This guide has been merged into CLEO's full diagnostic on AI overview presence, which now carries the audit procedure and the step-by-step recovery order alongside the three-gap diagnosis.
Ranking well in traditional search and appearing in AI overviews are different tests. Ranking measures whether a page is competitive for a query; citation measures whether the model can read, trust, and corroborate the page at the moment it generates an answer. Three gaps decide inclusion: machine readability (AI crawlers can extract content without executing JavaScript), extractable structure (answer-first paragraphs, tables, clear headings), and off-site corroboration (the brand is discussed across independent third-party sources, not only its own domain). The audit identifies which one is biting you, and the fixes run in cost order: technical structure first, entity corroboration last and slowest.
Read the full guide: Competitors Show Up in AI Overviews, You Don't