Google AI Overviews (the generative AI summaries that appear above the classical results for many queries) draw their cited sources from the broader organic ranking pool — but with additional filters that determine which of those ranking pages are actually surfaced in the Overview. **Baseline: organic ranking.** A page that does not rank in the top 10 organic for the query has very low likelihood of citation in the AI Overview for that query. AI Overview optimization starts with classical SEO foundations. **Structural directness.** The Overview synthesizer preferentially cites pages whose answer to the underlying query is clearly stated near the top. A 2,000-word article that doesn't state the answer until paragraph six is less likely to be cited than a 600-word article that answers immediately and then expands. **FAQPage and Article schema.** Schema-marked content gives the AI Overview synthesizer a cleaner structural parse. FAQPage schema is especially useful for question-style queries; Article schema with author and dateModified properties supports freshness and authority signals. **Named expert authorship.** Author bios with verifiable credentials linked to external sources (university pages, professional registry pages, published works) increase the page's authority weight in the Overview synthesizer's judgment. Anonymous content is cited less consistently. **Entity authority.** The synthesizer favours pages from sites that rank as recognized entities in their topic area. Google's understanding of your site's topic authority is partly built from external citation patterns — Wikipedia, government sites, established Canadian media (Globe & Mail, CBC, Financial Post, Maclean's), and major industry publications. **Renderable text.** The Overview synthesizer reads the rendered HTML, not the source HTML. JavaScript-dependent text that requires interaction (accordion expand, tab click) may or may not be parsed; static rendered text is reliably parsed. **No 'AI Overview blocking.'** There is no specific markup that opts your site out of AI Overviews while keeping it in classical search. The only way to be excluded is the broader nosnippet directive, which also reduces classical search visibility. **Monitoring AI Overview citations.** Google Search Console added impression data for AI Overviews in late 2025. Track the queries where your site is being cited and the queries where you are organically ranking but not being cited — the gap reveals optimization opportunities. For Canadian sites specifically, AI Overviews trigger more aggressively for Canadian-context queries (city names, .ca domain referenced, French-language queries) than for generic queries. Investing in genuinely Canadian-context content materially affects AI Overview visibility.