Why am I not showing in Google AI Overviews?
First distinguish two questions: no AI Overview appeared for the search, or an Overview appeared without citing your page. Capture the query, date, country, device and visible result. Those cases require different investigations.
Check publisher eligibility separately
Inspect whether the exact URL is indexed and eligible for a search snippet. Google does not require a special AI schema or a fixed top-ten ranking for AI-feature eligibility. Eligibility does not guarantee inclusion. Google’s publisher requirements.
Inspect the controls actually returned
Record applicable robots meta tags and X-Robots-Tag headers, including snippet controls, with their capture time. Compare those observations with the indexed URL Inspection result. Do not remove intentional restrictions simply to raise an audit score.
When an Overview exists but omits your page
Save the answer and exact cited URLs. Compare whether those pages answer the query with accurate, useful evidence. This is a content investigation, not proof that schema, paragraph length or an answer block caused the citation decision. Keep factual improvements useful to readers.
When no Overview appears
Check Google’s current availability guidance for the user’s country and language, then record whether the feature appeared for that exact search. Different sessions can produce different observations. Do not diagnose your publisher page from a feature that was absent for the search. Google’s AI Overviews help.
Ask for an observation, not a guarantee
| Field to retain | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Query, country/language, device and time | Defines the search observation |
| Overview present: yes / no / unavailable | Distinguishes absence from failed measurement |
| Exact citations and saved answer | Shows what was actually cited |
| URL Inspection and page-response dates | Separates index evidence from current HTML |
What a technical fix can establish
A before/after response capture can establish that an unintended directive was removed. A later answer capture can establish that the URL was cited in that observation. Neither alone demonstrates that the edit caused the citation. Use the canonical workflow if inspection identifies a different canonical, or crawler-access evidence when investigating a provider-specific block.