A Google results page in 2026 can hold a dozen different things before you reach a plain blue link. An AI Overview, a box of related questions, a map with three businesses, a row of images. Each of those is a SERP feature, and each one changes who gets the click.
This guide covers the SERP features that matter now, what each one is, which ones Google documents, and what changed this year. It also includes a small live check. On October 18, 2026 we pulled Google's results for four searches with different intents to see which features actually showed up.
What we saw in a live check
Before the list, here's what four real searches returned. It's a small sample, so treat it as a picture, not a statistic.
| Search | Features on the page |
|---|---|
| what is the capital of australia | AI Overview, People Also Ask, related searches |
| best coffee maker 2026 | AI Overview, People Also Ask, related searches |
| symptoms of the flu | AI Overview, People Also Ask, image pack, related searches |
| plumber near me | Local pack with three businesses, People Also Ask, no AI Overview |
People Also Ask showed up on all four. AI Overviews showed up on three, and not on the local search, where Google led with a map pack instead. The image pack appeared only for the health question.
The AI Overview for the capital of Australia had four blocks of text and only two source links. The flu one had five blocks and three sources. So even when an AI Overview appears, only a handful of pages get linked from it.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews are the summaries Google writes at the top of many results pages. Google's guide to AI features says they "help people get to the gist of a complicated topic or question more quickly, and provide a jumping off point to explore links."
The most useful line in that guide is about eligibility. "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary," it says. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. That's all.
Google also says both features may use "query fan-out," running several related searches behind the scenes to build an answer. That's why an AI Overview can cite a page that doesn't rank for the exact words you typed. Our guide to how to rank in AI Overviews, with examples goes deeper.
AI Mode
AI Mode is Google's separate, chat-style search. Google says it's "particularly helpful for queries where further exploration, reasoning, or complex comparisons are needed." It also shows "a wider and more diverse set of helpful links" than a classic search.
AI Mode and AI Overviews share the same eligibility rules. The difference is mostly depth. An AI Overview gives you the gist above the normal results. AI Mode is a conversation you can keep going.
Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable noted in October 2026 that Google keeps updating how links show in both. It still doesn't show click data for them in Search Console, a gap Schwartz keeps pushing Google to close.
Google updates links in AI Mode and AI Overviews again, but Google continues to refuse to show us click data in Search Console - show us the data 🖱️ https://t.co/N6rpObEjLf
Barry Schwartz@rustybrickOct 15, 2026If you want to measure these separately from your normal rankings, our guide to tracking AI Overviews apart from organic rankings covers how.
Know exactly what AI says about your competitors.
RankControl's Recon Agent monitors competitor citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews. See where they show up and you don't.
Featured snippets
A featured snippet is a box near the top that quotes one page directly. Google's featured snippets doc describes them as "special boxes where the format of a regular search result is reversed, showing the descriptive snippet first."
You can't ask for one. The doc's answer to "How can I mark my page as a featured snippet?" is simply "You can't." Google's systems decide. You can opt out with the nosnippet rule, and clicking a snippet takes the reader straight to the quoted section of the page.
People mix these up with AI answers all the time. On r/google, someone blamed AI Mode for a wrong answer showing in regular search. The top reply pointed out it was a featured snippet, a feature that had been around long before AI Overviews or AI Mode.
AI mode has officially poisoned Google's regular search. This traditional search result, now gives the same authoritative answer that AI mode did... because a university created a PDF poking fun at the original AI mode response...
The difference matters. In one case shared on X, a Google AI Overview got the UK government's state pension guidance for people abroad wrong. The featured snippet for the same search, quoting the source page, had it right.
Important correction: Google’s AI results has misrepresented the official @GOVUK guidance on State Pension payments abroad for expats. An elderly relative living abroad saw this and feared their pension would be cut off. It was infuriating to watch them so distressed by such https://t.co/lydv4u4tSc
Mr Jonathan Jones 🇹🇼🇬🇧@Jonny_J_Apr 25, 2025
People Also Ask
People Also Ask is the box of related questions that expands when you click one. It appeared in every search in our check.
Interestingly, Google doesn't give it a documentation page of its own. The only official mention is in the featured snippets doc, which calls it a "related questions group (also known as 'People Also Ask')." So there's no markup or setting for it. Pages that answer a common question plainly, near a heading that asks it, are the ones that tend to show up.
People Also Ask is also a cheap research tool. The questions it shows are real follow-ups people search for, which makes them good headings and FAQ items.
The local pack
For searches with local intent, like "plumber near me," Google shows a map with a short list of businesses. In our check it showed three, each with a rating, review count and a booking link, and there was no AI Overview at all.
The local pack is driven mostly by your Google Business Profile, reviews and distance. Google also documents a related feature called the Top Places List. It can show the curated "top places" lists that mention your business, if those lists are genuine, independent and not sponsored. Google says that feature "is only for businesses with a physical location."
Image and video packs
Image packs show a row of pictures, and video packs a row of videos, usually from YouTube. In our check, the image pack appeared only for the flu symptoms search, where a picture helps.
Google documents both under its image and video guidelines. Clear file names, descriptive alt text and a page that's actually about the image help. For video, a page where the video is the main content does better than one where it's buried.
Top Stories and Preferred Sources
Top Stories is the carousel of news articles for newsworthy searches. It's mostly for news publishers, and it's where Google's Preferred Sources setting lives. Readers can star sites they want to see more of, and since May 2026 that choice can mark links in AI Overviews and AI Mode too. Our guide to Google Preferred Sources covers how it works.
26 content formats. Published on your domain. Matched to your brand.
Guides, comparisons, listicles, case studies, and more. RankControl generates content that gets cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews.
Sitelinks, rich results and the rest
A few more features show up often enough to know.
- Sitelinks are the extra links under a site's main result, usually for brand searches. Google picks them automatically.
- Rich results come from structured data, like product prices, recipe ratings, event dates and job listings. Each has its own Google doc and markup.
- Knowledge panels are the boxes about people, places and companies. Google manages them through a separate help center, not Search Central.
What Google removed
Some features have gone, and old guides still recommend them.
- FAQ rich results. Google stopped showing them on May 7, 2026, and removed the documentation on June 15. FAQ markup still does no harm on a page, but it no longer creates the expandable result. Our post on FAQ pages for AEO covers what FAQs still do.
- The sitelinks search box. Google removed it in November 2024.
If a guide tells you to add FAQ schema to win more space in results, it's out of date.
How to show up in more of them
You can't pick which features Google shows. But a few habits make your pages eligible for more of them.
- Answer the main question near the top, in a short paragraph. That's what featured snippets and AI Overviews both lift.
- Use the questions people actually ask as headings. People Also Ask is a free list of them.
- Keep your Business Profile complete if you have a physical location.
- Use clear images with good alt text on pages where a picture helps.
- Add structured data where it applies, like products, events or recipes.
- Check your own results. The features differ by search, so look at the queries that matter to you.
One thing many searchers don't know is that Google offers a "Web" tab with plain links and no AI Overview. A thread on r/mildlyinfuriating with almost a thousand upvotes showed how few people know it exists. Most people see whatever loads first.
I'm sorry but isn't this supposed to GET RID of the ai overview?
We call this the first-screen rule. Whatever appears before the first scroll is what most people use, so that's the space worth planning for.
Doing it yourself or handing it off
Checking the features for your own key searches takes about an hour. Write down which ones show up and who wins them, then repeat every month or two, because they change.
RankControl does the content side. It writes each article against the pages already ranking for its keyword, with a clear answer near the top, and scores it for how easily AI engines can quote it, with a list of fixes. Its AI visibility tracking then checks up to 50 buyer questions every week across seven AI engines, including Google AI Mode and Google AI Overviews. Expect traffic from Google and AI search first, with citations following more slowly as other sites link to and mention you.
Your competitors are getting cited by AI. You're not.
Every day without citation tracking is a day your competitors pull ahead in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.
