Earning citations in Google's AI Overviews requires optimizing for two layers: the organic ranking that makes your content eligible for citation consideration, and the extraction patterns that AI systems use to select citable passages. Both matter, and one without the other doesn't produce citations reliably. The organic eligibility layer: AI Overviews predominantly cite content from pages already ranking in the top 10 organic results for the query (or closely related queries). If you're not ranking, you're not getting cited. The implications: invest in fundamental SEO — high-quality content, technical excellence, strong backlink profile, established topical authority. Programmatic thin content rarely earns AIO citations because it rarely ranks well to begin with. The extraction layer: even among well-ranking pages, AI engines prefer content structured for extraction. The patterns we observe in our citation analysis: content with clear, declarative answers in the first paragraph; lists and tables that present comparable data; numbered step sequences for procedural content; explicit definitions of terms (often with HTML definition list markup or Definition schema); FAQ sections with FAQPage schema; and original data, statistics, or research that provides quotable information not available elsewhere. E-E-A-T signals matter heavily for AI Overview citations. AI engines preferentially cite content with named, credentialed authors; sites with strong author entity profiles linked via Person schema and sameAs links; original research over content aggregation; and editorial backing from established publications or recognized experts in the domain. Canadian-specific considerations: AI Overviews on google.ca often prioritize Canadian sources for queries with Canadian context (regulations, currency, geography, market specifics). Building Canadian-specific content depth — references to Canadian regulations, Canadian market data, Canadian case studies, Canadian sources — improves citation odds for Canadian-context queries that US-based competitors can't match credibly. The measurement caveat: AI Overview citation tracking is still maturing. We use a combination of manual SERP audits across target queries, third-party tools (still imperfect), and direct analysis of referral traffic from google.com with the AI Overview source identifier. Track citation share quarterly, not weekly — the volatility is too high for shorter intervals to be informative.