Can Images and Videos Appear in Google AI Overviews?

How do images appear in AI Overviews?

There are three different situations:

• Thumbnails from cited pages. When an AI Overview links to a page, it often shows an image from that page. The page earns the citation; the image makes the link more visible.
• Image-led searches. Searching with a photo through Google Lens or Circle to Search can produce an AI Overview explaining what is in the picture, with links to supporting pages.
• Generated images. In July 2026, Google began bringing image generation into AI Overviews in English, in regions that already supported image creation in AI Mode. These images are created for the user's request, such as design ideas, and do not come from websites.

AI Mode also returns visual results for inspiration and shopping questions, drawing on images from product listings and web pages.

How do videos appear in AI Overviews?

Videos appear mainly as cited sources, often with a thumbnail and a link to the video. YouTube dominates. Beyond Ahrefs' figure, SE Ranking studied more than 50,000 German-language health searches made from Berlin. It found YouTube was the single most-cited source in AI Overviews, at 4.43% of all citations, ahead of any hospital, health portal or medical body. The researchers said the result could not be extrapolated to other regions. Google told The Guardian that AI Overviews are designed to surface high-quality content from reputable sources, regardless of format.

Videos hosted on your own site can also be used, if Google can find and index them. Google's video documentation requires a dedicated watch page for each video for video features, and that page must be indexed.

Why is YouTube cited so often?

• Video answers practical questions. How-to, repair, cooking, fitness and product demonstrations are often best explained on video.
• YouTube pages carry text. Titles, descriptions, chapters and captions give Google text it can match to questions.
• Scale. YouTube hosts an enormous amount of content on almost every topic, so there is often a relevant video.
• YouTube presence tracks AI visibility. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, mentions on YouTube correlated more strongly with brand visibility across AI assistants than any other factor it tested. That is a correlation, not proof that YouTube causes visibility.

How do you make your images eligible?

Follow Google's image best practices, which apply to AI features as much as to Google Images:

• Use standard HTML images, with an <img> element and a src attribute, not images loaded only through CSS or scripts.
• Write descriptive alt text that says what the image shows, in plain words.
• Place images next to relevant text, such as a product photo beside the product description, or a diagram beside the step it explains.
• Use descriptive file names and a consistent, high-quality image for each product or topic.
• Include images in your sitemap or an image sitemap if they are not discovered otherwise.
• Put important facts in text as well. A price table or chart saved only as an image is hard to read and quote reliably as text.

The most effective step is still the page itself. An image appears in an overview mainly when its page is cited, so the page needs to answer the question well.

How do you make your videos eligible?

For videos on your own site:

• Give each video its own watch page, indexed, where the video is the main content.
• Add VideoObject structured data with title, description, thumbnail and upload date.
• Provide a stable, crawlable thumbnail and make sure the video file or embed can be fetched.
• Publish a transcript or summary on the page, so the content can be understood as text.
• Mark key moments with chapters or Clip markup, so specific sections can be linked.

For YouTube:

• Write titles and descriptions that state the question answered, in the words people search.
• Add chapters and accurate captions, and correct automatic captions for product names and technical terms.
• Link to the video from a relevant page on your site, and embed it where it helps.
• Cover questions with a practical answer: set-up, troubleshooting, comparisons and demonstrations.

YouTube also matters beyond Google. Most major assistants can cite YouTube pages, so a well-described video library supports visibility widely.

What should you not expect?

• Images are not cited on their own. An image without a strong page around it rarely appears.
• Thumbnails are not guaranteed. Google chooses whether to show an image, and which one.
• Generated images do not come from you. They offer no citation or traffic.
• Alt text alone does not create visibility. It helps Google understand an image, but the page still has to be the best answer.

How do you measure image and video visibility in AI Overviews?

Google Search Console's generative AI performance report shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, which covers pages with images and video watch pages. YouTube Studio's traffic source reports show views arriving from Google Search, though not specifically from AI Overviews. Rank-tracking tools that capture AI Overviews can record which videos and images appear for your tracked queries. Checking a sample of important queries by hand each month shows how your media is presented. How to get featured more generally is covered in how to get featured in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode.

What might an illustrative case look like?

Consider an illustrative kitchen tap manufacturer whose installation guides are PDFs with photos. AI Overviews answering "how to install a mixer tap" cite retailers and YouTube videos from plumbers. The manufacturer publishes each installation guide as a web page with step photos, alt text and the key measurements in text. It records a short installation video for each main model, with chapters for each step and corrected captions. Each video gets a watch page with a transcript and video structured data, and a YouTube version linked from the guide. Over the following months, AI Overviews for model-specific installation questions start citing its guide pages, often with its step photos as thumbnails, and occasionally its YouTube videos.

What do people ask about images, videos and AI Overviews?

Does alt text help images appear in AI Overviews?

It helps Google understand the image. The page it sits on still needs to be cited for the image to appear.

Is YouTube better than hosting videos on my own site?

For AI visibility, YouTube is usually easier, since it is heavily cited. Hosting on your own site as well keeps traffic on your pages.

Can AI Overviews show my product images?

Yes, when a page showing the product is cited, or through product listings in shopping-related results.

Do AI-generated images in overviews use my images?

Google has not said which images train or inform its image model. Generated images are new images, not copies from specific sites.