gets a direct link?
• Which are mentioned but unlinked?
• Which show up only in the citation panel?

Where a brand sits in that hierarchy signals how strongly AI associates it with that query.

A brand linked directly inside the answer is probably more trusted by AI to satisfy the intent than one sitting in the citation panel.

The panel is corroboration, the inline link is endorsement.

After that, I click through some of the cited links.

What kind of content is AIO pulling from? What does it cover, how is it structured, and does it mention brands directly?

I look for whether brands are being described through a criterion, and which one.

Finally, I look at the full search results page.

The ads, the PAA questions, and the site types. All this helps me build a picture of what Google considers important for the query.

(And what types of content I can build to match.)

Work through this process, and you end up with a clear map of which sources have the most pull in your category.

And whether your brand is showing up in them at all.

Step 3: Build Signal Around Your Criterion

Your criterion only becomes real when the wider web reflects it back.

Think of it as two pillars.

What you control: your site, your pages, your messaging.

And what you influence: the reviews, the coverage, the third-party sources that describe you to the rest of the world.

Both need to carry the same criterion. Neither works without the other.

Backlinko’s Seen & Trusted (S&T) framework captures this well. So does Google’s own E-E-A-T standard.

Both are worth getting familiar with.

Make Your Site Do the Work

Your site is the one place you fully control.

It’s where you make your criterion explicit. Through your messaging, your page structure, and the language you repeat on every page.

Start with the basics.

Before AI Overviews can cite your content, your site needs to be technically accessible, crawlable, and easy to understand.

If important pages are buried, slow, or poorly linked, you are making it harder for search systems to discover and trust the content you want surfaced.

Audit your site’s technical health and performance with tools like Screaming Frog and Semrush Site Audit tool.

Use them to find the issues that weaken your foundation, including Core Web Vitals issues, missing metadata, and schema gaps.

Then, structure your content around clear, extractable answers.

Put the main point early. Use headings that make the page easy to scan. Use semantic HTML so the page structure is clear.

Your site also needs the right supporting pages that reinforce your criterion from multiple angles:

• FAQ pages or sections: Answer the questions buyers ask when evaluating your criterion
• Comparison pages: Show how you stack against competitors on the criterion you want to own
• Product and category pages: Give AI more context for your offer and who it’s for
• How-to guides: Connect your brand to the problems your criterion solves
• About pages: Make your expertise, point of view, and credibility explicit

Trade Coffee does this well.

The idea of personalization shows up consistently on its website and wider web presence.

That repetition gives AI a clear, corroborated signal about what Trade Coffee is and who it’s for.

That’s most likely why when AI Overviews mention Trade Coffee, they often frame it around that same idea.

Get the Web to Corroborate

It’s not enough to show up.

You need to keep showing up. Connected to the same idea, in the same places, over and over.

That’s how a criterion sticks. In buyers’ minds and in AI systems.

Start by identifying where to build visibility.

Look at the publications, review sites, communities, comparison pages, and creator channels that keep appearing for your most important queries.

(That’s the citation core you mapped in Step Two.)

Those are the sources with the most pull in your category.

Build a deliberate presence in each one.

Guest on podcasts. Contribute to relevant Reddit communities. Appear in industry newsletters. Publish on social media with consistent positioning. Wherever you show up, the criterion should come with you.

If you’re already in those sources, check what they’re saying about you.

Run a criterion audit across four things:

• Positioning: Is the criterion you want to own repeated in consistent language?
• Differentiators: Do they explain why your brand is a strong fit for that criterion?
• Proof: Do they give evidence that supports it, such as reviews, expert mentions, or specific product details
• Category associations: Does your brand repeatedly appear near the same topics, competitors, and comparison criteria?

If the answer to any of those is no, that’s your next focus.

Step 4: Measure Criterion Ownership Over Time

Some changes to your AI Overview visibility can happen quickly.

Others take months to show up.

Without a monitoring system, you won’t know whether the criterion you’ve chosen is sticking. Or whether AI is still describing you as something else.

Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit can help with this.

It tracks your brand’s presence in Google AI Overviews and gives you an AI Visibility Score. It also shows sentiment analysis and competitors’ share of voice.

Plus, a breakdown of which prompts your brand appears for and which it doesn’t.

If you’re using a different tool, make sure it covers at least four things:

• Traditional rankings and technical health: Still closely tied to AI citation eligibility. Monitor both together. Weakness in your technical foundation can limit what AI is able to surface.
• Criterion association: How is AI describing your brand? Does the language match the criterion you defined in Step 1? This is the most direct signal of whether your work is landing.
• Citation presence: Are you appearing at the awareness, comparison, and decision stages? A brand visible on all three has a fundamentally stronger criterion association than one that only shows up at one.
• Gaps: Which queries are competitors being cited for that you aren’t? More specifically, which criterion associations are they building that you haven’t claimed yet? Those gaps tell you where to focus next.

And, track by buying stage, not just the overall mention volume.

As Leigh McKenzie, Director of Online Visibility at Semrush, puts it:

Google AI Overviews Predictions

In the last version of this article, I predicted AI Overviews would not stay limited to simple informational queries.

That’s already happening.

This time, three things are worth watching.

First: AI Mode becomes the ONLY mode.

Google is already moving in that direction, collapsing the two experiences into one.

You start a normal search, get an AI Overview, click “Show More,” and AI Mode takes over automatically.

My second prediction is that personal intelligence will influence what you see.

AI Answers will adapt to who you are.

Two people can ask the exact same query but get different answers.

Chameleon answers, I call them. Shifting based on your past behavior, bookmarked sites, subscriptions, and the brands you follow. Among others.

In short, the query is just a starting point. Your history fills in the rest.

My third prediction is that AI agents will redefine Google search.

Google will become a hybrid — part search, part doing engine.

Tell it to book your flight when premium economy drops below $1,000. Tell it to keep an eye on the school district site and text you the second the calendar changes. Or get it to ping you the moment swim lesson registration opens, so you don’t miss a spot again.

Exciting days.

And through it all, one thing remains:

There is no hack if you want to stay relevant. In AI Overviews or AI Mode.

The brands that show up are the ones with clear positioning, a criterion they own, and consistent proof of it everywhere.

Good marketing. Still good ‘ol marketing.

Own Your Criterion in Google AI Overviews

If your brand already has a footprint online, you’re already on the radar of AI systems.

They’re picking up signals from your site, your reviews, your PR campaigns, and your customer language.

The question is whether those signals point to the criterion you actually want to own.

Because if they don’t, AI will assign you one anyway. Based on whatever it finds.

And that may not be the slot you’d have chosen.

Use our step-by-step AI search audit guide to see what AI systems already associate with your brand. And what you need to reinforce so the right signals become harder to miss.