AI Overview agency Be the brand Google recommends in its AI Overviews. Not the one it reads without naming.
Since 22 July 2026, Google answers your prospects before it even shows your pages. Astrak measures, query by query, whether your brand is named in AI Overviews and AI Mode, identifies who Google recommends instead of you and which sources it relies on, then does the work on your site and beyond so that your name appears in the answer.
Astrak is a French SEO and GEO agency specialising in Google AI Overviews, known in French as Aperçus IA. We help B2B and mid-market companies, industrial groups, professional firms and SaaS vendors get mentioned in these generated answers, and cited among their sources, as well as in AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity.
The symptom is usually the same: rankings don’t move, impressions go up, clicks go down. An AI Overview has slipped in between your result and your prospect. It answers the question, names a few players, cites three to five sources, and most users stop there. The goal is no longer just to rank first, it is to be the brand named in the answer.
Two different things are at stake, and they are not equal. A citation is your page linked among the sources. A mention is your brand name written in the answer itself. For a publisher, citations matter because they bring traffic. For a company selling a product or a service, the mention is what counts: prospects remember the names the AI recommends, not the links at the bottom of the answer.
Figures published by Ahrefs, measured internationally, show what is at stake: roughly one keyword in five triggers an AI Overview, the click-through rate of the first position drops by 58% when one is shown, and only 38% of cited pages rank in the organic top 10. That last figure is the most useful: a place in the answer is not reserved for sites that already rank first, it can be earned.
If you are looking for a Google AI Overviews SEO agency in France with a GEO practice in 2026, this page sets out what we actually do, in what order, with which indicators and at what price. It extends the work of our GEO agency, which covers every generative engine. Here, we focus on what is specific to Google.
What AI Overviews change for your acquisition
Three mechanisms we observe on the query panels we track every week, across sectors.
The answer comes before the first result
The AI Overview sits at the top of the page and answers the question. Your organic position stays the same, but it now sits below a complete answer. The brands named in the answer are the ones users remember, and the linked sources are the only ones that still stand a chance of being visited.
Being cited does not mean being mentioned
An engine can read your site, cite it as a source, use it to describe the market and recommend a competitor. On our panels, a brand is mentioned in 71% of answers when its site is cited, versus 19% otherwise: citations help, but the goal remains the mention.
Each engine has its own sources
ChatGPT reads companies’ service pages. AI Overviews rely more on rankings, comparisons and third-party media. A strategy that only works on your own site covers half the ground.
The companies we work with on AI Overviews
Organisations for which a Google search comes before the first contact, and where every inbound request has real value.
Industry and quote-based B2B
Manufacturers, subcontractors, technical distributors with long sales cycles
SaaS vendors
« Best software » queries, comparisons and alternatives
Professional services firms
Accounting, consulting, legal, real estate
Content sites and publishers
Informational traffic directly exposed to generated answers
Advice-heavy e-commerce
Buying guides, product comparisons, pre-purchase questions
Networks and local brands
Location-based queries where the business profile feeds the answer
What an AI Overview agency does
Six workstreams combined according to your starting point. None is sold as a separate option: they are all part of the same SEO and GEO engagement.
AI Overview visibility audit
A dated snapshot of your presence on 20 to 30 business queries: does an AI Overview appear, is your brand named, which competitors are named instead, and which pages Google relies on. It is the baseline without which no progress can be demonstrated.
AI positioning audit
Before trying to be recommended, you need to know what AI engines say about you. We question AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity about your brand: your business, your offer, your prices, your typical clients, your strengths, your limits, your competitors. We compare these answers with your actual positioning, flag errors, outdated information and blind spots, then trace them back to the sources that feed them so they can be corrected.
Pages that get your brand named
Engines name a company from its most specific page, rarely from its homepage. We create the missing service, industry and comparison pages and rewrite the others: explicit positioning, clients, dated proof, prices, a direct answer in the first paragraph, sourced figures, tables and lists the model can reuse. The method is detailed in becoming a source for LLMs.
Technical foundations and structured data
Google draws the sources of its AI Overviews from its index. Crawling, indexing, speed, cannibalisation and Schema.org markup are handled by our technical SEO team.
Presence in third-party sources
Rankings, comparisons, industry media, specialised directories: this is where most mentions are made. We identify the ones Google reads in your market and place your brand there, well ranked, with the right arguments. It extends our link building work.
Google Business Profile
On local queries, AI Mode and ChatGPT rely on business profiles. Category, services, review volume and rating are handled with our local SEO expertise.
What makes you invisible in AI Overviews today
How Google chooses the sources of an AI Overview
AI Overviews are generated by Gemini from pages Google has already indexed. AI Mode, launched in France on the same day, goes further: a fully conversational tab where users chain questions without going back to the list of links. Understanding how these two surfaces select their sources tells you where to act.
Everything starts with Google’s index
A page that is poorly crawled, slow, duplicated or competing with another page on the same site will not be cited, however well written. That is why work on AI Overviews adds to SEO rather than replacing it.
The engine rewrites your query into several searches
Before answering, the engine breaks the question down into derived queries: a rewording, a version with the current year, a comparison version, often an English version, and very often a version where it adds four to six brand names itself. Among the derived queries we have recorded, that last case is the most frequent (one in five). If your brand is missing from the pages that list those players, it is missing from the answer.
The most specific page wins
On recommendation queries, each company named is named through a page dedicated to the question asked: a service page, an industry page, a comparison. Homepages and « about » pages are read, but they are not enough to get the brand named.
Third-party rankings weigh more than your own word
AI Overviews readily cite comparisons and media rather than the brand’s own site. And rank matters: across 393 answer-and-ranking pairs we analysed, the brand ranked first in a cited source is picked up in 67% of answers, versus 33% beyond sixth place. Being on the list is not enough, you need to be well placed.
AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT: three engines, three logics
A prospect may ask Google in the morning and ChatGPT in the afternoon. The answers are not built the same way, and a serious strategy covers all three.
AI Overviews: third-party sources come first
It is the most cautious surface. It picks up the leader of a ranking less often than other engines and relies heavily on comparisons, specialised directories and media. Getting in requires clean SEO foundations and a presence in those sources.
AI Mode: the most literal surface
AI Mode reproduces more faithfully what the pages it cites say. When your site is among its sources, your brand is almost always named. The work is therefore about being selected as a source.
ChatGPT: service pages and the Google profile
ChatGPT reads companies’ own websites extensively and often opens local answers with a block of Google Maps listings. The same levers apply to ChatGPT SEO: we run them together so as not to multiply workstreams.
What you gain
What a well-managed presence in AI Overviews concretely changes for a company.
A place on the shortlist
When a buyer asks « which provider for… », the generated answer acts as the first shortlist. Being on it means being consulted. Being absent means not existing for that prospect.
Brand awareness that no longer depends on clicks
Many searches end without a visit. A brand mentioned in the answer is seen and remembered even when nobody clicks, then searched for directly by name. Cited links, for their part, recover some of the clicks lost by the first position.
A brand image under control
What AI says about you becomes your first sales pitch. Correcting a wrong description, an invented price or a blurred positioning means not losing prospects before the first contact. And those who do click arrive informed, ready to compare or request a quote.
One effort that serves every engine
Citable pages, third-party sources, structured data: what gets you into AI Overviews also serves ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. One workstream, several surfaces.
A head start on new ground
AI Overviews have only existed in France since summer 2026. In most markets, nobody holds the cited sources yet. The first brands to settle in will be the hardest to dislodge.
Measurement tied to revenue
Mentions, share of voice against your competitors, traffic from AI assistants in GA4, assisted contact requests: reporting talks about market share, not just rankings.
How to choose an AI Overview agency
No French agency has more than a few months of data on AI Overviews, since Google only launched them in France on 22 July 2026. What sets a serious provider apart is therefore not a track record but a verifiable method. Here are the questions to ask before signing, to us as to others. To compare, see our ranking of the best AI Overview agencies.
- A dated measurement protocol. Which queries, recorded how often, on which surfaces, with which tool. An agency that cannot show a reading is not measuring.
- The difference between mentions and citations. Being cited as a source and being recommended by name are two distinct indicators. An agency that only tracks citations measures what matters to a publisher, not to a company.
- The list of brands and sources chosen instead of you. It is the most useful deliverable of an audit: it tells you where to act. If it is not offered, the service is rebranded SEO.
- A look at what AI engines already say about you. Being mentioned is useless if the description is wrong or puts you in the wrong segment. Ask whether the agency audits how engines perceive your brand, not just how often it appears.
- Work beyond your own site. AI Overviews cite third parties. An agency that only talks about your content ignores half the mechanism.
- Real SEO foundations. Without clean indexing, no citation. Be wary of offers presenting GEO as a replacement for SEO.
- No guaranteed results. Generated answers change from one day to the next. An honest provider talks about presence rates over several readings, never about a single screenshot.
- Public pricing and reviews. Our prices are shown below, and our client reviews on Trustfolio are verified.
Our method, from first reading to first mentions
Five steps, each with a deliverable. Tracking starts before any recommendation.
The business query panel
We build 20 to 30 queries with you: the ones your prospects type when choosing (« best provider for… », comparisons, alternatives), and the conversational phrasings they use with an AI. Deliverable: the validated panel.
The baseline reading and the positioning audit
In parallel, we record what each engine says about your brand when asked directly, to spot gaps with your actual positioning. Each query is recorded on AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, several times, with a dedicated tracking tool and manual checks. Deliverable: your mention rate, your citation rate, your share of voice against your competitors and AI traffic tracking set up in GA4.
Source mapping
For each query, we list the brands the answer recommends and the pages Google cites: yours, your competitors’, third parties’. Deliverable: the prioritised list of pages to create, pages to rewrite and third-party sources to join.
Production, on your site and beyond
Technical fixes, dedicated pages, citation-oriented rewriting, structured data, then presence in the rankings and media identified in step 3. Both fronts move forward in parallel.
Weekly tracking and monthly decisions
Generated answers change from day to day: we read indicators as averages over several readings, never a single one. Monthly reporting in the same document as your SEO: mention rate first, then citation rate, share of voice, cited sources, sentiment, AI traffic and assisted conversions.
Our AI visibility results
Three GEO engagements, measured on ChatGPT and in Google clicks. As AI Overviews reached France in summer 2026, the first client cases measured on this surface will be published here, dated, once there is enough hindsight.
Automotive · Approved vehicle recycler
Inter-Car: first vehicle recycler recommended by ChatGPT, AI sessions +72%
Read the case study
Finance · SCPI investment platform
Epargnoo: 2.5× organic clicks in a year
Read the case study
Real estate · Property finders
Homelike Home: 2nd on ChatGPT, ×3 Google clicks in one year
Read the case study
AI Overview agency pricing
At Astrak, engagements start at €900 per month and our clients invest €2,000 per month on average. AI Overviews tracking is not billed separately: it is part of the SEO and GEO engagement, because the levers are the same.
What drives the budget
The size of the query panel and the number of surfaces tracked, the number of markets and languages, the volume of pages to create or rewrite, and the scope of third-party source work. A first call is usually enough to size your project.
Where to start
With a free diagnosis: together we record a few of your business queries in AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT, and we show you which brands Google recommends and which sources it cites instead of you. You leave with a clear picture, whether or not you work with us afterwards.
What our clients say
4.9/5 from more than 50 verified client reviews on Trustfolio
We called upon Léo Poitevin and Astrak to get a complete assessment of our current SEO strategy and brainstorming support on the future distribution of our customer platform. Astrak’s intervention allowed us to gain a much clearer vision of our SEO strengths, weaknesses, and quick wins, to properly prioritize our efforts thanks to very concrete recommendations, and to improve our content structure and internal processes.
Right from the initial audit, we identified and fixed numerous critical technical errors that we hadn’t detected internally, with results immediately visible on our performance. Beyond this technical fix, we now have a genuine publishing strategy structured around strategic keywords. We finally have a clear roadmap for our SEO development.
We used Astrak to find optimization levers on a site that was already well-positioned in SEO. We were looking for specific, professional expertise that stands out from the usual SEO agencies and standard recommendations. We found new SEO opportunities and appreciated the in-depth work carried out with a high degree of intelligence.
We used Astrak for our SEO strategy and we are very satisfied with it. In less than 6 months, we ranked first on Google for key queries, which had a direct and positive impact on our visibility and our business. Their tailor-made approach, responsiveness, and expertise allowed us to quickly achieve our goals.
Frequently asked questions about AI Overviews
The questions we are asked most often during a first call.
What is an AI Overview agency?
What is the difference between being mentioned and being cited in an AI Overview?
What is the difference between AI Overviews, Aperçus IA and AI Mode?
My rankings are stable but my clicks are falling: is it because of AI Overviews?
What if AI engines describe my company wrongly?
Can you measure your presence in AI Overviews?
How long does it take to be mentioned in an AI Overview?
Should you give up traditional SEO?
How much does an AI Overview agency cost?
Sources: Google France, launch of Aperçus IA and AI Mode, 22/07/2026; Ahrefs, AI Overviews studies (triggering, clicks, citations), 2026, international data; Astrak readings on query panels tracked every week. Page updated on 22 September 2026.
Find out who Google recommends instead of you.
Start with a free diagnosis: we record your business queries in AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT, and show you which brands are mentioned, which sources are cited, and why you are not there.
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