A Strategic Guide to Optimising for AI Overviews in 2026

Optimising for AI Overviews in 2026 comes down to shifting your focus from convincing a human to click to convincing a machine to cite you. The core strategy is to structure your content so clearly that models like Gemini 2.0 can extract the facts instantly while doubling down on E-E-A-T signals to prove you are the safest answer to serve. You have to move away from keyword stuffing and towards Answered Engine Optimization because if the AI can’t verify your expertise it will simply ignore you.

I remember sitting in a meeting room back in 2023 when the first whispers of SGE started getting loud. We were all staring at a projector screen wondering if our jobs were about to evaporate. They didn’t. But they changed. A lot.

It is strange to look back at how simple things used to be.

We used to chase blue links. Now we are chasing citations inside a generated box that takes up the entire top half of the phone screen. If you are reading this you probably noticed your organic traffic dipping or maybe plummeting and you want to know how to fix it. The good news is that it is fixable. The bad news is that the old tricks don’t work anymore.

The reality of zero click search

Let’s look at the numbers because they paint a pretty stark picture. Zero-click searches now account for over 80% of queries as of early 2026. That is up from about 65% back in 2020. It is a massive shift.

What this means is that eight out of ten people who search for something never leave Google. They get their answer right there in the AI summary and they close the tab. For businesses that rely on ad revenue or top-of-funnel traffic this is terrifying. I have seen clients face projected traffic losses of 40% to 60% simply because they ignored Search Generative Experience SEO.

But here is the thing.

The traffic that remains? It is high intent. It is valuable. If someone clicks a citation in an AI overview they are usually verifying a source or looking to buy. We have seen a 35% increase in clicks from these high-intent users for brands that get cited. So while the volume is down the quality is arguably better.

You have to accept that the vanity metrics are gone. We aren’t optimizing for volume anymore. We are optimizing for survival & relevance. It is a different game with different rules.

The “zero-click revolution” driven by Gemini 2.0 has essentially split the market in two. You have the optimized brands gaining what we call “citation bonuses” and then you have everyone else losing traffic sharply. You want to be in the first group.

Understanding the tech behind the curtain

To win at this you need to understand what you are playing against. Google’s SGE isn’t just a search engine it is a synthesis engine. It uses models like Gemini 2.0 to read millions of pages and construct a coherent answer.

It doesn’t “rank” pages in the traditional sense. It evaluates information. SEO for AI search is less about backlinks, though they still matter, and more about semantic clarity. The AI needs to be able to read your content and understand exactly what you are saying without struggling through fluff.

I think a lot of people miss this point. They try to game the system with keywords but the system is smarter than that now. It understands multimodal content too. It can look at your infographics and your videos and use them to build its answer.

If your content is buried in a wall of text or if your site structure is a mess the AI is just going to skip you. It wants easy data. It wants structure.

This is why we talk about LSI keywords like “Google SGE AI” not because we need to stuff them in but because they help define the context. Context is king for LLMs. If the model can’t figure out the context it won’t risk citing you.

It is also worth noting that SGE suggests follow-up questions. It creates a conversational journey. If your content only answers the first question and ignores the logical next steps you are missing out on being part of that conversation.

Generative Engine Optimization is the new standard

We have a new acronym to worry about. GEO. Generative Engine Optimization. It sounds fancy but it is really just a shift in philosophy. Traditional SEO was about pleasing the algorithm to get a rank. GEO is about formatting your content so the Generative Engine can eat it.

Think of it like preparing a meal for a toddler versus a food critic. The toddler just wants the food cut up into tiny manageable pieces. The generative engine is the toddler.

You need to focus on making content easily synthesizable. This means clear headings. Bullet points. Direct answers to questions immediately after the heading.

Don’t bury the lead. If the heading is “What is the best running shoe?” the first sentence should be “The best running shoe is…”

I’ve seen so many sites fail at this. They write 500 words of backstory before answering the question. The AI hates that.

Generative Engine Optimization also involves technical aspects like schema markup. You need to tell the engine explicitly what part of the page is the price, what part is the review, and what part is the author. Don’t make it guess.

There was a study recently on SGE recovery projects. One client was looking at a projected 79% traffic loss. By implementing GEO strategies they flipped that to an expected 97% growth. It wasn’t magic. It was just structuring data the way the machine wanted it.

It is about being the source of truth. If you have unique expert data you win. If you are just regurgitating what everyone else said you lose.

The critical role of trust and authority

If there is one thing I cannot stress enough it is E-E-A-T. Experience. Expertise. Authoritativeness. Trust. This used to be a nice-to-have. Now it is a requirement for SGE optimization strategy.

The AI has a safety filter. It does not want to give bad advice especially on medical or financial topics. If your site looks sketchy or if the author has no credentials the AI will simply ignore your data even if it is correct.

I worked on a site last year that had great content but no author bios. Traffic flatlined. We added detailed bios linking to the authors’ LinkedIn profiles and other publications they had written for. Traffic came back. It seems silly that a photo and a bio could make that much difference but it does.

You need to demonstrate that you have real experience. Don’t just say “this camera is good.” Say “I took this camera to the mountains for three days and here is what happened.” The AI looks for that first-hand evidence.

AI search ranking factors are heavily weighted towards this. Credibility is the gatekeeper. If you don’t pass the credibility check you don’t get into the summary.

And it isn’t just about the author. It is about the brand. Is your site secure? Do you have a physical address? Do other reputable sites link to you? These are all signals that the AI uses to determine if you are a hallucination risk or a reliable source.

Building your content for citations

So how do you actually get cited? “Visibility is defined by the quality and frequency of citations within AI-generated summaries.” That is a quote from a recent industry report and it hits the nail on the head.

You need to optimize for AI Overviews optimization by writing in a way that invites citation. This means using statistics. Using quotes. Using unique data points that the AI can’t find anywhere else.

If you write generic content you are invisible. But if you conduct a survey and publish the results you become a primary source. The AI loves primary sources.

Here is a strategy I use. I look at the current AI overview for a topic and I ask myself “what is missing?” Maybe the summary mentions price but not durability. I then write a piece of content that specifically addresses durability with data to back it up. Often Google will update the summary to include my data because it fills a gap.

It is a bit like filling potholes. You find the holes in the AI’s knowledge and you fill them.

Make sure your content is long-form and covers subtopics thoroughly. Thin content is dead. The AI prefers a single comprehensive page over ten short ones. It wants to find everything in one place.

Also pay attention to formatting. Use H2s and H3s to break up the text. Use bold text for key concepts. This helps the AI parse the information. It is basic stuff but you would be surprised how many people get it wrong.

Technical foundations you cannot ignore

You can write the best content in the world but if your technical house is a mess it won’t matter. Page speed is still huge. If your site takes five seconds to load the AI crawler might timeout or just rank you lower because user experience metrics like dwell time matter.

Mobile-friendliness is non-negotiable. Most of these AI interactions happen on mobile. If your site is a pain to use on a phone the user signals will be bad and the AI will drop you.

Internal linking is another big one. You need to connect your pages so the AI can understand the relationship between topics. It helps build a semantic web of content on your site.

I mentioned schema before but I want to bring it up again. Schema.org markup is your best friend. It is like speaking the AI’s native language. Use it for everything.

FAQs. How-tos. Products. Events. The more structured data you provide the easier you make it for the machine.

Sometimes I feel like a broken record telling clients to fix their metadata. But it matters. It helps the AI understand what the page is about before it even reads the content.

It is tedious work. I know. But it is the foundation that everything else sits on.

Navigating the future of agentic commerce

We need to look a bit further ahead too. By late 2026 we are going to see a rise in agentic commerce. This is where AI agents handle purchases for users. Imagine telling your phone “buy me a pair of running shoes under $100 that are good for flat feet” and the AI just does it.

This changes Search Generative Experience SEO again. Now you aren’t just optimizing for information you are optimizing for transaction. You need to make sure your product data is pristine. Price, availability, shipping times, all of this needs to be accessible to the AI agent.

If the agent can’t verify that the shoes are in stock it won’t buy them. It is that simple.

This might seem frightening to some. The idea that a machine is making buying decisions. But it is also an opportunity. If you are the most transparent and data-rich option you become the default choice.

We are also seeing deeper AI ad integration. The organic results are getting pushed further down. This makes the “citation bonus” even more critical. If you aren’t in the AI summary and you aren’t paying for ads you might as well not exist for some queries.

It is a harsh reality & one we have to adapt to.

Practical steps for recovery and growth

If you have been hit by these changes don’t panic. Panic leads to bad decisions. Start by auditing your content. Is it unique? Is it helpful? Does it demonstrate expertise?

Look at your top pages. Are they answering questions directly? If not rewrite them. Add a FAQ section. Add an author bio. Update the stats. Make it fresh.

I had a client who was panicking because their “ultimate guide” traffic dropped 50%. We looked at the page and it hadn’t been updated since 2024. In internet years that is ancient. We updated it with 2026 data added some quotes from industry experts and optimized the headings. Traffic recovered within two months.

It is often small changes that have the biggest impact. You don’t need to burn the website down. You just need to renovate it.

Sometimes it is necessary to accept that some keywords are gone forever. If a query is fully answered by the AI with no need for a click move on. Focus on long-tail question-based queries where the user needs more depth. That is where the traffic is now.

The “Answered Engine Optimization” approach is key here. Ideally your page is the perfect answer card. Structured. Concise. Accurate.

There is a strange irony here. To appeal to the AI we have to be more human. We have to show real experience and real empathy. The content farms are the ones suffering the most because they lack that human element.

I think that is a good thing honestly. It forces us to be better.

The impact of multimodal search

We can’t forget about images and video. AI search ranking factors now include visual content. SGE is multimodal. It can “see” your images.

Use high-quality original images. Stock photos are fine for decoration but they don’t add value. If you can create a custom chart or infographic do it. The AI can extract data from that chart and cite it.

Video is massive too. Short concise videos that answer specific questions are gold. Optimize the video title and description just like you would a blog post. Transcripts are essential because they allow the text-based models to “read” the video content.

I have seen sites get citations purely from their YouTube videos appearing in the AI snapshot. It is another door into the room.

Don’t neglect alt text on images either. It helps the AI understand what the image is. It is an old SEO rule but it is more important than ever.

Common mistakes to avoid

I see people making the same mistakes over and over. They try to trick the AI. They hide text. They stuff keywords.

It doesn’t work. The models are too sophisticated.

Another mistake is ignoring user intent. If someone searches for “how to fix a leaky tap” they don’t want the history of plumbing. They want a step-by-step guide. If you don’t give them that the AI won’t rank you.

There is also the issue of consistency. You can’t be an expert one day and a content farm the next. You need to maintain a high standard across the whole site. One bad section can drag down the site’s overall authority score.

And please for the love of god check your facts. The AI can hallucinate on its own it doesn’t need your help. If you publish wrong information you damage your trust score. And trust is hard to earn back.

I once saw a finance blog publish a wildly incorrect tax rate because they didn’t check the new laws. Their traffic tanked overnight. It took them six months to recover. Don’t be that guy.

Adapting to the new normal

This shift to AI Overviews optimization is not going away. It is the new normal. You can fight it and lose or you can adapt and win.

It requires a mindset shift. You are no longer just a content creator. You are a data provider. You are feeding the machine.

This means being independant in your research. It means verifying everything. It means structuring your work so it is machine-readable.

It also means being patient. These changes take time to settle. The algorithm is constantly tweaking itself. What works today might need adjustment tomorrow. But the core principles of quality and structure will remain.

The days of easy SEO are over. But the days of valuable SEO are just beginning.

Final Thoughts

I have been doing this for 15 years and I have never seen the industry change this fast. It is exhausting sometimes. I get it. You feel like you just figured out the rules and then someone flips the board over.

But there is something exciting about it too. It clears out the junk. It forces us to focus on what actually matters, providing real value to real people (and the robots that serve them).

If you stick to the basics, expertise, trust, structure, you will be fine. You might even come out ahead. The tools change but the goal is always the same: help the user find the answer. Do that better than anyone else and the AI will have no choice but to pick you.