AI Overview
Example: When someone searches whether a neighborhood cafe is open on Sundays, Google's AI Overview answers right at the top of the page, and the cafe earns a citation chip only because its hours sit in clean, schema-anchored text.
the paragraph Google writes above the search results
A paragraph Google's generative answer engine writes at the top of a search results page, citing two or three sources by name. Triggered on roughly 13.14% of US desktop searches as of March 2025 and approaching one in five in 2026. The cited sources appear as small chips at the bottom of the box.
Why it matters
For informational restaurant queries — hours, menu, reservations, dietary — the AI Overview now answers above the map pack. If your page isn't cited, your discovery surface for that query is gone. Citation runs on different signals than blue-link SEO: paragraph shape, schema-anchored entities, predicate sentences with no hedge tokens, and stable URLs.
Frequently asked
What is AI Overview?
AI Overview is a paragraph Google's generative answer engine writes at the top of a search results page, citing two or three sources by name. Triggered on roughly 13.14% of US desktop searches as of March 2025 and approaching one in five in 2026. The cited sources appear as small chips at the bottom of the box.
Why does AI Overview matter for a restaurant?
For informational restaurant queries — hours, menu, reservations, dietary — the AI Overview now answers above the map pack. If your page isn't cited, your discovery surface for that query is gone. Citation runs on different signals than blue-link SEO: paragraph shape, schema-anchored entities, predicate sentences with no hedge tokens, and stable URLs.
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