AI Overviews and AI Mode are AI features in Google Search that show a generated answer with links to websites. For your website, they mainly mean that the usual SEO basics count. Google sets no extra technical requirements: a page has to be indexed and able to appear in Google with a snippet. Google’s help pages list both features as available in the Netherlands and in Dutch.
What is the difference between AI Overviews and AI Mode?
AI Overviews appear above or between the ordinary search results when you ask something Google thinks a summary would help with. AI Mode is a separate space in Google Search where you hold a conversation: you ask a detailed question and then follow-up questions.
| AI Overviews | AI Mode | |
|---|---|---|
| What do you get? | An AI summary with the key information on a topic | An AI answer to a detailed question, with room for follow-up questions |
| What is it for? | Quickly understanding a complicated topic | Nuanced questions, comparisons and exploring in several steps |
| Links to websites? | Yes, supporting links | Yes, links to supporting websites |
| Available in the Netherlands? | Yes, in Dutch too | Yes, in Dutch too |
The availability comes from Google’s help pages on AI Mode and AI Overviews, checked on 11 November 2026. On that page, Google itself warns that AI Overviews can make mistakes and advises users to open the links to check information.
For a website, it makes little difference which of the two features you appear in. In both cases your page is a supporting link below or beside a text Google writes itself. A visitor clicks through when they want to know more than the answer gives, or want to check the information.
How often should I oil the chain on my e-bike?
It depends on how often you ride and in what weather. Many bike mechanics suggest cleaning and oiling the chain once it sounds dry or after a ride in the rain. The Spoke Bike Shop explains on its maintenance page, step by step, how to do this at home and which lubricant suits dry or wet conditions.
Bronnen: thespoke-example.co.uk › maintenance, example-cycling-forum.com
What does Google require of your website?
In AI features and your website, Google is clear: to appear as a supporting link, a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet in Google Search. There are no other technical requirements. Google does not name any special structured data you need to add either.
Google’s guide to generative AI features (updated in July 2026) goes further. According to Google, you do not need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup or Markdown to appear in Google Search. Google Search ignores them. That includes llms.txt, which you can read more about in What does llms.txt do for your website?. Nor do you need to cut your content into small chunks: Google’s systems can recognise several topics on one page.
What does count are the basics you also need for ordinary search results. You can check most of them yourself:
The basics Google also uses for AI features
- Googlebot may fetch your important pages according to your robots.txt
- Those pages carry no noindex in the code or in the HTTP headers
- They can be reached through ordinary internal links from other pages
- The content is on the page as text, not only in an image
- Structured data matches what is visible on the page
- You have not set nosnippet on pages you actually want used as a source
What those basics involve is covered in What is SEO and how does it work? and Structured data explained. A page that is not in Google cannot become a link in an AI answer either. You can track down the causes with Why is my page not showing in Google?.
Why do you sometimes see different links from the ordinary results?
Google describes how AI Overviews and AI Mode may run several related searches across subtopics and different data sources. That technique is called query fan-out. While putting the answer together, the systems find additional supporting pages. As a result, an AI answer can contain links to pages that are not at the top of the ordinary results for the same search.
Query fan-out in brief
- QuestionSomeone asks which e-bike suits a daily commute.
- Sub-questionsThe system also searches for range, maintenance and the rules for speed pedelecs.
- Pages per sub-questionEach sub-question brings different pages into view.
- AnswerGoogle writes one answer and adds links to supporting pages.
For your website, that is an opportunity. A page that answers one sub-question well, such as how to maintain a product or what determines the delivery time, can fit as a source for a broader question. So it pays to give each question customers ask you a clear answer on your site. How to collect those questions is covered in Researching customer questions and keywords.
How do you control what Google uses from your page?
Google offers a few rules that limit what it shows. The robots meta tag specification describes them.
| Rule | What it does |
|---|---|
nosnippet | No text snippet in the search results. Also prevents the content from serving as direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. |
max-snippet:[number] | Limits the snippet to a number of characters, and with it how much content may serve as direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. |
data-nosnippet | An HTML attribute that excludes part of the page from snippets. |
noindex | The page does not appear in the search results, and so not as a link in an AI feature either. |
This is what that looks like in a page’s code. The first rule limits the snippet for the whole page; the attribute excludes one paragraph:
<head>
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:160">
</head>
<body>
<p>Google may use this text as a snippet.</p>
<p data-nosnippet>Google does not use this paragraph as a snippet.</p>
</body>Two things to watch. These rules only work if Google may fetch the page: if you block the page in robots.txt, Google never sees the rule. And Google-Extended is not the right tool here. According to Google’s list of crawlers, that token controls training and grounding for Gemini and has no effect on inclusion in Google Search. You can read more about the token under Google-Extended.
How do you see traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode?
Google says sites that appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the overall search traffic in Google Search Console. You find them in the performance report under the Web search type. In June 2026, Google also announced a separate generative AI performance report in Search Console, showing how often pages from your site appeared in these features (Google Search Central, June 2026). The announcement describes impressions, broken down by page, country, device and date; it does not mention a separate click figure. Compare per page over a longer period.
There is no separate trick for AI Overviews. A page that Google can fetch, index and understand, and that answers a question clearly, has a chance of becoming a source. That is why Outseen works on SEO and GEO in one approach. Atlas, our own research engine, checks the public code for things such as robots rules and indexing instructions in code and headers. Whether your page appears in an AI answer is up to Google.
What does this mean for your business?
You do not need new files or special markup for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Start with the pages that matter most to your business, such as your main services or product categories, and check that they are indexed, readable as text and free of any nosnippet or noindex you did not intend.
Then look at the questions customers ask you that do not yet have a clear answer on your site. A page or paragraph of its own for each question gives Google something to link to for a sub-question. Follow impressions and clicks per page in Search Console over a few months rather than reacting to a single week.