To appear in Google AI Overviews you generally have to rank in the top ten first, because that is where it draws from. To appear in Perplexity you need a recent, specific, well-structured page and a crawler it is allowed to run. The two need different work.
These are the two AI surfaces worth measuring, because both name their sources. That makes the feedback loop short: you can see who is being cited today and read the page that beat you.
How each one picks its sources
| Perplexity | Google AI Overviews | |
|---|---|---|
| Retrieval | Live search on almost every query | Mostly from pages already indexed and ranking |
| Ranking dependency | Weak. A page outside the top ten can be cited | Strong. The top ten is effectively the shortlist |
| Recency weight | High. Recent pages are strongly favoured | Moderate. Freshness matters on some query types |
| Citations shown | Numbered inline, always visible | Linked cards, sometimes collapsed |
| Crawler | PerplexityBot | Googlebot, plus Google-Extended for AI training |
| Fastest route in | Publish something specific and current | Get the page into the top ten by ordinary means |
Working on Perplexity
Perplexity behaves like a research assistant. It runs a search, opens several results and synthesises. The pages it favours share a few traits.
- Specific over general. A page answering one narrow question beats a broad guide that mentions it in passing. Perplexity is matching a query to a passage, not a domain to a topic.
- Recent. Dates matter. A page updated this month is preferred to one from two years ago on the same subject, and it displays the date to the user.
- Openly structured. Headings that match question phrasings, short paragraphs, tables for comparison. It quotes passages, so passages have to make sense alone.
- Reachable. PerplexityBot has to be allowed in robots.txt. This is the single most common reason a site is absent.
Perplexity is the cheapest AI surface to test on. Publish a genuinely specific page, wait a week, and ask it the question that page answers.
Working on AI Overviews
AI Overviews is a Google feature and behaves like one. It composes an answer from pages it already ranks, so the entry requirement is ordinary organic performance.
- Rank first. If you are not on page one for the query, you are very unlikely to be cited in its overview. There is no separate route in.
- Answer the question directly. Within the ranking set, the pages cited are the ones with a clean, self-contained answer near the top. A page that buries the answer under a preamble loses to one that does not.
- Use structured data. FAQPage, HowTo and Product markup make the extractable parts explicit. It is not a ranking factor, but it makes extraction easier.
- Cover the follow-ups. Overviews often expand into related questions. A page that answers the obvious next question too gets cited across more of them.
What this means for how you write
The practical change is small and applies to both. Put the answer in the first sentence under each heading, use numbers rather than adjectives, and keep one idea to a paragraph. That is most of it.
The rest is ordinary discipline: keep pages current, mark up what can be marked up, and earn the third-party mentions that make a source look credible. None of this is new work so much as a shift in emphasis.
Measuring both
Run the same prompt list monthly against both surfaces and log whether you were cited and which URL. Expect them to disagree. When Perplexity cites you and AI Overviews does not, the gap is usually ranking. When AI Overviews cites you and Perplexity does not, the page is probably stale.
Questions we get asked
Which is easier to get cited by, Perplexity or AI Overviews?
Perplexity, usually. It retrieves live and weighs recency heavily, so a good new page can be cited within days. AI Overviews mostly recycles pages already ranking on page one, so it inherits the difficulty of ordinary SEO.
Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to my site?
For informational queries, yes, measurably. For queries where someone intends to buy or book, the effect is much smaller, and being the cited source in the overview carries its own value.
Should I block AI Overviews?
You cannot block it separately from Google Search. The nosnippet and max-snippet directives limit what can be shown, but they also limit your ordinary snippet, which usually costs more than it saves.
Does Perplexity have its own crawler?
Yes, PerplexityBot. It respects robots.txt. If it is blocked, you are out of Perplexity results entirely.
How do I know if I am being cited?
Run your prompt set manually each month. Both surfaces show sources, so you can see the cited URL directly. Search Console does not separate AI Overview impressions from ordinary ones.
Is it worth optimising for these when the traffic is small?
The traffic is small and growing fast, and the work overlaps heavily with ordinary SEO. Treat it as a tilt in how you write rather than a separate budget line.
