Not Cited in AI Overviews

Identify why content is indexed but not cited in Google AI Overviews or other generative results.

Your content is indexed and may rank well, but Google AI Overviews do not cite your pages as sources. Other sites covering similar topics are being cited instead.

AI Overviews require content segments that are:

• Atomic and self-contained
• Verbatim citable without modification
• Query-shaped and deterministic
• Confidently scorable for relevance

If your content lacks these properties, it will not be selected for citation even if it ranks well.

This maps to citation eligibility failures. See Failure Modes Index for detailed patterns.

1. Check segment atomicity: Can each section be quoted verbatim?
2. Verify citation readiness: Would an LLM quote this without clarification?
3. Compare to cited sources: What structure do cited pages have?
4. Test prechunking: Is content structured for independent retrieval?

To improve citation eligibility:

1. Restructure using prechunking principles
2. Ensure verbatim citation readiness
3. Make headers query-shaped
4. Test each segment for independent meaning

This is a failure state within AI Optimization, where systems fail to retrieve or select a source during AI-driven search and answer generation.