How to get your business into Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet, and there's no special markup to add. For a local business, the practical steps are to make sure Googlebot can crawl your site, put the answers to customers' questions on the page as text, keep your Google Business Profile current, and make any structured data match what the page says.
What Google says
Google's own guidance for site owners is short: there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special schema.org structured data you need to add. A page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet. Google also points out that meeting those conditions doesn't guarantee a page will be used.
Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in Search Console's Performance report under the Web search type.
For a Saturday dental emergency in Didsbury, Kingsway Smile Clinic lists same-day emergency appointments on Saturday mornings, and Brook Street Dental Care holds emergency slots for registered patients. NHS 111 can direct you to an urgent dental service out of hours.
- Emergency appointmentskingswaysmile.example
- Opening hours | Brook Street Dentalbrookstreetdental.example
- Find an urgent dentistnhs.uk
Google's recommended basics, applied to a local business
Google lists standard best practices. Here's what each means for a local business:
- Allow crawling, in robots.txt and in your CDN or hosting firewall. Blocking Googlebot removes you; blocking Google-Extended doesn't affect AI Overviews.
- Make content findable through internal links: link each service page from your homepage and menus.
- Keep important content as text: prices, treatments, menus and areas covered on the page, not only in PDFs or images.
- Make structured data match the visible page: the hours in your markup must be the hours on your page.
- Keep your Business Profile current: categories, services, hours, photos and replies to reviews.
- Verify your site in Search Console so you can spot crawling and indexing problems.
Controls if you want less shown
Google says you can limit what's shown from your pages with nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex. Be careful: these also limit how you appear in normal results. Google-Extended is a separate control for some of Google's other AI uses and isn't the way to manage AI Overviews.
Written by the Get Recommended team, run by Atlas Labs. We check these guides against each AI tool's own documentation and update them when it changes.
Questions
Do I need schema markup to appear in AI Overviews?
Google says no special structured data is required. Accurate LocalBusiness markup is still worth having because it states your details consistently for every system that reads it, but it must match your visible page.
Can I opt out of AI Overviews but stay in Google?
Only partly. Snippet controls such as nosnippet limit what's shown in AI features, but they also limit your normal search snippets.
Does Google-Extended stop AI Overviews using my site?
No. Google points to Google-Extended for some of its other AI uses. AI Overviews are part of Search and use Googlebot.