AI Overviews
(SGE / Search Generative Experience)Definition
Google's AI Overviews are generative summaries that appear at the top of Google search results for many queries, synthesizing information from multiple ranked sources into a single conversational answer with linked citations.
Launched globally as Search Generative Experience in 2024 and renamed AI Overviews in 2025, the feature uses Google's Gemini model to generate a multi-paragraph answer to many search queries before the traditional ten blue links are shown. Each Overview cites three to seven source URLs that contributed to the answer.
For publishers, ranking in the source pool that feeds Overviews is increasingly important and structurally different from ranking in traditional results. AI Overviews tend to favor: definition-pattern content (glossaries, "what is X" pages), step-by-step procedural content (how-to guides), and content with named entities clearly tagged through schema markup.
Definition pages are particularly effective because the Overview model needs to authoritatively define terms used in answers. Pages that lead with a clean single-sentence definition — like every entry in this glossary — get extracted verbatim more often than pages that bury the definition under setup text.
Google has not published the ranking factors for AI Overviews, but observable correlations include: long-form content (1500+ words), structured data markup, named author attribution, freshness signals (recent dateModified), and high topical authority (a site about reviews is more likely to be cited on review topics than a generalist site).
Related terms
Schema.org Markup
Schema.org markup is a standardized vocabulary of structured data tags — typically embedded as JSON-LD blocks in a page's HTML — that tells search engines and AI assistants what type of entity the page represents and what its key attributes are.
DefinedTerm Schema
DefinedTerm is the Schema.org type used to mark up entries in glossaries, technical lexicons, and reference works, signaling to search engines that the page contains an authoritative definition of a specific concept.