You may have noticed that whenever we search for something on Google, we often get a summary. Below that, you’ll find websites, but first, you’ll find a summary. We call that summary the AI overview. So, as an SEO or website owner, our goal used to be to get our website to the first page of Google, rank in the top three for our relevant keywords, and rank number one.
But today, what can we do to ensure that this AI overview, or the AI summary you find on Google, also appears in context? What new techniques can we use to do this? This is what we’ll discuss in this blog. Google’s latest update has given us tips on how to rank our website in the AI overview. We’ll discuss those nuances.
So, in today’s times, standard SEO isn’t enough. You need to do something extra. And that’s what we call AEO, or answer engine optimization. Now, you need to rank as a reference for the search engine’s answering method, the AI overview, or any other generative AI tool where people search for businesses to get suggestions.
Why AEO Matters Today
As Google’s search results evolve, users are increasingly relying on instant answers generated by AI. These summaries pull information from multiple sources, and if your website isn’t optimized for AI Overview, your brand will simply not appear in these high-visibility spots. Therefore, standard SEO is no longer enough. You now need to optimize your content for AI-driven answers.
Learn More: AEO is the New SEO! – Learn what Answer Engine Optimization is.
Google’s May 2025 Update: What You Need to Know
First, let’s see what Google tells us. What updates have come from Google? Then, we’ll summarize that and discuss what we can do based on it. So, in May 2025, there was a blog post from Google. There were recommendations about things you could do. So, the topic of this blog was: The Top Ways to Ensure Your Content Performs Well in Google’s AI Experiences on Search. So now, whenever you type anything on Google, after that, you see your websites, your website recommendations, links, and businesses. But our goal now is to rank at the top here, because this is where anyone will click. So, our goal is to rank at the top here. But when you open an AI overview like this, we should rank there as well.
Not only should your website rank on the first page of Google, but it should also rank in the AI overview. So, we’ll summarize Google’s recommendations. We’ll understand what Google wants from us. Can we do things to ensure our website ranks as a reference in the AI Overview?
Let’s break down Google’s recommendations and understand what you need to do.
- Create Unique, Helpful, and High-Quality Content
So, the first thing we need to do is create unique and helpful content on our website. Now, on your website, on your web pages. If the content is the same as on four other websites, the same content that you haven’t upgraded in years. Even if it hasn’t been updated in years, the same content only praises your products and services. There’s no authority. There’s no trustworthiness. There’s no experience or quality in your content. So, forget about trusting your content in the AI Overview.
These days, your web pages won’t even show up in normal blue links. So, we have to make sure that instead of just writing a blog on a single topic, or four or five paragraphs about our services, we’ll expand it a bit. For example, if you’re writing a blog and your purpose is to rank it on Google or for SEO purposes, you’ll expand it significantly. For example, if you want to write a blog about the top five mobile phones in India, that’s a topic. It’s just a list of five mobile phones with their advantages and disadvantages, and reviews. That’s what we would normally write. But that’s not enough. You have to do something special. You have to write unique content that actually helps the user.
Example: Blog on “Top Five Mobile Phones in India”
Most websites list five phones with pros, cons, and reviews. That’s not enough anymore. You must add depth, categories, and helpful insights, such as:
- Top 5 phones based on camera quality
- Top 5 based on battery backup
- Top 5 based on audio quality
- Top 5 based on performance/speed
- Top 5 based on resale value
This single blog now contains multiple blocks of helpful content, exactly how AI likes to respond. AI answers are never simple lists. They provide context and breakdowns. Your content must do the same.
- Add “Extra” Elements to Your Content
You have to provide that extra element in your content. For example, recipe blogs today don’t just show a single recipe. They include:
- A short, quick recipe
- Ingredient list
- Step-by-step recipe with photos
- A long-form, detailed recipe
- Video version
- Related side dishes
This additional richness makes the content extremely helpful, and AI sees that.
For Businesses:
Don’t just write two paragraphs about your service. Explain why you’re authoritative and trustworthy.
Add:
- Detailed FAQs
- Customer reviews (text + video)
- Case studies
- Experience-backed insights
- Service comparisons
- Real examples
The more detail you provide, the more AI understands your expertise.
Benefits:
- Your content becomes keyword-rich
- Your content becomes actually useful
The more detailed you can be about your product or service, the more detailed your videos will be. This will provide two benefits. First, your content will become keyword-rich. Second, this content will actually be helpful.
- Improve Page Experience (Very Important Today)
If you want to grow on Google and get high traffic, look at page experience. In today’s time, where running code has become so easy, where building tech-based websites has become so easy, if your websites are still slow, your website isn’t providing a good user experience, or your website isn’t mobile-friendly, then trust me, no matter how good the content is, no matter how expensive the website is, no matter how big the institution or company, your website won’t rank.
Forget about the AI overview. Your website won’t rank even in normal blue links. So, you need to make sure your pages aren’t slow. You need to make sure your website is mostly mobile-friendly. Along with that, your website’s core values should be very good. If this isn’t the case, if your website’s page speed is slow, or if your website has technical issues, then trust me, you won’t benefit from the SEO overview at all.
Therefore, ensure your website’s user experience is excellent.
- Strong Technical SEO Is Non-Negotiable
In addition to this, technical SEO is essential. Technical SEO includes your structural data, your website’s speed, key values, mobile compatibility, and broken links. Therefore, you need to address all the technical issues that slow down your website, prevent it from crawling, and hinder its crawling and indexing. You need to fix all of these things.
Technical SEO includes:
- Page speed
- Crawlability
- Indexing
- Broken link fixes
- Mobile optimization
- Structured data (schema)
- Correct use of robots tags
- Clean website structure
AI and Google bots learn from your content. If your website is hard to crawl, they can’t read it—and they will not show it in the AI Overview.
- Use Google’s New “Max Snippet Tag”
Google has also launched a new meta tag, called “After AI Overview,” which is you can specify on your website and web pages how much part, up to how many characters, or how much value Google can show in its snippets. This is called the max snippet tag.
The max snippet tag indicates how many characters Google can show in its snippet preview. It basically helps you control which parts and how much of your content should be shown on Google. This also helps train search engine bots effectively. Along with this, there is also a no snippet tag. If you don’t want any particular data or text to appear on Google, you can prevent it from appearing. You can control that data. Just like we used to use no-index or no-follow tags, a single line is used.
This helps Google understand your content better and allows AI tools to train their models more accurately using your data. There is also a No Snippet Tag, similar to no-index/no-follow.
- Add Relevant Structured Data (Schema Markup)
Similarly, there’s a robots tag with a meta name. As you can see on the screen, you can add it to your web page. Along with that, you have to make sure that your website and your web pages have relevant structured data, i.e., schema markup.
If your website is organization-related, use organizational data. Use a product schema. Most importantly, for your e-commerce website, use an FAQ schema. Add your recipe schema, Blogger schema, and new schema. The search link is gone now. It’s in the recent update from Google. So, all these types of schema that are relevant to your web pages are relevant to your content. You should put it on your website. Look, whenever we understand or read about schema, we understand that schema tells more about your web pages to Google. So, we’re doing the same thing in the AI Overview.
Our goal is to tell Google as much as possible about our web pages, about our content. So, since schema does the same thing, we have to focus heavily on schema.
If you want Google and its AI systems to trust your website, you must focus on:
✔ Unique and deeply helpful content
✔ Excellent user experience
✔ Quick, mobile-friendly pages
✔ Strong technical SEO
✔ Proper use of structured data
✔ Proper snippet control via meta tags
✔ Offering “extra value” in every piece of content
This is what will help your website rank not only in blue links but also inside Google’s AI Overview, which is now the real prime spot.
