Winning at search with Google’s AI Overviews

When a big story breaks, publishers today are as likely to think “optimize for AI” as “stop the presses.”

Particularly since its introduction of AI Overviews, Google Search is changing how audiences find stories, and whether they click through to news sites at all. According to data from Semrush that was featured in the Wall Street Journal, for example, traffic declined by more than 40% for some publications between June 2025 and June 2026.

Searchers now get direct answers to their digital queries, minimizing the need for traditional searching and filtering. By putting summaries at the top of search results, AI Overviews in Google Search are pushing down sponsored ad spots and top story recommendations.

In July 2026, Nieman Lab reported some media organizations are considering opting out of Google search entirely. Yet some publishers that have adapted through ongoing analysis and experimentation are ensuring their content is sourced and cited in AI-generated answers and summaries.

There is still strong demand for well-researched and reported stories. You just have to study the path readers now take to find them.

What AI Overviews mean for enterprise publishers (the stakes)

A 2026 report from Similarweb found Google searches that return an AI overview have climbed to 43% from 15% a year ago.

The traffic displacement is real but not uniform. Chartbeat found that smaller publishers with 1,000–10,000 daily page views have seen a 60% drop in referral traffic over the past few years. Among larger publishers with more than 100,000 daily page views, traditional search referrals fell only 22% in the same period.

However, most publishers are still in the early days of learning how to rank in AI Overviews. And Google has now offered more concrete guidelines on what helps and what doesn’t.

Google’s official guidance: What actually matters

Published in May 2026, Google’s AI Optimization Guide is aimed at all businesses but addresses questions and misperceptions about best practices in answer engine optimization (AEO) vs. traditional SEO. If you had to sum it up in a news headline, it might read, ”Google confirms SEO still works for AI visibility.“

The guidelines explain that AI Overviews in Google Search are rooted in the same techniques (such as retrieval-augmented generation and query fan-out) that power its traditional search services. The company explicitly says “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience,” which means publishers don’t necessarily need to develop a separate optimization framework for AEO.

Just as great journalism debunks misinformation and conventional wisdom, Google’s guidelines also show publishers don’t need to focus on llms.txt files, “chunking” content, or over-indexing on structured data. Here’s what to do instead:

• Continue writing for people: Visitors and subscribers have always appreciated stories that run with clear headings and paragraphs. AI Overviews need them too, along with semantic HTML underneath.
• Make the most of multimedia: Editors like to say a story needs “art.” In this case, images and video will get surfaced in AI Overviews, so continue including the highest-quality assets possible.
• Stay focused on non-commodity content: Newsrooms produce stories that combine deep background research, interviews with primary sources, and expert insights with unique points of view. This is more important than ever for publishers interested in winning Google search AI.

Agentic AI will let the technology act on users’ behalf, such as making purchases or recommending content, so understanding and building out a great agent experience (AX) is an area for publishers to watch.

How to rank in AI Overviews: Examples with leading publishers

Those that approach AI search proactively are continuing to gain qualified traffic and seeing high engagement from their audiences, including some of the best-known brands in the media sector.

USA TODAY Co.’s winning Google AI search strategy

At USA TODAY Co., AI was positioned as part of its overall search strategy early on, which coalesced around discovering best practices as an organization and testing workflows. According to Jessica Davis, a former journalist who leads the SEO team as USA TODAY Co.’s vice president of product, publishers should consider why audiences appreciate AI Overviews in Google Search.

“There’s a lot of skepticism that AI Overviews increase the time a searcher spends within Google because it’s easier than hunting through the 10 blue [ad] links. But there is a benefit to the user — increasing time to value.”

– Jessica Davis, VP of Product, USA TODAY Co., said in a webinar hosted by WordPress VIP.

“As publishers, we need to consider their intent and where they are in those journeys,” she adds. “And when they do decide to click on a link, it may be deeper into their journey and more specific to what they need.”

Davis and her team used that thinking to develop their own AI-assisted summaries, dubbed Key Points, which feature article highlights at the top of its stories. It launched the same week as AI Overviews, and now the publisher’s journalists simply press a button in its CMS to generate them.

In its internal analysis, USA TODAY Co. has found stories with Key Points have higher engagement time on average, which benefits search ranking, Davis says.

“We’re excited because it’s good for busy readers who can choose where they spend their time online. By giving them that little heads up, [they’re] actually consuming more of the story,” she says.

Journalists, meanwhile, appreciate the fact that they’re kept as humans in the loop with AI, reviewing and checking Key Points before they’re published and making edits as needed. “It’s very empowering for them,” she says.

The Independent’s AI Overviews SEO strategy in 2026

Based in the U.K., The Independent didn’t just optimize how its stories appear in search but developed an entirely new product to support it. Working directly with Google engineers, The Independent launched Bulletin, which it describes as “News for Really Busy People.”

“It takes our longform content that we publish under The Independent and summarizes it under the Bulletin brand in order to just give the salient points and the ability to click through if a reader wants more detail.”

– Peter Barr-Watson, CTO with Independent Media Ltd., explained in a digital publishing trends webinar with WordPress VIP and Fueled.

Barr-Watson says the traffic through Bulletin has been significant, and its CPM on those pages higher than on its main site. There’s also been a positive side effect in that it has helped create 10 new journalism jobs within the company.

“Using the AI tool allowed us to publish a significant amount of content more rapidly than we’d done previously with the more longform content, and as a result of that, we saw that there was a need to have more people doing it,” he says. “It’s that spirit of experimentation and that willingness to sort of take that first step which has given us some incredible results.”

Tactical playbook: How to win in AI Overviews

If you hired an expert researcher, you’d expect them to only bring forward the absolute best primary sources. It’s no different with AI, and optimizing for services like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity is largely about giving a strong indication that yours is the content worth scraping.

As you continue to develop new content and refresh your existing asset base, prioritize:

1. Publish original research and proprietary data

AI search tools are on the hunt for information that can’t be found anywhere else. Brands can do that by commissioning an original survey of their existing customers or the public at large, but that’s not the only option.

Organizations are often sitting on proprietary data that marketing teams don’t even think about. Average order patterns can suggest product categories that will become popular over the holidays. Customer service teams gather valuable data about the most common troubleshooting issues that could educate new buyers. Search queries can indicate the areas where customers and prospects show the greatest curiosity, or where they’re looking to upskill.

2. Add first-hand expert quotes and case-specific details

Too much enterprise content is published anonymously, as though representing the insights from an entire organization. The most salient thought leadership, however, often comes directly from those who have spent years on the front lines with customers.

Weave customer testimonials into campaign content to show prospects how their peers have found success. Take the time to interview your best subject matter experts to validate the most provocative claims in your blog posts or eBooks. Go beyond generic explainers and offer a step-by-step breakdown of how your team delivers an outstanding experience.

3. Use clear FAQ sections

Headings and scannable structure make it easier for LLMs that are combing the public web. Putting frequently asked questions (FAQs) at the bottom of blog posts like this one, as well as dedicated FAQ pages about product returns and privacy policies, helps these details stand out as candidates for AI-generated answers.

4. Improve content depth for longtail keyword clusters

The best answer to a query or prompt may require more than a short set of bullet points. This should be a priority for content you refresh. The post you’re reading now, for example, was originally based on a Q&A with a single source that stemmed from a live event. We recognized there was a lot more that searchers — including LLMs — might need to know, and we’ve fleshed it out accordingly.

5. Track referrals and measure impressions from AI search

There’s no point in optimizing for AI Overviews if you’re not able to evaluate progress. This is where analytics platforms like Parse.ly matter, so you can see all referrals at a glance and assess what’s shifting away from traditional sources to AI-powered search.

Winning at search with Google’s AI Overviews is not only possible; it should be a strategic priority for any brand that wants to continue getting discovered by customers and prospects.

Turn AI search into an advantage with WordPress VIP

Winning in AI Overviews comes down to two things: publishing original, well-structured content, and knowing what’s working. WordPress VIP gives you both. Content Intelligence, powered by Parse.ly, shows your team which stories earn attention and where to focus next. Structured, API-first publishing keeps that content in the shape AI search can read and cite. See it in action — book a demo.

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