AI Overview
the AI answer above the search resultsThe answer text Google generates with AI and places above the actual search results.
- Someone asks a question
- The AI builds an answer from several sources
- Citable content is named as a source
- Visibility without a click on position one
What does AI Overview mean?
Anyone searching on Google today often no longer gets a list, but a finished answer text first. Google generates it with a language model out of several websites and places it above the first organic result. Underneath sit small source references — the pages the answer was assembled from.
For a business this changes the arithmetic. Until now the rule was: position one brings clicks. Now position one can lie below the point at which most visitors have already stopped reading — because their question was answered above the first result. The position is real, but it carries less than it used to.
It does not follow from this that search engine optimisation has become pointless. It follows a second question: is my content cited in the AI answer? That is a different race from the one for position, and it is won by different rules.
What gets cited is what can be cited. In practice that means: a clear question, and directly beneath it a short, complete answer in two to four sentences. Figures of your own, with the source and the date of collection named. Copy that stays understandable without the rest of the page. And a visible author with a date — because a model choosing between two sources reaches for the one that can be checked.
What does not work, by contrast: copy that only gets to the point after three paragraphs of run-up. An answer that exists only in the expanded state of an accordion. Or a claim without a figure and a source, which could just as easily come from any other website.
How widespread this has become we measured ourselves rather than estimating it: across 1,249 evaluated search result pages, 659 of them already carried an AI-generated answer — more than half. Anyone who talks about visibility today and speaks only about positions is describing the smaller half of the problem.
One limitation belongs with this: nobody can undertake to be named in an AI answer. There is no registration, no purchase channel and no guaranteed inclusion. What can be influenced is the probability — through content a machine can cleanly recognise as an answer, and through sources that can be verified.
That is why at Conexa Digital we undertake to measure the current state with evidence and to make the content citable. We do not undertake that you will appear in a particular answer. Anyone who promises you that is selling you something they cannot deliver.
Check the numbers
On 659 of 1,249 evaluated search result pages an AI-generated answer was already in place — 53 per cent.
The evaluation covers search terms from our own market environment. What is remarkable about it is not the number alone, but what stands beside it: the domains with the most placements sometimes did not appear in the AI answers at all, while smaller websites with few, very clearly structured pages were cited regularly. Position and citation are two different races.
Source: own survey, SE Ranking, September 2026, 1,249 evaluated search result pages in the German market. Our own measurement, disclosed — not official statistics.
Common questions
Can I pay to be named in an AI answer?
No. There is no registration and no purchase channel. Only the probability can be influenced — through content a machine can cleanly recognise as an answer, and through figures with a source that can be checked.
Do AI answers cost me visitors?
For questions that can be answered in three sentences, yes — but those were rarely customers anyway. Anyone looking for a provider, a price or an appointment clicks on. That is exactly why it pays to have content that goes beyond a short answer.
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