Updated
Updated What changed on
Fact-checked Only these facts were re-checked against the 14 October 2026 source checks, plus UK availability against Google's AI Overviews help page and its August 2024 launch post on 14 October 2026; nothing else on the page was re-checked.
- Corrected the first reason: blocking Google-Extended does not remove you from AI Overviews. Googlebot access and Search Console's Search generative AI control (live worldwide since 31 August 2026) do. The flowchart, fix order and FAQs now say the same.
- Added the Cloudflare risk: setting AI Training to Block, rather than Disallow AI Training, now also blocks Googlebot and Bingbot.
- Corrected the Ahrefs ranking figures: 37.9% of AI Overview citations sat in the first 10 results blocks in March 2026, 31.2% at positions 11 to 100 and 31.0% beyond the top 100. The July 2025 figure of 76.1% used a different method, so the two are not like for like.
- Corrected the AI Mode and AI Overviews study size: the 13.7% citation overlap comes from 540,000 query pairs (US data, September 2025), not 730,000 responses.
- Corrected the Ahrefs schema test: 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD against 4,000 controls showed no lift in AI Mode or ChatGPT and a small decline in AI Overviews.
- Dropped FAQ schema from the advice: Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026, and says structured data is not required for its AI features.
- Removed the word count example: Google's guide says there is no ideal page length.
- Fixed the Goodie link, described the free AI Search Visibility tool accurately, and corrected the ChatGPT tile: OAI-SearchBot, not GPTBot, governs ChatGPT search.
- Replaced "UK rollout still uneven" with what Google states: AI Overviews launched in the UK in August 2024, and Google's help page lists the UK for all users, showing an Overview only when its systems judge it helpful.
Why is my site not in AI Overviews? Five common reasons.
The 30-second answer
Citation is a retrieval problem on top of ranking, not a stronger version of ranking. Five things explain almost every absence, in the order they bite: Googlebot is blocked (blocking Google-Extended does not remove you from AI Overviews; Googlebot and Search Console's generative AI control do that), your direct answer is buried below the first viewport, the page does not cover the sub-questions Google fans out from the main query, the content has no original data or specific numbers worth extracting, or your authority signals are weak. Rank still helps but it no longer carries the result on its own. Ahrefs' March 2026 study found 37.9% of AI Overview citations in the first 10 results blocks, 31.2% at positions 11 to 100, and 31.0% beyond the top 100. If the thin pages were published in bulk by a tool or an agency, that is a different job from a single-page rewrite: see AI content cleanup.
Why ranking no longer guarantees a citation
of URLs cited in Google AI Overviews appeared in the first 10 results blocks for that query. Ahrefs counts blocks, not organic results, so this is not the same as ranking in the top 10.
How it was measured: 863,000 keyword SERPs and 4 million AI Overview URLs. Ahrefs measures the top 10 as blocks, counting ads, featured snippets and video packs as separate blocks.
was Ahrefs' July 2025 figure. It counted only the top 3 citations per AI Overview, and Ahrefs has since changed its parsing, so the two years are not like for like.
How it was measured: 1.9 million citations from 1 million AI Overviews, analysing only the top 3 most visible citations in each one. Ahrefs notes it improved its parsing between this study and the 2026 update. Both differences mean the fall to 37.9% cannot be read as a like for like change.
of links cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot appear in Google's top 10 for the same prompt. Perplexity is the outlier at closer to one in three.
How it was measured: 15,000 prompts. This is 2025 data and has not been re-run, so treat it as directional rather than current.
Before the five reasons: AI Mode and AI Overviews are not the same surface
This catches a lot of people. AI Overviews are the boxed summary at the top of standard Google results. AI Mode is the full chat experience inside Google Search itself. Ahrefs compared 540,000 query pairs across both (US data, September 2025) and found only 13.7% citation overlap. Different retrieval pools, different freshness weights, different prompts behind the scenes. If you are auditing why "AI Overviews ignore me", check both surfaces before assuming the same cause. Most of this page is about Overviews, but reasons 2-4 below apply to Mode too.
AI Overviews
Boxed summary on the standard SERP. Usually 3-7 citations. In Ahrefs' March 2026 study, 37.9% of AI Overview citations sat in the first 10 results blocks, 31.2% at positions 11 to 100 and 31.0% beyond the top 100. Triggers on informational and complex queries. Live in the UK since August 2024, and Google's help page lists the UK for all users. An Overview still only shows when Google judges it helpful for that query.
AI Mode
Conversational, multi-turn experience inside Google Search. Citation pool is wider, freshness bias is stronger, source overlap with AIO is only 13.7%. Optimising for one does not buy you the other.
The five reasons, ordered by how often they are the actual problem
1Googlebot is silently blocked
The cheapest check, so it goes first. A stale robots.txt rule, a security plugin update or a CDN setting can quietly block Googlebot. Blocking Google-Extended does not remove you from AI Overviews; it covers Gemini model training and grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI. Googlebot's robots.txt rules control Search crawling, and since 31 August 2026 Search Console also has a Search generative AI control for AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features. On Cloudflare, setting AI Training to Block (rather than Disallow AI Training) now also blocks Googlebot and Bingbot. Diagnostic: test your robots.txt against the AI bot list, then check your CDN's bot settings. Google-Extended is a robots.txt token for Gemini training and grounding; it does not control AI Overviews and never shows in your logs.
2The direct answer is buried below the first viewport
This is the lever the 2026 evidence actually points at. The CXL 100-page citation study found 55% of AIO citations are pulled from the top 30% of the source page. If your answer sits under a long brand intro, a video embed and three paragraphs of context, the extractor goes elsewhere. Restructure so the page opens with a 30-60 word direct answer to the head question, then expands below. The structure you are reading on this page (30-second answer block, then a flowchart, then the reasons) is the same pattern.
3The page only covers the head query, not the fan-out
When a query triggers an AIO, Google does not just retrieve for the literal phrase. It decomposes the question into sub-queries (the "query fan-out"), runs each, scores candidate paragraphs across all of them, then assembles the answer. A page that answers the head question and stops gets passed over for one that also answers the three obvious follow-ups. Google's guide says there is no ideal page length. Search Engine Land frames this as "relevance engineering" - building for the fan-out, not the head. Practical test: type your target query into AnswerThePublic or look at Google's "People also ask"; the questions there are your fan-out, and your page should cover at least the top four.
4The page has no original data or specific number
This is the "information gain" lever and it is underrated. AI Overviews synthesise from multiple sources and actively avoid redundancy - if your page repeats the same three statistics every competitor uses, the extractor has no marginal reason to pick you over them. The fix is small: include one number, one count, one date or one quote nobody else has. A line like "we audited 312 client robots.txt files in 2025 and 41% silently blocked Googlebot" makes the page extractable in a way that "many sites accidentally block Googlebot" never will. Freshness compounds this - Seer Interactive found AI-cited URLs are 393 days newer on average than organic top-10 results.
5Authority and E-E-A-T signals are not visible on the page
Lowest-priority fix on this list but the one most consultants chase first. AIO weights author bylines, Person schema, Organization signals and external citations - but it weights them after reasons 1-4. A page with a clear author bio, named expertise and a link to a Wikipedia or LinkedIn entity carries more citation weight than the same words with no byline. Schema is hygiene here, not a lever: the Ahrefs schema experiment (1,885 pages that added JSON-LD against 4,000 matched controls, May 2026) found no citation lift in AI Mode or ChatGPT, and a small decline in AI Overviews. Ship Article schema because it still helps pages qualify for rich results (Google says structured data is not required for its AI features, and stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026), then stop expecting it to outweigh real content depth.
The order to fix in
- Day one: confirm Googlebot is not blocked and check the Search generative AI setting in Search Console. Test here.
- Week one: rewrite the top 3 pages so the direct answer is in the first 300 words.
- Week two: for each, add 4-6 sub-questions from People Also Ask. Each sub-question gets a one-sentence answer first, then detail.
- Month one: add one specific original number per page (audit count, percentage, dated example).
- Quarter one: ship Article schema (Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026), add named author bios with Person schema, link to authoritative entity records (Wikipedia, Wikidata, LinkedIn).
- Ongoing: rerun the diagnostic monthly on your top 10 priority queries.
Honest framing: some queries will not trigger an AI Overview no matter what you do. Heavy commercial intent, navigational queries, sensitive verticals (health, finance, legal in some jurisdictions) skip the AIO entirely or trigger it inconsistently. Before spending months optimising for a query, check whether it reliably triggers an AIO in your country. If it does not, work on the queries that do.
Primary sources behind this page
- Ahrefs - 37.9% of AI Overview citations in the first 10 results blocks (March 2026)
- Ahrefs - AI Mode vs AI Overviews 13.7% citation overlap (540,000 query pairs, US data, September 2025)
- CXL - where AI Overviews cite from, 100-page study (55% top-30% finding)
- Seer Interactive - AI citation recency study (393-day freshness gap)
- Ahrefs - schema controlled test, May 2026 (1,885 pages; no lift in AI Mode or ChatGPT, small decline in AI Overviews)
- Search Engine Land - relevance engineering and query fan-out
- Google Search Central - AI features and your website (no special schema needed for AI features)
- Google - common crawlers (Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Google Search)
- Search Console Help - Search generative AI control (AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features, worldwide since 31 August 2026)
More on AI Overviews diagnosis.
If I rank well in Google, why am I still not in the AI Overview?
Because AIO is a retrieval problem on top of ranking, not a stronger version of ranking. Ahrefs' March 2026 study found 37.9% of AI Overview citations in the first 10 results blocks, 31.2% at positions 11 to 100, and 31.0% beyond the top 100. Its July 2025 figure of 76.1% counted only the top 3 citations per AI Overview, and Ahrefs has since changed its parsing, so the two are not like for like. The query is fanned out into sub-questions, candidate pages are scored on extractability and information gain, then a subset is cited. Rank still helps, but it no longer carries the result on its own.
What is the difference between Google AI Mode and AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are the boxed summary at the top of the standard results page. AI Mode is the full chat-style experience inside Google Search. Ahrefs compared 540,000 query pairs (US data, September 2025) and found AI Mode and AI Overviews cited the same URLs only 13.7% of the time. Different retrieval pools, different freshness weights, different prompts. Optimising for one does not buy you the other.
How fast does the answer have to appear on my page?
Fast. The CXL 100-page citation study found 55% of AIO citations come from the top 30% of the source page. If your answer sits below a long brand intro and three paragraphs of marketing prose, it is structurally hard to cite. Lead with a direct 30-60 word answer in the first viewport, then expand below.
Does schema actually move AI Overview citation rates?
Mixed evidence. Cross-sectional data shows cited pages are 2-3x more likely to carry JSON-LD, but the Ahrefs schema experiment tracked 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD against 4,000 matched control pages (May 2026): AI Mode (+2.4%) and ChatGPT (+2.2%) were statistically indistinguishable from zero, and AI Overviews showed a small but statistically significant decline (-4.6%). Treat schema as hygiene quality sites have anyway, not a standalone lever. Ship Article schema, then move on. FAQPage is still valid markup, but Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026.
How quickly should I expect to see citations after fixing the issues?
Robots.txt and schema changes typically register inside a week. Rewriting a thin page so the answer is in the top 30%, adding fan-out sub-questions and inserting an original number takes a quarter to fully re-evaluate as Google re-crawls. Citation patterns move quicker than blue-link rankings but slower than ad spend. Seer Interactive measured AI-cited URLs as 393 days newer on average than the same query's organic top-10, so freshness compounds on top of the other fixes.
Why does my competitor get cited but I do not?
Usually one of five things: their answer is in the top 30% of the page, they cover the sub-questions Google fans out from the head query, they have at least one piece of original data or specific number, they have a named expert author with structural credibility, or they are not blocking Googlebot (on Cloudflare, setting AI Training to Block rather than Disallow AI Training now also blocks Googlebot). Walk the diagnostic on this page in order; the first no is almost always the fix.
Is there a tool that tells me which AIO citations I am missing?
Profound, AIClicks, Otterly.AI and Goodie all track AIO citations specifically. For a one-off starting point, run my free AI Search Visibility tool, which scores structural readiness and gives you test queries to run in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode yourself. Ongoing monitoring needs a paid tracker.
Jason Burns
Independent UK SEO, GEO and AI consultant. In search since 2007. Portfolio includes 3M, BlackRock, Unilever and E.ON. Owner of SEO Moves Ltd since 2014.
More about Jason →Want me to run the diagnostic on your site?
Send one query that should be triggering an AIO in your category but is not citing you. I run the five-reason diagnostic live on a 30-minute call and tell you which one is yours.
Book the diagnostic