Glossary · Platforms & surfaces
Google AI Overviews (AIO)
Also called: AIO, AI Overview, Google AI Overview
Google AI Overviews (AIO) are the AI-generated answer boxes that appear at the top of a Google search results page, synthesising a response from multiple sources and citing a small number of them inline above the classic blue links.
AIO is powered by Gemini grounded in Google Search. As of mid-2026 it appears on roughly half of commercial-intent queries in the verticals we track, and a cited source earns materially higher click-through than a top blue link because the buyer reads the box first.
Winning AIO placement is structural: a Quick Facts table Google can lift row-by-row, question-shaped H2s with a direct answer in the first sentence, validated Article and FAQPage schema, and a recent dateModified. Blocked crawlers or wall-of-text pages lose the slot.
AIO is one surface within AI Search — the boxed answer on a Google SERP — distinct from standalone chat engines like ChatGPT or Perplexity.
A page restructured under the four-layer recipe wins an AI Overview citation for "how to get a VASP licence in Lithuania" within six weeks: Google lifts its Quick Facts row on regulator and timeline verbatim into the box, with the page cited as source one.