# AI snippet

Category: [AI Search & GEO](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/ai-search-geo/) › [AI search & answer engines](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/ai-search-geo/ai-search-answer-engines/) · Also known as: AI Overview Snippet

**AI snippet** is an informal SEO label for the text that Google shows from a page inside its AI answers, or for the AI-written summary itself. Google's own documentation uses the names AI Overviews and AI Mode instead.

## What does "AI snippet" mean in SEO?
The term has no fixed definition. Some authors mean the short excerpt of a page that appears next to a link in an AI answer. Others mean the whole generated summary above the results. Many search results for the phrase are unrelated, because it also names text-expander and prompt-library tools.

Google describes the links in AI Overviews and AI Mode as a wider and more diverse set than in classic results, and says the features use "query fan-out", which means issuing several related searches across subtopics. Google also states that there are no additional requirements to appear in these features and no special optimizations necessary.

## How can you control the text shown?
The controls are the same as for classic snippets. `nosnippet` and `data-nosnippet` limit what is shown from your pages, `max-snippet` limits the length, and `noindex` keeps a page out of the index and therefore out of AI features. Google sources snippets mainly from the page content and only sometimes from the meta description.

## Example
Limit the preview text to 80 characters and hide one block from snippets:

```html
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:80">
<p>Public intro text.</p>
<p data-nosnippet>Internal note that should not appear in previews.</p>
```

## Related terms

- [AI opt-out](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/ai-opt-out/index.md)
- [max-snippet](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/max-snippet/index.md)
- [Search snippet](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/search-snippet/index.md)
- [AI search](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/ai-search/index.md)

## Sources

- [AI features and your website - Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)
- [Snippets - Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet)
- [Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag - Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots-meta-tag)

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Last updated: October 7, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/ai-snippet/