How to get your business named in Google AI Overviews

AI Overviews are generated from pages in Google's search index, so the work that gets you into one starts with being indexed and ranking for the question, then having a passage on the page that answers it cleanly enough to be summarised. This is the one assistant where your existing search work carries over almost directly.

Why this one is different from the others

Assistants like Perplexity run their own retrieval and can surface a page that Google ranks poorly. AI Overviews sit on top of Google's index and appear above the ordinary results for the same query. So the pages that get summarised are, in the main, pages Google already considered good answers.

The practical consequence is that you should not treat this as a separate channel needing separate content. Treat it as a change in what winning looks like for the search work you already do. You are no longer only trying to earn a click. You are trying to be the passage that gets summarised, and then still earn the click.

There is a second difference that catches teams out. Google says performance data for AI Overviews is included in your overall Search performance reporting rather than broken out separately, so you cannot open a report and see your overview impressions on their own. That means the measurement has to be done by hand, by searching the questions and looking, which is exactly the method described below.

The five things that make a passage summarisable

A direct answer, early, in one place. A summary is built from a passage, not from a whole page. If your answer is assembled across four scattered paragraphs, there is no passage to lift. Put the answer in a short block near the top and then expand underneath it.

Plain structure. A clear heading that matches the question, then the answer. Lists work well for anything with steps or options, because a list is already the shape a summary wants.

Specifics that shorten the answer. A count, a price with a date, a named list. These survive compression. Adjectives do not, and a sentence of adjectives compresses to nothing.

No contradiction with your other pages. If two of your pages answer the same question differently, you have given the summariser a reason to use somebody else.

Content in the HTML. A page whose text only appears after scripts run can be treated as far thinner than it is. Look at the raw HTML, not the rendered view.

A worked example

Two readings from our own work decide how you should spend your effort here, and they point in opposite directions.

The first is a warning. On 17 September 2026, on the questions about how to look a case up, Claude put official court portals in every position above any commercial product, including clawlaw.in, our sister company. It said plainly that no commercial product should rank above the official portal for a question about using that portal. If your buyer question is governed by a published rule or a public portal, expect the same behaviour here. The authority gets cited and possibly nobody else, and that is the correct answer rather than a failure you can fix.

The second reading is the encouraging one. On 6 August 2026 ChatGPT cited the page clawlaw.in/blog/how-to-check-a-companys-court-cases-in-india as a source for a vendor due diligence question, fourteen days after that page was published, in a part of the market where the same question set had named the company nowhere at baseline. That page was built for one question a buyer types, and it answered the question in its own right instead of describing a product.

Put the two together and you have the shape of a page that works. Answer the question directly in the first block. Name the authority that sets the rule rather than competing with it. Then take the part the authority does not cover, which is who arranges the thing, what it costs and how long it takes. Add a short list where the subject has steps or types in it, because a list is already the shape a summary wants. Add a dated line saying when you last checked the requirements. Then, and only then, a line about what you charge and how to get in touch.

Note what does not belong in that page: another paragraph about how experienced your team is. No summary will ever repeat that sentence.

The uncomfortable part about clicks

Being summarised does not guarantee a visit. Somebody who reads the overview may not need your page at all. This is a real cost and it is worth planning for: the questions where being the summary is enough are informational, and the questions where a person still needs you are the ones where they have to decide, compare, price or contact.

So weight your effort towards the deciding questions. Being summarised on "what is X" is nice. Being named on "which X should a company like mine buy" is what pays.

What this cannot do

It cannot make an overview appear. Google decides whether to generate one for a query, that decision changes, and many commercial queries do not get one at all. If no overview appears for your most valuable question, there is nothing to be named in and your effort belongs in the ordinary results for now.

It cannot be verified from a report, because the data is not broken out. Your record is your own sheet.

It cannot be guaranteed. Overviews vary by country, language, device and over time, two people can see different things for the same words, and nobody can promise you a place in one.

What to check first

Search your buyers' questions in an ordinary Google search and see whether an overview appears, which sources it links, and whether you are among them. Then check the obvious mechanics on your own side: is the page indexed at all, does it answer the question in the first block, and does it render its content without needing scripts.

Common questions

How often should I check?

Monthly for the full question set. Overviews come and go for the same query, so a weekly check mostly records that variation. Keep every reading, because the useful output is a pattern over months.

Why does an overview appear one day and not the next?

Because whether to generate one is Google's decision for that query at that moment, and it changes. Location, language and device all matter too. This is why the first column in your sheet is "overview shown", not "were we named".

An overview cited a competitor's page for a fact about my company. What do I do?

Open the page. If the fact is wrong, ask them to correct it and keep a dated copy. If it is right, the problem is that their page states it and yours does not, at least not in a form that can be lifted. Put the fact in a short block near the top of the right page of your own, with a date.

Is being cited in the overview the same as being recommended?

No. A link under the overview means a page of yours was used. Being named in the text is what a buyer reads. Keep them as separate columns, along with a third for whether you ranked in the ordinary results underneath, which still sends visits.

Do I need new pages, or can I fix existing ones?

Fix first. Most businesses already have a page that ranks for the question and buries the answer. Moving the answer to the top and adding a dated specific is an hour of work and it beats a new page that has to earn its place from nothing.

Does structured data help?

It helps Google understand your page and it is good practice, and it is not a route into an overview on its own. No markup makes a vague passage liftable. Do the plain text answer first and treat markup as support rather than as the mechanism.

What to do first

Search your single most valuable buyer question in an ordinary Google search today, from a signed out browser, and write down three things: whether an overview appeared, which sources it linked, and whether you were named. If no overview appeared, stop and pick a different question, because you were about to spend a month optimising for something that is not being generated.