Does Optimizing for Google AI Overviews Help Visibility in Other AI Engines?
Optimizing for Google AI Overviews helps other AI engines partly. The content work carries over: clear answers, specific facts, pages readable in HTML, accurate information and third-party mentions help in every engine. The access and ranking layers do not. AI Overviews depend on Googlebot and Google's index. ChatGPT draws on third-party search providers, Claude uses Brave Search, Perplexity runs its own crawler and index, and Copilot uses Bing. A site can be well cited in AI Overviews while blocking OpenAI's or Perplexity's crawlers, or ranking poorly in Bing or Brave. To extend the work, check crawler access and rankings for each engine and track each one separately.
What carries over and what does not?
| Carries over to other engines | Engine-specific |
|---|---|
| Direct answers and specific facts on the page | Crawler access: Googlebot vs OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Bingbot |
| Key text in HTML, not scripts | Rankings in each engine's index: Google, Bing, Brave, Perplexity's own |
| Accurate, consistent business information | Local data: Google Business Profile vs Bing Places, Apple Business, Yelp |
| Reviews and third-party coverage | Which third-party sites each engine prefers to cite |
| Original data and expertise | How each engine displays and names sources |
How different are the engines' sources?
- Rankings matter differently. About 38% of AI Overview citations came from Google's top 10 in Ahrefs' 2026 analysis. For Claude, one analysis of about 35,000 citations found 79.2% came from Brave's top 10, against 34% from Google's top 10. Seer Interactive found in 2025 that most ChatGPT search citations matched Bing's top 20 results.
- Preferred sources differ. Semrush's 2025 study found ChatGPT cited Wikipedia in up to 55% of answers at one point, against about 3% for Google's AI Mode and under 1% for Perplexity.
- Naming differs. A Semrush and Growth Memo study found Gemini named brands far more often than it cited them, while ChatGPT did the reverse.
Brands that are well known tend to appear across engines. But which of your pages get cited, and whether you appear at all for a given question, can differ sharply.
Does it carry over within Google's own products?
Mostly, but not completely. AI Mode runs many related searches at once, which Google calls query fan-out. It can cite pages for sub-questions that never produce an AI Overview. It also handles longer, conversational follow-ups. The Gemini app grounds answers in Google Search too, but site owners who block Google-Extended opt out of that grounding, while still appearing in AI Overviews. So a site can be visible in AI Overviews, less visible in AI Mode for complex questions, and absent from the Gemini app because of one robots.txt line. Track all three separately if your audience uses them.
How should results be reported?
Report visibility by engine, not as one blended figure. A single score can hide an engine where you are missing entirely. A simple table works: rows for engines, columns for mention rate, citation rate and the main sources cited. Leadership can then see where AI Overview work has carried over and where it has not.
What should you add to AI Overview work?
- Check crawler access for each engine. In robots.txt and your CDN or firewall settings, allow the search crawlers you want: OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot and Bingbot. Blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot is a separate choice.
- Check Google-Extended. Blocking it does not affect AI Overviews, but it stops your content being used for grounding in the Gemini app.
- Check Bing. Use Bing Webmaster Tools, submit sitemaps and consider IndexNow. Bing's AI Performance report shows Copilot citations and the queries behind them.
- Check Brave rankings for your key pages if Claude matters to your audience.
- Complete non-Google local profiles: Bing Places, Apple Business and Yelp, which licenses data to OpenAI.
- Track each engine separately, with the same questions, so you can see where the gaps are.
What might an illustrative comparison show?
Consider an illustrative software company that invested in AI Overview visibility and is cited in most AIO answers for its category. Tracking the same 30 questions in other engines shows it appears in about a third of ChatGPT answers and almost none from Perplexity. Server logs show PerplexityBot is blocked by a firewall rule. Its Bing rankings for comparison queries are much weaker than its Google rankings, because its sitemap was never submitted to Bing. After unblocking PerplexityBot, submitting to Bing and adding IndexNow, Perplexity begins citing its pages within weeks. ChatGPT mentions rise more slowly, as Bing rankings improve.
Related questions are covered in how traditional SEO fundamentals affect AI visibility and what Google AI Overviews are and how they work.
What do people ask about AI Overviews and other engines?
Is ranking in Google enough to appear in ChatGPT?
Not reliably. ChatGPT uses other search sources, and published analyses disagree on whether its citations match Bing's results more closely than Google's.
Should we optimize separately for each AI engine?
Do the shared content work once, then handle access, rankings and profiles for each engine.
Does Google-Extended affect AI Overviews?
No. It affects Gemini training and grounding in Gemini apps, not Google Search features.
Which engine should we fix first?
The one your customers use most, based on surveys, sales conversations and AI referral data.
Published by The Kovmere Team · updated Sep 29, 2026 · More resources