How to Get Your Website to Show Up in Google's AI Search Results

Okay, so if you’ve searched for anything on Google lately, you’ve probably seen it... A little AI-written answer sitting right at the top of the page, above all the regular links. That’s called an AI Overview. There’s also something called AI Mode, where people can type longer, more conversational questions and keep asking follow-ups, kind of like chatting with the search engine.

And if you run a business, your next thought is probably the same one I keep hearing from clients, which is: how do I get my website in there?

Here’s the honest answer, and it’s a lot less dramatic than the internet makes it sound. Google put out its own official guide on this, and the headline is that showing up in AI results is still just SEO. No secret code, no special file, no new trick you have to pay someone for. The same things that help your site show up in regular Google search are what help it show up here.

So let’s walk through what that actually looks like, what’s worth your time, and what you can totally ignore.

First, What Are AI Overviews and AI Mode?

Quick version so we’re on the same page... AI Overviews are those summaries at the top of some search results, and they include links to the pages the information came from. AI Mode is a separate way to search where you can ask bigger questions and follow up on the answers.

Behind the scenes, both of them pull from Google’s regular search index. And when someone asks a question, Google doesn’t just look up that one question. It can send out a bunch of related searches at the same time to fill in the picture. Google calls this “query fan-out.” Their own example is someone asking how to fix a lawn full of weeds, and the system also looking up things like how to get rid of weeds without chemicals and how to keep them from coming back.

Why does that matter for you? Because your page doesn’t have to match someone’s exact words. Google’s systems understand synonyms and general meaning, so someone searching “florist for my wedding” can still land on your page that says “wedding floral design.” You can stop stressing about squeezing every possible phrase into your site.

The Good News: It's Still Just SEO

Google’s guide says it pretty plainly. From their perspective, optimizing for AI search is optimizing for the search experience, so it’s still primarily about good SEO.

You may have seen the terms AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) floating around, usually attached to someone selling a service. Google’s take is that those are the same work with a new label. If anyone pitches you a special “AI visibility package,” it’s worth reading Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI features yourself first. It’s written for regular website owners, and it’s pretty readable.

So the plan isn’t to start over. It’s to get the basics solid, and then make content that’s actually worth pulling from.

Step 1: Make Sure Google Can Find and Show Your Site

This is the not-so-fun part, but it decides whether anything else matters. For a page to show up in AI features, it has to be indexed (meaning Google knows it exists and has it in its library), and it has to be eligible to show in search with a snippet, which is the little preview text under a search result.

Here’s what to check:

• Set up Google Search Console if you haven’t already. It’s free, and it shows you what Google sees on your site, including which pages are indexed.

• Make sure your pages aren’t hidden from search. On Wix or Squarespace, look in each page’s SEO settings and make sure nothing is set to keep search engines out. This one gets left on from when the site was being built more often than you’d think.

• Keep your important info as real text on the page. If your services or details only exist inside a graphic, Google can’t read them as text!

• Check for the new AI setting. Google has started testing a setting in Search Console (under Settings, in a section called Search Generative AI) that controls whether your site can appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It’s rolling out to a limited group of site owners first, so you might not see it yet. If you do, make sure your site is set to be included, because Google’s guide says a site has to be included there to be eligible.

• Make sure your site works well on a phone, loads at a reasonable speed, and makes it easy to tell what the main content is. Google calls this page experience.

One reality check from Google itself: meeting every requirement doesn’t guarantee Google will crawl, index, or show your page. Nobody can promise that, so be wary of anyone who does.

Step 2: Write Something Only You Could Write

This is the big one. Google’s guide says that creating content people find unique and useful will likely influence your presence in AI search more than anything else it lists!

They draw a line between two kinds of content. Commodity content is stuff that could have come from anyone, like “7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers.” Non-commodity content has real experience baked in. Google’s example is a post about why someone waived the inspection and saved money, with a look inside the sewer line. See the difference? One is a summary of what everyone already says. The other could only come from someone who was actually there.

The AI systems look at a lot of sources. If your page says what every other page says, there’s no reason for it to pick yours. Think about what that looks like for your business. A bakery writing “how to choose a wedding cake” is going to sound like fifty other bakeries. A bakery writing about what actually happens when a three-tier cake meets an outdoor wedding in July has something to say. A contractor, a photographer, a therapist, a nursery owner, a coach— same thing. You know stuff from doing the work that nobody can find by Googling.

A few ways to get yourself into your content:

• Answer the questions clients actually ask you, the way you actually answer them.

• Use real projects, real photos, and real examples (with permission if they involve a client).

• Say what you’d do and what you wouldn’t, including your opinions.

• Show who’s behind the site with a byline, a short bio, and a solid About page.

And if you use AI tools to help you write, that’s fine as long as the result meets Google’s standards. But Google’s guide is pretty clear that just recycling what’s already out there, or what an AI model could easily produce on its own, isn’t the goal.

Step 3: Make It Easy to Read, and Add Real Images

Write for people. Break things up with clear headings and shorter paragraphs, and organize the page the way you’d explain it if we were sitting across a table from each other. Google says there’s no ideal page length. A page should be as long as it needs to be for the person reading it, and no longer.

Images and video matter too. Google’s AI features can pull in relevant images and video, which gives your site another way to show up besides a link. Use good-quality photos that are actually yours when you can, give files sensible names, write alt text that describes what’s really in the picture, and put images near the text they go with. If you have a short video, like a walkthrough of a project or a quick explanation of your process, put it on the page it relates to.

Step 4: If You’re a Local Business, Clean Up Your Google Business Profile

AI answers can include information about local businesses, and Google specifically points to your Google Business Profile as one way to help your business be visible in those responses. If you have a physical location or serve a specific area, make sure your profile is claimed and that your hours, address or service area, phone number, services, and photos all match what’s on your website. If you sell products online, Google’s Merchant Center does a similar job for product listings.

It’s not glamorous, but mismatched or inconsistent info between your profile and your site is one of those little things that works against you in the background without you even realizing it.

Step 5: Check How It’s Going

Google points site owners to a Generative AI performance report in Search Console, which shows how people are finding your content through the AI features. Depending on when you’re reading this, you may or may not have it yet since Google has been rolling it out in stages. If you don’t see it, the regular Performance report in Search Console still tells you which pages and searches are bringing people to your site.

One more thing worth mentioning... Google’s guide warns about third-party tools that promise ranking success or claim to use “internal” Google data. Use them if they help you stay organized, but know that no outside tool has access to Google’s internal ranking systems.

What You Can Skip

This part might save you some money and a few headaches. Google’s guide lists several things you don’t need to do for Google Search:

• You don’t need an llms.txt file. Google Search ignores it. If you want one for other services, it won’t hurt, but it won’t help you in Google either.

• You don’t need to chop your content into tiny pieces for AI. Google can handle a page with multiple topics and show the relevant part.

• You don’t need to rewrite your pages in some special way for AI. Because Google understands synonyms and meaning, you don’t have to worry about hitting every long-tail keyword.

• You don’t need to chase fake mentions around the internet. Google says inauthentic mentions aren’t as helpful as they seem, and its systems are built to block spam.

• You don’t need a special schema. Structured data isn’t required for AI features, and there’s no special markup for them. It can still help with regular rich results, so it’s fine to use, but it’s not a secret key.

And please don’t build a separate page for every possible way someone might phrase a search. Google says doing that mainly to manipulate rankings or AI answers goes against its scaled content abuse spam policy, and it doesn’t work well long term anyway. One really good page beats ten thin ones.

A Realistic Way to Look At It

There’s no guarantee here, and anyone who tells you otherwise is just selling something. Google itself says that meeting every guideline doesn’t mean a page will be crawled, indexed, or shown. But the flip side is encouraging: Google also says plenty of good content does well in search, including its AI features, without any fancy SEO at all (but that still doesn't mean that you should neglect all the foundational or ongoing parts of SEO altogether— it just means you don't have to have your site 100% perfectly polished up to every SEO standard in order to show up).

So do the foundations, write things that are genuinely yours, and keep showing up. Treat AI visibility as a bonus that comes from doing good work, not something you have to hack your way into!

Where Your Website Comes In

This is where design is more than how things look. A website that loads well, works on a phone, is organized so people can find what they need, uses real photos, and sounds like an actual person wrote it is basically the same site Google’s guide is describing. That’s not a coincidence. A good experience for visitors and a good experience for search tend to be the same thing.

At Thrive Design Co., I design brand identities and build custom Wix websites for small business owners whose online presence doesn’t quite match the quality of their work and the experience that they provide. If your site feels DIY, outdated, or just a little disconnected from what you really do, reach out to me today, and we can talk about what would actually help.