How they work and how to make your web pages appear on them
Last spring, I alerted you that Google’s AI Overviews would eventually be rolled out in Canada, and I stressed the importance of following SEO best practices and creating useful blogs. Doing so would help “future-proof” your webpages to gain better visibility and outrank your competition in search engine results.
Well, not to say “I told you so,” but the future is here!
Canadian Google Search users are now seeing AI Overviews on search results. And for many of the e-commerce businesses that took the advice on future-proofing, they’re getting rewarded with exposure on AI Overviews, and ultimately, more clicks!
At the end of this article, I’ll show you a success story about one of my clients, but first, let’s start with understanding what AI Overviews are and the steps that e-commerce businesses should take to improve their chances of appearing on them.
In this article you’ll learn:
- What are Google’s AI Overviews?
- Key differences between AI Overviews and Featured Snippets
- Benefits that AI Overviews could bring to your website?
- How to improve your chances of getting on AI Overviews
- Success Story: Nomi Designs Case Study
What are AI Overviews?
AI Overviews was rolled out last year by Google Search Engine. According to Google’s research, websites that get referenced on this feature end up getting more clicks!
What better way to explain this feature than with the AI Overview answer itself?
When I type “What is AI Overviews” in Google Search, Google generates an answer based on their interpretation of information from various web pages.
“AI Overviews" is a Google Search feature that uses artificial intelligence to generate concise summaries of information from various web sources, appearing at the top of search results for complex queries; it was rolled out in Canada in October 2024”.
This is a screenshot of the AI Overview answer on the left side and the web sources on the right side.
Not all queries would result in AI Overviews, and more complex queries would have a higher chance of generating AI Overviews—the logic being that taking information from multiple sources would generate a more well-rounded answer that better matches the user’s intent.
Wait, isn’t AI Overviews the same as Featured Snippets?
Google’s Featured Snippets are still available on search results and help provide users with quick answers to their queries. The main difference is that a Snippet comes from a single source and is an excerpt from the source.
Here’s an example of what a Featured Snippet looks like:
Key Differences between AI Overviews and Featured Snippets:
| AI Overviews | Featured Snippets | |
| Source of Information | Multiple sources | Single source |
| References | Source web pages shown | Source web page shown |
| Format of Search Results | Synthesized information presented in an AI generated answer (AI tells you the answer it its own words) | An excerpt from the source web page (text comes from the source page itself). |
What benefit could AI Overviews bring to your website?
You could get more clicks!
According to Google’s research, in their testing of AI Overviews, “links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query.”
That’s because similar to being on Snippets, source web pages will be referenced in the AI Overviews answers, which boosts your visibility and credibility, and users can easily access your web page if they want to dig deeper into the topic they are researching.
Now that you understand what AI Overviews are, the next step is to get your web pages to show up on the feature when users enter relevant queries.
What should you do to improve your chances of getting on AI Overviews?
According to Google, “Google's systems automatically determine which links appear. There is nothing special for creators to do to be considered other than to follow our regular guidance for appearing in search, as covered in Google Search Essentials.”
Here’s a snapshot of the Key Best Practices mentioned in Google’s Search Essentials (they sum it up so well!):
Success Story: Nomi Designs Case Study
Client: Nomi Designs
Platform: Squarespace
Project: AI Overviews Case Study
Blog: Can You Wear Linen Clothing in the Winter?
To show you the benefits of blogging and why it’s an important SEO strategy in 2025. I did some analysis on this blog post "Can You Wear Linen Clothing in the Winter?"
This blog was posted on November 2, 2023.
Here’s a screenshot of the Google result for “can you wear linen in winter”. Their blog comes up as the #1 result in AI Overview with a link to their website.
When you click on the link (yellow box) it takes you directly to their blog article.
This is how the blog is performing in search results. This is a screenshot from Google Search Console. In the last 3 months, their blog had 22,890 impressions and 525 clicks. It’s the #2 best performing page on their website https://www.nomidesigns.net/, mainly because the blog ranks for 743 keywords!
This graph from Google Search Console shows the blog performance in the last 5 months. On the left is the number of clicks and the right is impressions. The blue line is measuring clicks and the purple line is measuring impressions. In July the blog was getting 43 clicks and 2.39K impressions. By the end of November, it reached 230 clicks and 8.9K impressions.
The blog has received 947 pageviews since it was posted.
A page view is each time a user loads a specific page on a website. This provides a good measure of overall website traffic and content popularity.
When measuring website traffic, you should primarily look at "page views" as it represents the number of times a page on your website was loaded and viewed by users, giving you a clearer picture of actual engagement with your content compared to just impressions or clicks alone; however, depending on your goal, you may also need to consider "impressions" for visibility and "clicks" to measure user interaction with specific elements like links or ads.
Are you on the right track to getting more clicks?
If your e-commerce website already follows these key best practices, you’re on the right track to boosting your chances of having your links appear on AI Overviews.
But if you’re feeling unsure about your content, here are 3 useful blogs that can help:
How to Write SEO Friendly Blog Posts
How to Increase Blog Traffic with Internal Linking for SEO
How To Create a Blog Content Strategy for Effective Content Marketing
Too busy to work on your content or SEO?
As always, I’m here for you.
If you want your blogs and SEO keyword research done right, but have trouble getting it all done on your own—reach out and book a call with me. I can help you with your SEO keyword research, blog content strategy and writing.
You can also explore my services and book a consultation!