Search after AI Overviews: write to be quoted, not just ranked

For years, SEO meant one thing: get onto page one and earn the click. Today, for many searches, Google writes an answer at the top of the page before anyone sees a link. The click is no longer the only prize. Being named inside that answer is.

For businesses in Dubai and across the UAE, this changes how a website should be written, not just how it's optimised.

AI Overviews summarise several sources into one answer and link to the pages they used. People still click, but they click on the sources that look most useful in the summary. If your page isn't one of them, you can rank well and still be invisible.

What gets a page quoted

• One clear question per page, asked the way a customer would ask it.
• A direct answer in the first two or three sentences, before the detail.
• Real expertise: examples, numbers from your own work, named authors.
• Structure a machine can read: proper headings, lists, tables and FAQ sections.
• Structured data (schema) that says who you are, what the page is and who wrote it.

"Near me" and city searches still lean heavily on local signals. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and active, use the same name, address and phone number everywhere, collect real reviews, and build a page for each service you want to be found for.

Don't forget Arabic

Many customers in the UAE and Egypt search in Arabic. A properly written Arabic version of your key pages, linked to the English version with the right language tags, opens a second set of searches your competitors often ignore.

• A title and meta description written for the search, not for the brand.
• A clear H1 that matches what people type.
• The answer to the main question in the first paragraph.
• An FAQ section with the questions sales teams hear every week.
• Internal links to related services and case studies.
• Fast loading on mobile, with compressed images.

In Google Search Console, watch impressions as well as clicks. Rising impressions with steady clicks can mean you're being shown, and seen, inside answers. Track which pages earn them and give those pages more depth.

Our Web & Digital Optimization team builds sites and landing pages with this structure from day one, and our Performance team makes sure the traffic you earn turns into leads. Talk to us about an SEO audit.