By Mehdi HassanWhat does Google's AI features guidance actually say?
Google's AI features guidance says that the best practices for appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode are the same as for regular Google Search. There are no additional technical requirements, no special markup and no separate submission process. If a page is indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, it is eligible to appear as a supporting link in an AI feature.
The documentation lives in Google Search Central under AI features and your website. It reads short because the message is short: keep doing the fundamentals. In May 2026 Google added a longer guide aimed at site owners who were being sold AI optimization services, and its tone is blunter. It treats most "AEO tactics" as either ordinary SEO renamed or as work that does nothing for Google.
This summary is part of our wider guide to getting cited in Google AI Overviews, which covers what the 2026 data shows about which pages get picked. Here we stick to what Google itself says, then point out where its advice stops.
What are the eligibility rules for AI Overviews and AI Mode?
To appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page has to meet the same technical requirements as any Google Search result: Googlebot can crawl it, it returns a successful status, it is indexed, and it is eligible to be shown with a snippet. Google is explicit that there is no extra requirement on top of that.
Requirement | What it means in practice | Where to check |
|---|---|---|
Crawlable | Not blocked in robots.txt, reachable through internal links | URL Inspection in Search Console |
Indexed | The page appears in Google's index, not excluded as a duplicate or noindex | Pages report in Search Console |
Snippet-eligible | No nosnippet tag and no max-snippet limit that rules out quoting | Page source and meta robots tags |
Content in the HTML | Important text is rendered, not hidden behind clicks or slow scripts | URL Inspection, view rendered HTML |
Meets spam policies | No scaled low-value pages, no cloaking, no thin doorway content | Manual actions report |
The table is boring on purpose. Google's point is that the bar is the normal bar. If a page you care about is missing from AI Overviews, the first suspects are the same as for a ranking problem: it isn't indexed, it's canonicalised to another URL, or it doesn't answer the query as well as the pages that were picked. Our guide to whether you need to rank top 10 to appear covers how loosely citations and rankings now track each other.
What does Google say you don't need to do?
Google's May 2026 guide lists several tactics it considers unnecessary for its AI features: creating an llms.txt file, splitting content into tiny chunks for machines, adding AI-specific structured data, and rewriting pages in a special style for AI. Its view is that its systems already understand normal, well-written pages.
- llms.txt. Google doesn't use it for Search. Separately, Ahrefs found that 97% of the llms.txt files it checked received zero requests.
- Chunking. Google advises against breaking pages into fragments. Clear sections that each answer one question are fine; dozens of micro-sections written for a parser are not.
- AI-specific schema. There is no markup that makes a page more likely to be cited. Structured data still helps rich results and helps machines read entities, but it isn't an AI switch.
- AI rewrites. Rewriting pages into a formula aimed at AI isn't required. Helpful, accurate, people-first content is the stated standard.
Which controls change how your content appears in AI features?
Google's guidance says the existing snippet and indexing controls apply to AI features too. You don't get a separate opt-out for AI Overviews; you use the same meta robots rules that control how your page appears in regular results.
- noindex removes the page from Search entirely, including AI features.
- nosnippet stops Google from showing any text from the page, which also keeps it out of AI Overview quotes.
- data-nosnippet on an HTML element hides just that part of the page from snippets and AI features.
- max-snippet limits how much text Google may quote. Set it too low and you limit what AI features can use.
- Google-Extended in robots.txt controls whether your content is used for training and grounding Gemini models. Google says it does not affect inclusion in Search or AI Overviews.
The practical advice: don't block anything on pages you want cited, and audit old templates for leftover nosnippet or max-snippet rules. Teams sometimes add them years ago to stop a messy snippet and forget they're there.
How does Google report AI features traffic?
Google counts clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode inside the normal Web search type in Search Console's Performance report. There is no separate AI filter, so you can't isolate how many clicks came from an AI Overview versus a blue link.
That matters because clicks are shrinking where AI Overviews show. Ahrefs' analysis of December 2025 data found the top-ranking result's click-through rate was 58% lower when an AI Overview appeared, up from a 34.5% drop it measured in 2025. Google's guidance argues that the clicks that do come from AI features are higher quality, with visitors more likely to stay, but it doesn't publish numbers you can benchmark against. To work out whether you appear at all, use a manual or tool-based check, described in our guide to tracking AI Overviews.
- Lower CTR for the top result when an AI Overview shows (Ahrefs, Dec 2025 data)
- 58%
- Share of llms.txt files Ahrefs found got zero requests
- 97%
What does Google's guidance leave out?
Google's guidance covers Google. It says nothing about ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Copilot, which run their own crawlers, retrieve pages differently and cite different numbers of sources. For a B2B company whose buyers research in ChatGPT, following Google alone leaves gaps.
- Other crawlers. OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot need to be allowed in robots.txt and at the firewall. Many AI crawlers don't run JavaScript, so content that only appears after client-side rendering may be invisible to them. See our guide to JavaScript SEO.
- Different citation habits. The Semrush AI Visibility Index, built on 126 million prompts, found ChatGPT cites about 15 sources per answer against about 3 for Gemini. More slots means more room for smaller sites.
- Off-site mentions. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, web mentions correlated 0.664 with AI Overview visibility, against 0.218 for backlinks. Google's guide talks about your pages, not about what the rest of the web says about you.
- Conversion. Fewer clicks means each visit has to work harder. Google's guidance is about being included, not about what the page does when someone lands.
Why Google's advice and the AEO industry disagree
Google's incentive is to keep site owners writing for people, because that keeps its index useful and resists manipulation. The AEO tool industry's incentive is to sell measurable tactics. Both have a point.
Google is right that there is no hidden switch for AI Overviews. The industry is right that pages structured with clear answers near the top, real tables and visible FAQs are easier for any engine to quote. Where they overlap is ordinary good writing: answer the question, name the subject, keep each section self-contained. That's the part worth doing.
What should you do with this guidance?
Treat Google's AI features guidance as permission to stop chasing tricks and to fix the fundamentals on the pages that earn money. For most B2B sites, that means a short, concrete list.
- Confirm that your homepage, pricing, product and comparison pages are indexed and snippet-eligible.
- Make sure the main content is in the server-rendered HTML, not injected later by scripts.
- Put a direct, quotable answer in the first lines of each page and each section.
- Allow the AI crawlers you want, including OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, and check your CDN or firewall isn't blocking them.
- Earn mentions on other sites, since that's where Google's advice is silent and the correlation data is strongest.
- Make the page convert, because the visit you still get is worth more than it used to be.
If the audit points to a rebuild rather than fixes, our Framer to Next.js migration cost guide shows how we scope a move to a server-rendered stack. For how AI Mode differs from AI Overviews, read Google AI Mode and how websites show up in it.
