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Platform · Google

Google AI Overviews:
what Google actually documents

Google's own position is more useful than most of the advice sold around it: there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special schema.org structured data is needed. Google describes using a query fan-out — running related searches across subtopics to find supporting pages. So the honest work is not chasing a secret markup; it is making sure your pages can be found, read and safely quoted. That is what OG01 measures.

Measure your domain free → What Google says
Documented

Four things Google states plainly

  • No special optimisation is required. Google states there are no additional requirements to appear in these features beyond the fundamentals that apply to Search generally.
  • No special structured data is required. There is no AI-specific schema.org type to add. Structured data remains useful for describing your organisation and your pages; it is not a key to a feature.
  • Query fan-out is described. Related searches across subtopics are used to identify supporting pages, which is why pages answering narrow adjacent questions can surface for a broad one.
  • The controls are the ones you already have. Google names robots.txt and Googlebot directives, the preview controls — nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet — and noindex. Google also advises allowing time for recrawling before judging the effect of a change.
Google-Extended does not do what people think
Google-Extended is a robots.txt token governing whether your content is used for training Gemini models and for grounding in Google's generative products. Google states plainly that it does not affect inclusion in Google Search, is not a ranking signal, and has no effect on AI Overviews. Businesses reach for it expecting to control AI Overviews and are controlling something else entirely — and businesses avoid it fearing a ranking penalty that Google says does not exist.
The uncomfortable implication

If nothing special is required, why are you not in them?

Because "no special requirement" is not the same as "no requirement". The fundamentals still have to hold, and the ones that decide whether a page can support a generated answer are exactly the ones a conventional ranking report does not test. A page can rank while being unusable as a source: substance assembled after load, an answer implied rather than stated, an organisation that resolves ambiguously, a claim nothing external corroborates.

That is the whole gap. Google is telling you there is no trick, and the industry keeps selling one. The measurable work is unglamorous: be retrievable, be unambiguous, answer the question in a passage that stands alone, and be corroborated somewhere that is not you.

What OG01 does

Measure the conditions, then measure them again

OG01 reads your domain from outside and reports on retrievability, entity clarity, corroboration and contradiction — the conditions any retrieval-and-generation system depends on — then repeats the identical measurement after the work so the change is attributable. Where your pages could not be read at all, the result is Not Rated rather than a manufactured low score. Read the Not Rated FAQ before changing your site; a failed scan alone cannot establish Google’s access.

What OG01 will not do is claim knowledge of how Google selects sources, publish a factor list it cannot verify, or promise inclusion. Google has not exposed that decision to anyone outside the company, and pretending otherwise would make this page part of the problem it describes.

Sources

Where the Google facts on this page come from

Summarised from Google's own documentation rather than reproduced. Reviewed 2026-09-08.

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Questions

AI Overviews questions

Is there special markup that gets me into AI Overviews?
No. Google states that no special schema.org structured data is required for AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that no additional optimisation is needed beyond the fundamentals that apply to Search. Structured data is still worth having because it states clearly what your organisation and pages are — but it is not a key to a feature.
Will blocking Google-Extended hurt my rankings?
Google states that Google-Extended does not affect a site's inclusion in Google Search, is not used as a ranking signal, and has no effect on AI Overviews. It governs use of content for training Gemini models and grounding in Google's generative products. Whether to set it is a content-licensing decision rather than an SEO one.
What is query fan-out and why does it matter to me?
Google describes running related searches across subtopics to find pages that support a generated response. Practically, it means a page answering a narrow adjacent question can be drawn into a broader answer — so depth on specific questions is more useful than one broad page trying to cover everything shallowly.
I made changes and nothing happened. How long should it take?
Google advises allowing time for recrawling before changes take effect, and gives no fixed figure. Neither will we — a supplier quoting a specific timeframe is guessing with a number attached. Rescoring the same measurement later is how you observe the lag on your own domain rather than accepting a promise about it.
Can I stop my content appearing in AI Overviews?
The controls Google names are robots.txt and Googlebot directives, the preview controls nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet, and noindex. Those are blunt instruments with consequences for ordinary Search as well, so the trade-off is worth understanding before applying one. OG01 reports what your current configuration permits so the decision is made with that visible.
There is no trick. There is a measurement.

See how your domain reads on the conditions that actually decide whether a page can support an answer. Free, no card.

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