A website optimised for AI search: how to appear in Google’s AI-generated answers

More and more often, when you search for something on Google, you first get an AI-generated answer, with a few links to the websites it was built from. Google calls these AI Overviews and AI Mode. For a business, the natural question is: how do I get among those sources?

The good news is that you don’t need any new tricks. The less comfortable news is that you have to do the basics well, and many websites only do them by halves. Below you will find what Google officially says, what it means in practice for your website and a checklist you can start applying tomorrow.

What Google says about AI features in Search

Google has a dedicated page for site owners about AI features in Search. A few points from it are worth remembering precisely:

• There are no additional requirements. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisations needed. The same fundamental SEO practices apply.
• The technical requirement: the page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet. That’s it. Even then, Google doesn’t guarantee it will be shown.
• You don’t need special files or markup for AI. You don’t need special schema.org markup or text files dedicated to AI. Any structured data you use just has to match the visible text on the page.
• You stay in control. If you want to limit what is taken from your pages, you use the same controls as for classic snippets: nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex.
• Measurement: traffic from AI features is included in your overall traffic in Search Console, in the Performance report, under the “Web” search type.

In short, optimising your website for AI search really means having a website that Google can access easily, understands clearly and considers useful. The difference from a few years ago is that AI answers are less forgiving of vague content: if your page doesn’t answer a question precisely, there is no reason for it to be cited.

How an AI answer chooses its sources

Google doesn’t publish a step-by-step recipe. What we can say for certain, from its guidance, is that AI answers draw on pages that are already indexed and eligible for snippets. So the first filter is classic SEO. The second filter, from practical experience, is how easily a clear answer can be extracted from your page: a short definition, a starting price, the steps of a process, a comparison, the terms of a service.

Think of a customer asking “how much does a voice agent for a clinic cost” or “how do I book a car service in Cluj on a Saturday”. If on your website the answer is buried in a general paragraph about “innovative solutions”, there is nothing to cite. If you have a clear section with a heading, a direct answer and the details, you have a real chance.

The technical side: the checklist

Start with the things Google explicitly mentions as best practice for AI features:

1. Allow crawler access. Check your robots.txt file and your CDN or firewall settings. It often happens that overly aggressive bot protection also blocks Google’s crawler.
2. Check indexing. In Google Search Console, use URL Inspection for your important pages. A page that isn’t indexed can’t be a source for any answer.
3. Keep important content in text. Prices, opening hours, services, addresses, terms: written as text on the page, not only in images or PDFs.
4. Use internal links. Every important page should be easy to reach from other pages, with descriptive link text.
5. Provide a good page experience. Decent speed, correct display on mobile, no pop-ups covering the content.
6. Correct structured data. You don’t need anything special for AI, but basic data about your business, services or FAQs must match what is written on the page.
7. Keep your Google Business Profile up to date. Google explicitly mentions it among the things to keep current, along with Merchant Center for online shops.

The content side: how to write so you can be cited

Answer directly, then explain

Put the short answer in the first lines of the section, then the details. For example, instead of “We offer tailored solutions for every client”, write “An AI voice agent starts from €1,500 plus VAT, implementation included, paid in instalments tied to deliverables.” That is a sentence a person or a system can pick up without having to interpret it.

Structure your content around customers’ real questions

Make a list of the questions you get on the phone or on WhatsApp. Each frequent question can become a section heading or an FAQ item. Real questions are exactly the wording people type into search.

Be specific

• Say which city and areas you work in.
• Say who the service is for and who it isn’t for.
• Explain the process in numbered steps.
• Give concrete examples from your work, without inventing figures.

Show who is behind the information

A real “About” page, full contact details, company details and named authors on articles all help people trust you. Google has been insisting for years on helpful content created for people, and that still holds for AI answers.

If you use AI to write your content

You can use AI for research and structure, and we use Claude in our day-to-day work. But Google is clear in its warning: generating lots of pages with no value for users may breach its scaled content abuse policy. Google also recommends manually reviewing every AI-generated text before publishing, including titles, descriptions and structured data.

In practice, our rule is simple: the AI writes the first draft, and the person who knows the business checks every claim and adds real experience. An article written in five minutes and published without checking can do you more harm than good.

How to control what is taken from your website

Some businesses don’t want certain information to appear in generated answers, for example prices that change often or content for subscribers. The controls are the same as for classic Google snippets:

Bear the trade-off in mind: the more you restrict snippets, the lower your chances of appearing as a source. Google also notes that, after you add these controls, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few months until the page is crawled again.

How to measure results

There is no separate “AI” report in Search Console. Traffic from AI features is included in the Performance report, under the “Web” search type. What you can do in practice:

• Track impressions and clicks for the pages you have rewritten in question-and-answer format.
• Note the date of your changes, so you can compare the periods before and after.
• Measure what matters to the business: calls, messages, quote requests, bookings.
• Ask new customers how they found you. “I searched on Google and you came up” is a good sign.

Common mistakes

• Buying “AI optimisation” as a magic service. Google says explicitly that no special optimisations are needed. What matters is getting the basics right.
• Blocking crawlers without realising. Check your robots.txt and firewall.
• Hiding useful information. Prices only “on request”, opening hours only in an image, services described vaguely.
• Publishing generated text in bulk. Fewer, better pages, checked by a person.
• Structured data that doesn’t match the page. If the markup says one thing and the text another, you lose trust.

How we can help

We build websites designed for search from the start: clear structure, copy that answers customers’ real questions, sound technical SEO and measurement in Search Console. The details are on our websites page. For an Austrian-Italian timber trading group, the multilingual websites we built brought in export customers from China and Saudi Arabia, precisely because people in other countries found them through search.

If you want to know where your website stands now and what is worth changing first, book a free 30-minute call. We will look at a few pages together and tell you exactly what to do.