How to find blog topics that trigger Google AI Overviews

You find blog topics that trigger Google AI Overviews by starting from the searches your buyers make, checking which of them show an overview at the top of Google, and then judging which of those your blog can earn a place in. An AI Overview is the generated summary Google places above the regular results for some searches, with links to the pages it drew from. A blog post that gets cited there reaches people who might never scroll down to the blue links.

Google doesn't show an overview for every search. It shows them mostly for questions where a short explanation helps: how something works, what a term means, how two options compare, or what steps a task takes. Searches for a brand's name, a product to buy, or a local business show them less often. That pattern is useful, because informational questions are exactly what a company blog is good at answering.

There are two common ways to check by hand. The first is to search Google yourself in a private browser window and look for the overview at the top. That works for a handful of keywords, but the results vary by location and by person, and it doesn't scale past a short list. The second is a keyword tool. Semrush and Ahrefs both record which search features appear for each keyword, so you can filter a keyword list down to the ones that show an AI Overview. Google Search Console won't do this for you, because it counts clicks and impressions from AI Overviews inside your ordinary web search totals rather than reporting them separately.

Both routes answer whether an overview appears. Neither tells you which of those topics is worth a post. A good topic has four things going for it: Google shows an overview for it, enough people search for it to matter, it connects to what your business sells, and the pages the overview cites today are ones you can match or beat. An overview that cites government sites and household brands is a hard place to break in. One that cites a thin forum thread and a three-year-old blog post is an opening.

Kite does that judging for you. It finds the searches that show an overview, reads what each overview cites, and turns the best openings into briefs and posts for your blog.

Start by asking Kite for topics in plain words:

"Find blog topics where Google shows an AI Overview and we have a real shot at being cited. Focus on US searches."

Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. You can work with Kite in your browser or in Slack. By the time you ask, Kite already knows your product, your customers, your competitors, and the topics your site covers from its research on your business. So it proposes the seed topics and competitors to start from without a long brief. Confirm them or adjust them, and Kite starts.

You don't need an SEO tool account for this job, because Kite's keyword, ranking, and search results data comes from its own built-in DataForSEO connection. If you'd like Kite to include the searches you already get impressions for, connect your Google Search Console account and it will add them to the starting list.

Researching keywords and reading search results is routine work, so Kite runs the research and comes back with the list. It asks before it publishes any post.

Kite starts from three sets of searches, because each one finds a different kind of opening. The first set is the searches your site already ranks for. Kite pulls your ranked keywords with each one's position, monthly search volume, and the search features Google shows for it, including whether an AI Overview appears. A keyword where you already rank on the first page and Google shows an overview is the closest opening you have, since Google already considers your page relevant.

The second set is the searches your competitors rank for and you don't. Kite reads the ranked keywords for each competitor in your research and finds the ones missing from your site. These are topics your market already searches for, written about by companies your buyers compare you with.

The third set is the questions around your product that nobody in your space has covered well yet. Kite takes the problems your product solves and the terms your buyers use, then asks DataForSEO for keyword ideas, suggestions, and related searches built from them. This set catches the longer, question-shaped searches that tend to trigger overviews, such as "how do I" and "what is the difference between" searches.

Kite keeps only the searches where Google currently shows an AI Overview, using the search features recorded for each keyword. Along with the overview flag, it keeps the monthly search volume, the keyword difficulty, and the likely intent behind the search, such as learning, comparing, or buying.

It then drops the searches a blog post can't serve well. A search with your competitor's brand in it, a search for a product page, or a search with no connection to what you sell doesn't belong on your blog list, even if it shows an overview. Kite also merges searches that are really the same question in different words, such as "what is AEO" and "what does AEO mean", so one post covers them both.

Kite checks every shortlisted search on the live Google results page, because the keyword data shows that an overview appeared and the live page shows what it says now. For each search, it confirms the overview is still there and reads the pages the overview links to as its sources. It also reads the top organic results and the "People also ask" questions Google lists beside them.

Then it reads the cited pages themselves. Kite notes what kind of page each source is, such as a vendor's blog post, a documentation page, a forum thread, or a news article, along with how recent it is and how directly it answers the question. It also notes when the overview cites a page that ranks well below the first few results. That's a sign Google picked the source for its answer rather than its ranking, which means a clear, specific post can be chosen even before it ranks near the top.

Kite ranks the topics by how good a chance your blog has of being cited, weighed against how much the search is worth to your business. A topic rises when real buyers search for it, when it sits close to what your product does, and when the current sources are thin, dated, or written by someone with less standing on the subject than you. A topic falls when the overview leans on official sources or major publications that a company blog can't displace, or when the search volume is too small to justify a post.

Kite also checks your own site before it recommends a new post. When you already have a page on the topic that ranks but isn't cited, it recommends updating that page instead, because a page Google already trusts is quicker to improve than a new one is to establish. When several topics share a theme, it groups them so one strong post can answer the main question and its close follow-ups.

For each topic it keeps, Kite writes down the angle it recommends: the direct answer the post should lead with, the facts and examples your business can add that the current sources lack, and the "People also ask" questions the post should answer along the way.

Kite turns any topic you choose into a brief and then a draft post. The brief names the search the post targets, the answer it opens with, the sections it needs, the questions it should cover, and the cited sources it needs to improve on. Kite writes the post in your brand's voice, putting a plain answer to the question at the top of the post and at the start of each section, because that's the part an overview is most likely to quote.

You can review the brief, the draft, or both. Once you approve the post, Kite publishes it on a site it hosts or through a supported CMS connection, such as Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, or Storyblok, and adds the title, description, and structured data the page needs.

When the research is done, Kite sends you the ranked topic list in the conversation where you asked, with a short explanation of why the top topics made the cut and why notable ones didn't. It also says how many searches it checked, how many showed an AI Overview, and how many survived the review of their cited sources.

From there, you can pick the topics you want written, and Kite starts on the briefs. If you want a fresh list each month, ask Kite to run the same research on a schedule. Overviews come and go as Google changes what it shows, so a monthly run catches new openings and flags topics where the overview has disappeared.

When Kite finishes, you have a list of blog topics you can act on right away, with the evidence behind each choice, and briefs ready for the ones you pick.