Five Google AI Overview checks a UK B2B team can run this week

A Google AI Overview is the AI-written summary that sits above the normal results for many searches, with links to the pages it drew on. It's live across the UK, and since 31 August 2026 every website can see in Search Console how often its pages are cited in one, and opt out.¹²

What is a Google AI Overview?

Google shows one whenever its systems judge that generative AI will help, and searchers can't switch it off, because Google treats it as a core feature in the same way as a knowledge panel. The nearest thing to an off switch is the Web filter, which strips the page back to plain links.¹ AI Mode, the chat-style tab, is a separate product that reached the UK on 29 July 2025.³

There's no application form for a website. Google's documentation says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, so a page simply has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet.⁴ The more useful line is about query fan-out, where both features may run several related searches across subtopics before answering and so link to a wider set of pages than a classic results page.⁴ That means a page that answers one narrow question clearly may be cited for a broader search where it would never make the top ten, which we think is the most encouraging thing in the whole document.

The two Search Console screens that arrived this summer

Google announced the Generative AI performance report on 3 June 2026 and had rolled it out to every site by 31 August.² It came with a setting called Search generative AI, found under Settings, which decides whether your pages can appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative features in Discover, and every property starts on Include.⁵

The report counts impressions, meaning each time a link to your site was shown inside an AI answer, and you can split them by page, country, device and date.⁶ There's no query column and no clicks, which is a bit like being told you were mentioned in a meeting but not what was said. Even so, it shows which pages Google is willing to cite, and that's the half of zero click search you couldn't count until now.

Five checks to run this week

None of this needs a developer. You'll need an hour and the Search Console and GA4 logins, and we'd work through it in this order.

1. Go to Settings, then Search generative AI, and confirm it reads Include. Subfolder or subdomain properties may show Inherit control from parent, so a change at the top flows down.⁵
2. Read the report for the UK by filtering Countries to United Kingdom and sorting Pages by impressions. A missing report usually means too few AI impressions so far.⁶
3. Search ten questions your sales team hears every month and read each AI Overview line by line.
4. In GA4, look at chatgpt.com as a source and annotate 8 to 15 October 2026 as unreliable.
5. For the pages earning AI impressions, find out which organisations actually read them.

In step two, we'd look at which kind of page gets cited rather than at the total. If an old blog post is doing the work and your service pages aren't, that's a content decision for this quarter, not something to note and forget.

Step four matters because, after the GPT-6 release, ChatGPT links lost utm_source=chatgpt.com, the tag that tells analytics where a visitor came from, so those visits landed in GA4 as Direct. Across about 500 pages, an Adobe analysis found ChatGPT visits down roughly 31,000 a day and direct up about 26,000, which is a lot of traffic to quietly change its name. OpenAI called it a bug and began fixing it on 15 October.⁷

Of course, none of this should be blown out of proportion. Marie Haynes' analysis of 12 months of GA4 data across 100 websites found ChatGPT sent 0.62% as many sessions as Google organic search. Its visitors converted at 13.8% against 3.02% for Google, yet Google organic still drove 27 times as many conversions as all the AI assistants combined.⁸ The study didn't publish its industry mix, so it may not match your sector exactly, but we'd still put the hour into Google's AI features first.

Google can't help with step five, because Search Console never says who saw an AI Overview and GA4 shows sessions without names. Scout identifies the company behind a visit, gives every match a confidence score from 1 to 99 and pulls in your own GA4 and Search Console data, so a cited page sits next to the firms that read it and the queries associated with them. If you'd rather start without a tool, you can do a rougher version by hand with the query and landing page reports.

How accurate are AI Overviews?

Google prints its own warning that AI responses may include mistakes.¹ The best independent measure we know of is an EBU and BBC study from October 2025, in which journalists in 18 countries checked more than 3,000 answers from ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Perplexity. Of those, 45% had at least one significant issue and 31% had serious sourcing problems, with Gemini faring worst at significant issues in 76% of responses.⁹ To be fair to Google, it covered news questions put to assistants rather than AI Overviews, so we'd treat it as a warning about the technology rather than a score for Google.

That's why step three is worth the time. When you read the answers, look for errors about you, such as a dropped service or an old price, and then open the cited source. If it's your page, update it, and if it's a directory, ask them to correct the listing.

Should you exclude your site from AI Overviews?

For almost every B2B firm, we'd leave it on Include. Excluding removes your links and stops your content being used to build the answers, but Google says content from other sites will still appear and may look similar to yours.⁵ Your buyers still get an answer, just without you in it. The setting doesn't touch AI training either, because that's handled by a separate control called Google-Extended.⁵

Google also says clicks from pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, meaning people stay longer.⁴ It doesn't publish the figures, so we'd check that against your own GA4 data before repeating it to a board. The exception is a firm whose content is the product, such as paid research, and even then we'd test excluding one subfolder property first, which the inheritance rules allow.⁵

From cited pages to companies you can call

The new report tells you Google is quoting you, but it doesn't tell you whether the right accounts came looking afterwards. Scout links the two by identifying the companies reading your pages alongside your own GA4 and Search Console data, and it flags ISP, mobile and VPN traffic in the low band instead of guessing a name. Start a 14-day free trial, no card needed.

Frequently asked questions

How does Google use AI?

In Search, Google uses generative AI to write AI Overviews and to run AI Mode, its chat-style search tab. Both may run several related searches behind the scenes, which Google calls query fan-out, and then link to the pages that support the answer.

How to appear in AI searches?

For Google there's no extra step, because its documentation says a page just has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. Pages that answer one question clearly stand a good chance of being cited, and the Generative AI performance report in Search Console shows which of your pages already appear.

Can you turn off AI Overviews in Google Search?

Searchers can't, because Google treats AI Overviews as a core feature, although the Web filter shows plain links instead. Site owners can exclude their pages in Search Console under Settings, then Search generative AI, and Google says exclusion generally takes effect within a few days.

What is Google's equivalent of ChatGPT?

Gemini is Google's standalone AI assistant and the closest match to ChatGPT. Inside Google Search, AI Mode offers a similar conversational experience with links to sources, and it's been available in the UK since July 2025.

Are Google AI Overviews accurate?

Google itself warns that AI responses may include mistakes. An EBU and BBC study published in October 2025 found 45% of answers from four AI assistants, including Google's Gemini, had at least one significant issue, so we'd check anything an AI Overview says about your business against the page it cites.

Sources

1. Google Search Help: Find information in faster & easier ways with AI Overviews in Google Search support.google.com
2. Google Search Central Blog: Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console developers.google.com
3. Anicca: Google AI Mode launches in the UK anicca.co.uk
4. Google Search Central: AI features and your website developers.google.com
5. Search Console Help: Search generative AI control support.google.com
6. Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report (Search) support.google.com
7. Search Engine Land: ChatGPT drop in UTM tracking was a bug searchengineland.com
8. Search Engine Land: ChatGPT sends less than 1% of Google's traffic: Data searchengineland.com
9. EBU: Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time ebu.ch