Win the answer that sits above the results.
AI Overviews now answer a large share of informational and commercial queries before anyone scrolls. Gemini draws on the same signals. Being ranked below the Overview is not the same as being in it.
Four signals that decide it.
Ranking well is necessary but nowhere near sufficient.
Six levers specific to Google's AI surfaces.
Different weighting from ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Entity consistency
Name, description, category and identifiers aligned across your site, schema, Business Profile and directories.
Structured data depth
Organization, Product, FAQPage, Breadcrumb and Article markup, validated and deduplicated.
Passage optimisation
A direct, self-contained answer near the top of the page — the shape Overviews extract.
Google-Extended policy
Whether to allow Gemini training access, and what your current setting is actually doing.
Corroborating sources
Aligning what third parties say about you with what your own pages claim.
Overview tracking
Presence and citation in AI Overviews tracked per query, separately from organic position.
Why ranking first isn't enough.
The two are only loosely correlated in our data.
They are not the same product.
Each needs checking separately.
About Google's AI surfaces.
Google states Google-Extended governs Gemini model training and grounding, not Search indexing. In practice we recommend allowing it unless you have a specific reason not to, and we audit what your current setting does.
Inclusion is driven more by entity confidence and structured data than by position. It is the most common pattern we see.
For informational queries, materially. That is exactly why being named inside the Overview matters more than the link below it.
Not selectively while remaining in Search. The practical strategy is to be included rather than excluded.
Per query, from stored captures, separately from organic rank so the two can be compared.
Check your AI Overview presence.
Free, and it compares your organic position with your actual inclusion.