AI Overview
Google's AI-generated answer at the top of a results page, built by running sub-queries against retrieved pages and summarising them, with the sources listed beside it. Coverage is not universal: measuring five categories in Spain in August 2026, two returned no AI Overview at all across thirteen runs, so the first thing to check is whether your category gets one before paying to monitor it.
GEO Glossary
- We Asked an Assistant for Alternatives to Eight Vendors. One Answer Was About a Different Company Entirely.
Ask an AI assistant for alternatives to a vendor and the vendor itself usually is not there. In one answer, neither was the category.
- AI Answers Name One Set of Vendors and Read Another. In 27 Namings, 4 Had Their Own Page Cited.
Across 48 vendor observations in 7 software categories, answers named a vendor 27 times and cited that vendor's own page 4 times.
- Reddit Is in Every Small-Business Answer We Measured. Change Only the Buyer and It Falls Away.
Reddit is cited in 8 of 8 small-business cells and 1 of 5 enterprise ones. In 4 of 4 paired cells, only the buyer changed.
- We Asked Google the Same Question Twice. In the US Nothing Changed and in France Half of It Did.
One buying question, asked twice minutes apart, in four markets. The sources that hold repeated 100% of the time in the United States and 50% in France.