If you’ve searched anything on Google lately, chances are you’ve seen an AI overview (AIO). Formerly known as SGE, AI overviews are the succinct AI-generated summaries of information that appear right at the top of Google for a majority of search queries.
While it can serve as a convenient way to get a question answered quickly without having to sift through so many options of links to click on, it certainly has some issues. There have been plenty of instances of false information being presented.
Accuracy and trust are particularly important in high-stakes industries like health, law, and finance. What happens when someone asks Google a medical or legal question and receives a wrong answer?
The AIO also poses new challenges for SEO professionals, as it reshapes how users search online and how businesses need to shift their SEO strategy.
iLawyer Marketing, a law firm SEO, offers perspective on how businesses in high-stakes industries can stay visible and trusted in an AI-driven search landscape.
The technology behind AI overviews and their limitations
AI-generated summaries at the top of Google aren’t going anywhere. A recent study from Pew Research found that 58% of participants saw an AI-generated summary when conducting searches.
The summaries are created using large language models (LLMs) that aggregate content, extract relevant answers, and provide source citations. However, AI Overviews contain the same misinformation that organic results can, and they can hallucinate.
Plenty of controversy has arisen over AI hallucinations, or false statements that AI produces out of confusion. AI isn’t perfect, after all. There are also concerns over source transparency, as users can’t always tell where the answer is coming from at a glance. For high-stakes topics, that’s a problem. If the source is wrong or unreliable, the answer might be too.
Risks and opportunities in high-stakes industries
While some AI hallucinations are harmless and rather amusing (the “adding glue to pizza” response, for example), in high-stakes industries, this misinformation can have more serious consequences.
Consumers who are seeking medical or legal advice on Google, which is not recommended but inevitable, can end up with incorrect AI overviews shoved in their faces. And since such answers are prominently featured at the top of the page, they carry unearned authority. One bad answer could lead to poor medical decisions, legal missteps, or financial harm.
The good news is that AI overviews present an opportunity for authoritative, trustworthy sites to be cited more often. For professionals in law, healthcare, and finance, this means it’s important to have content that is accurate, well-structured, and published by credentialed experts.
The bad news for SEO experts is that organic rankings are no longer the sole focus. The new race is to be featured in the AIO. If a user asking for legal advice can get their answer, whether true or not, without clicking any links, why would they?
Fortunately, if you’re ranking well organically, you have a higher chance of being featured in the AIO. Ahrefs recently found that 76% of AIO citations pull from the top ten results.
Implications for law firm SEO
How can law firms and other high-stakes professionals adapt? They need to ensure that content is addressing common questions and doing so in a clear, structured format.
The concept of E-E-A-T is alive and well in SEO: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. This content strategy hasn’t gone anywhere and is likely a factor in AIO citations.
In legal content, questions like “Do I need a lawyer after a car accident?” can be used as headings, with a clear answer following. Any legal answer that can be cited with a government statute should absolutely do so.
Another aspect of gaining authority and trust comes from getting high-quality backlinks. Being cited in trusted sources like legal directories, news sites, or .edu and .gov pages is still an important part of SEO strategy.
SEO professionals suggest focusing on both traditional ranking factors and new AIO-specific formats to cover all the bases.
What SEO pros should be doing now
The first step in optimising for AI is to monitor how your site appears in overviews. You can search manually or use tools, but start tracking which queries you appear for and which page or section of your page is cited. You should also look at which page or section of your competitors’ pages are being cited.
Schema, or structured data, is one strategy for trying to get your content into the AIO. It communicates your content to Google in a language it understands more easily and is your best shot at getting rich results. Having FAQ sections on your pages with concise answers and structured data will improve AI accessibility.
It’s also a good idea to reevaluate which of your current pages are targeting high-intent, high-risk queries. Can you strengthen the answers? Improve readability? Cite more trustworthy sources? Even small edits might make a big difference.
Looking ahead
Google’s AI overviews are raising the bar for content in industries where precision matters. For law firm SEO and other high-stakes verticals, success now means becoming a trustworthy source, not just a top result.
Firms that invest in high-quality content, structure, and authority will be better positioned for an AI-driven search experience, no matter what that looks like in the future.
