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People have not stopped using Google, but AI-generated summaries now appear in some search results, and some people also ask standalone AI assistants for information. If your business is missing from AI answers, there is no special Google schema or file that guarantees a fix. Start with the basics: make your important pages accessible and eligible for Google Search, publish genuinely useful information, and measure whether visitors take meaningful actions.
Are people really replacing Google with AI?
That is too broad a conclusion. AI search is showing up both inside conventional search and in standalone assistants, so seeing an AI summary on a search page does not mean the person has abandoned Google.
Pew Research Center analyzed one month of browsing data and found that around six in ten respondents visited a search page with an AI-generated summary. That measures exposure to summaries on search pages—not a switch away from Google, a purchase made through AI, or the share of people who ask a standalone assistant for recommendations. The study is available in Pew’s May 2025 report. The available evidence does not establish how much business discovery has shifted across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other assistants.
What does it take to appear in Google’s AI features?
Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on existing Search systems. Its guidance describes retrieval from Search and query fan-out, in which a search can be expanded into related queries. Google’s guide to generative AI features therefore points site owners back to foundational SEO—not a separate set of guaranteed AI-ranking tricks.
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For a page to be eligible as a supporting link in these features, Google says it must be indexed and eligible to appear with a Search snippet. Eligibility is not a promise that Google will crawl, index, serve, or feature a page. Google’s AI features guidance says there are no additional technical requirements specifically for appearing as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. That does not mean a page can ignore Search eligibility or access problems.
What should you do to improve your chances?
Make your important pages accessible
- Check that key pages can be crawled and indexed, and that robots.txt, your content delivery network (CDN), or hosting configuration is not blocking Googlebot.
- Make essential information available as text and keep internal navigation usable, so visitors and search systems can reach the content.
- Use Google Search Console to diagnose indexing and search-performance issues. Google’s Search Essentials explains the baseline considerations for appearing in Search.
Give people something distinctive and useful
Build pages around real customer questions and the information your business can reliably provide. Google recommends useful, original, people-first content; structured data should accurately reflect content visible on the page. In a May 21, 2025 post, Google Search Relations’ John Mueller advised: “Focus on unique, non-commodity content that visitors from Search and your own readers will find helpful and satisfying.” See Google’s guidance on succeeding in AI search.
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Avoid mass-producing near-identical pages for slight variations of prompts. A larger page count is not evidence that a business is more useful, and it can make the site harder to maintain.
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Keep business details accurate
Where relevant, maintain accurate business information and Merchant Center details. Add structured data only when it matches what visitors can see on the page; Google does not require special AI schema for AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What should you measure?
Do not treat an “AI ranking” or a single visibility score as the business result. Google says traffic from its AI features is included in the Search Console Performance report’s Web search type, rather than reported as a separate AI channel. Review overall search performance alongside leads, sales, signups, or another outcome that matters to your business.
Third-party AI-visibility scores, setup kits, and promises of guaranteed recommendations deserve skepticism unless the provider explains its method and can show verifiable evidence. Google recommends evaluating SEO advice against its own guidance; following that guidance still does not guarantee visibility in an answer.
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