If AI Overviews disappeared from your own Google results, something between you and Google is removing them: a filter, a query operator, an extension, or a country and language Google does not serve them in. If your page stopped appearing inside AI Overviews, no penalty took it out, because Google documents none; it lost the citation to another page, or the query stopped triggering an overview at all.
Two problems, one search phrase. Users first, then site owners.
The short answer
- Google says AI Overviews "often don't trigger". A query with no overview is normal.
- There is no on/off switch. Google says the feature "cannot be turned off", so if it is missing, something is hiding it.
- Check, in order: country and language, the Web filter and
udm=14, a-aiin the query, extensions and ad-block filters.- For a page that dropped out: confirm it is still indexed and snippet-eligible. If it is, you were out-cited, not penalised.
If you are a user and AI Overviews disappeared
Work down the list. Each item removes the overview, with the source that confirms it.
Your country or language is not on the list. Google publishes the countries, territories and languages AI Overviews are available in on its AI Overviews help page. The list is long and split by language, so an account whose interface language is outside it will not see them even in a supported country. Check both.
The Web filter is on, or a search shortcut is adding udm=14. The same help page: "AI Overviews are a core Google Search feature, like knowledge panels. Features cannot be turned off. However, you can select the Web filter after you perform a search. This filter displays only text-based links without features like AI Overviews." The parameter behind that tab is udm=14, and the usual way to make it stick is a custom search engine in the browser that appends it to every query, a method MakeUseOf documented in May 2024. Open the browser's search engine settings, find the entry whose URL contains udm=14, and switch the default back.
The query has -ai in it. Appending -ai removes the overview, which 9to5Google reported on 23 May 2026. A minus operator excludes a term, and a query carrying an exclusion is one Google does not summarise. A saved shortcut or bookmark with that suffix is doing its job. Remove it.
An extension or an ad-block filter is hiding the block. The overview is in the page; a content script or cosmetic filter hides it after load. MakeUseOf names "Bye Bye, Google AI", "Hide Google AI Overviews" and custom uBlock Origin filters, and open-source ones like Google AI Overviews Blocker exist for Chrome and Firefox. Disable anything with "AI" or "Google" in its name and reload. In uBlock Origin, check My filters for a line starting google.com##.
You are signed out, or in Incognito. In the US this stopped mattering in 2024: Google confirmed that AI Overviews show for signed-out users, Incognito included, which 9to5Google covered on 16 August 2024, and Google's availability section now reads "To all users". Sign-in still gates Search Labs: the help page's Labs instructions begin "Make sure you're signed in to your Google Account with Incognito mode turned off." So Incognito can cost you a Labs experiment, not the overview.
You are under 18 on a school account. Google's Workspace documentation says AI Overviews and AI Mode are available to Workspace for Education users designated as under 18 in most countries, while those users "cannot access Search Labs". Same split: the overview should be there, the experiments will not.
The query is one Google chose not to summarise. Google Search Central: "AI Overviews are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search, and as such, often don't trigger" (AI features documentation, last updated 10 December 2025). If everything above checks out and one query has no overview, that is the feature working. Try a different query before concluding anything.
If you are a site owner and your page stopped showing in AI Overviews
Start with the only rule Google publishes, from the same Search Central page: "To be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet." There are "no additional requirements" and no "special optimizations necessary".
So the first check is binary. Is the page still indexed, and free of any noindex, nosnippet, max-snippet or data-nosnippet? If a redesign added a snippet restriction, or a CDN rule started serving Googlebot something different, you removed yourself. Fix that and you are back at the floor.
If the page passes, you were not removed. You were not chosen. Two documented facts explain most of that.
The overview did not trigger. They "often don't trigger". A query that carried an overview last month can carry none this month, and no page is cited in an overview that does not exist.
The candidate set comes from more than one search. Google says AI Overviews "may use a 'query fan-out' technique, issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources", showing "a wider and more diverse set of helpful links" than a classic result page. The pages competing for your citation are not the ten you see ranked.
We have measured what that looks like. On 22 August 2026 we asked seven answer engines the same seven buying questions about SEO and AI visibility tools through our own scanner. Google AI Overviews answered all seven with sources and cited 40 distinct domains, repeating youtube.com (4 answers), reddit.com (3) and zapier.com (3) most. Across all seven engines, 139 distinct domains were cited, 92 of them by exactly one engine, and none by more than five of the seven. The organic results for the same terms were Zapier, Semrush, Backlinko and Ahrefs. Seven questions on one topic on one day is a probe, not a study. What it supports is that the cited set is wide, spread thin, and not the ranked set. A page that held one of those slots and lost it lost it to one of 39 neighbours, with no signal from Google that anything was wrong. Ranking first does not mean you get cited shows the same gap from an earlier run.
So "how do I get my AI Overview back" has no direct answer for a publisher. There was never a slot with your name on it. Confirm eligibility, make sure the main content is in the HTML rather than arriving by JavaScript, then measure the citation list on the questions that matter to you, so a drop shows up as a dated fact rather than a feeling. The method is in how to measure AI visibility; the published record of how sources are picked is in how AI Overviews choose citations.
How to check whether a page is cited right now
Ask Google the question a buyer would ask and read the sources on the answer. Use a clean profile with no extensions and the All tab selected, or you will be debugging the first half of this post. Searching your brand name is not a test, because a brand query is not what a prospect types, and one search is one sample of a feature that often does not trigger.
Our free AI visibility check asks Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT a buyer question about your site and returns the citation URLs each one showed, no account needed. It is our product, and it is one question, so read it as a starting point. For the same job on a schedule, tracking AI visibility in Google AI Overviews describes what a paid scan records and what it costs us to run.
What does not work
The Labs toggle. "AI in Search" in Labs changes which experiments you get. It does not add or remove AI Overviews, which Google classes as a core feature that "cannot be turned off".
Searching again. If the overview did not trigger, repeating the search asks the same system the same question.
Adding llms.txt or schema to get cited. Google: "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add." Structured data still earns rich results, which is a separate reason to keep it.
Blocking or unblocking Google-Extended. That token governs Gemini training and grounding, and Google says it "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search". AI Overviews come from the index Googlebot fills; see Google-Extended vs Googlebot.
Waiting for a penalty to lift. None is documented. If the page is indexed and snippet-eligible, there is nothing to serve out.