· Luca Moretti
AI Overviews take the clicks: SEO and AEO in 2026
Pew found that about 1% of users click the links in Google’s AI Overviews. Google itself says optimising for AI search “is still SEO”.
Google’s AI Overviews launched in the US in May 2024, reached more than 100 countries by October 2024 and more than 200 countries and 40 languages by May 2025. They now run on the Gemini 3 family. AI Mode, with its “query fan-out”, reached all US users on 20 May 2025.
The click problem
A Pew study reported that only about 1% of users click the source links inside an AI Overview. In December 2024, AI Overviews and featured snippets together took about 67% of the desktop screen and 76% on mobile.
AEO, GEO, AIO
The new names all mean the same thing: being visible in answers generated by AI. In 2026 Google published a guide saying that optimising for generative AI search is still SEO, and Bing Webmaster Tools added an AI Performance report.
What works
- Pages that answer one question plainly, near the top.
- Real facts: prices, places, dates, names.
- Structured data (schema.org) that tells machines what a page is.
- Being cited elsewhere, by people.
The legal side
The European Commission opened an investigation in December 2025 into whether AI Overviews breach competition law. In 2026 a Munich regional court issued a temporary injunction over AI Overviews statements about two Munich publishers, and in January 2026 Google restricted AI Overviews on some health searches.