How to get cited in AI Overviews: what I'm doing for my own name

To get cited in Google's AI Overviews, a page has to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and Google says there's no special schema, file or trick on top of that. So for my own name, I'm doing the unglamorous part: removing everything that makes "Aatman Jain" ambiguous, then being patient.

I'm writing this before it has worked. Not one citation to show you. What I have got is what was muddling Google about me, what I changed, and how I'll check.

If someone looks me up before hiring me, I want the answer to be right. The idea behind everything below is the title of the profile checklist in my repo:

Same name. Same line. Same link. Everywhere.

What Google actually says

Before touching anything, I read Google's own pages, because this topic is full of people selling magic. Google's AI features and your website (opens in a new tab) page is blunt:

A page must be "indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet", and "There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add." Google also warns that AI Overviews "often don't trigger", so a search for a name might just get normal results. Fine by me, as long as they're right.

Its newer guide, Optimizing your website for generative AI features (opens in a new tab), adds a setting worth knowing about. A site "must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console" to be eligible. That control rolled out to every site on 31 August 2026, and Google's help page (opens in a new tab) says Include is the default. Worth a look anyway.

The same guide is clear about what does matter: first-hand, "non-commodity" content. Its example: "a first-hand review provides a unique perspective based on personal experience, whereas a summary of existing content simply restates information already available elsewhere."

So the recipe is boring: get indexed, then make it impossible to confuse you with anyone else.

What I found when I checked my own name

On 26 September I checked what crawlers actually got from my site, which was still running an older build. It wasn't great.

My case studies, service pages and some glossary terms weren't being prerendered. They got the plain app shell, and that shell had a hard-coded canonical tag pointing at my home page. So each of those pages was telling Google, "I'm really just the home page." My JavaScript then changed the canonical after loading, which is exactly what Google's JavaScript SEO basics (opens in a new tab) tells you not to do.

scroll or tap to zoom

The shell also carried Base44's fallback summary, built from the app's name and description. The name was "Aatman Jain Portfolio". The description was an AI-generated line:

"A refined, minimalist digital sanctuary serving as a singular anchor for personal identity and professional presence."

I still don't know what a digital sanctuary is. Neither does Google, probably.

The same day I went through my own profiles. That was worse. One put me in London (I'm in Belfast). One spelt my award "Best Built" (it's Best Build). One bio still said "I'm 14". And my GitHub profile didn't even have my name on it.

I've fixed most of those profiles since, and the rest are on my list. None of them is a big deal on its own. Together, they're four small reasons for a search engine to wonder whether all these accounts are the same person.

What I changed on the site

Stop telling Google the wrong canonical

The fix was deleting two lines from index.html: the static canonical and the static og:url. Google's page covers this case directly: "If you can't set the canonical URL in the HTML, then you can use JavaScript to set the canonical URL and leave it out of the original HTML." Now each page sets its own canonical in JavaScript, and unknown pages get none.

Replace the fallback text

On 27 September I changed the Base44 app's name and description through the Base44 API. The fallback summary now opens with "Aatman (AJ) Jain is a 15-year-old developer and Base44 Partner in Belfast, Northern Ireland." No sanctuary. Check yours: it comes from your app's name and description, and mine was written by AI, not me.

Describe myself once, in structured data

Every page carries the same Person markup in JSON-LD. You can see the important bits with plain curl, straight from the live site:

$ curl -s https://aatmanjain.com/ | grep -A7 '"@type": "Person"'"@type": "Person","@id": "https://aatmanjain.com/#person","name": "Aatman Jain","alternateName": [  "AJ",  "Aatman (AJ) Jain",  "AI with AJ"],$ curl -s https://aatmanjain.com/ | grep -o '"disambiguatingDescription": "[^"]*"'"disambiguatingDescription": "Developer and Base44 Partner based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who goes by AJ. Formerly known online as AI with AJ (aiwithaj.dev)."$ curl -s https://aatmanjain.com/ | grep -A7 '"sameAs"'"sameAs": [  "https://app.base44.com/@a-j",  "https://github.com/AatmanAJ",  "https://x.com/aiwithaj_",  "https://linkedin.com/in/aatmanjain",  "https://www.youtube.com/@AIWithAJ11",  "https://aiwithaj.substack.com/"]

alternateName ties my nicknames and old brand to one person. disambiguatingDescription separates me from anyone else with my name, and it has no age in it, so it never goes stale. sameAs lists my profiles, and mainEntityOfPage points at my about page, which carries ProfilePage markup.

Google doesn't need any of this for AI Overviews, and says so. I did it because it helps anything working out which Aatman Jain it's reading about. The one rule I take seriously: your structured data has to match the visible text on the page.

Answer the question in plain words

Structured data backs the text up. It doesn't replace it. The first paragraph on my home page answers "who is this?" before anything else, and the first question on my FAQ is literally "Who is Aatman (AJ) Jain?"

Answer the question someone typed, in the first place they'll look. That's all it is.

Make sure crawlers get real pages

Base44 serves crawlers a prerendered snapshot, but only for routes written out literally in your app. I explained that one in why Google sees an empty page on your Base44 app. New blog posts also get pinged to Bing through IndexNow on the day they go live. That covers Bing and a few other engines, not Google.

The agent files (llms.txt, agents.md and a JSON API) are for other tools. Google says Search doesn't use them.

Off the site: same name, same line, same link

That profile checklist has the exact wording to use everywhere:

Two rules from it I'd steal. Leave your age out of bios, because it goes out of date and you'll forget. And don't change your handles, because that breaks links all over the web.

The goal is every profile with the same name, the same line and a link back to aatmanjain.com. Boring. That's the point.

How I'll know if it's working

No guessing. These are the checks:

A knowledge panel would be nice. I can't ask for one. Google's help page says "Knowledge panels are automatically generated", and you can only claim one once it exists.

What I'm not doing

Google's guide lists things that don't help, and I'm happily skipping all of them:

• Chasing mentions. "Seeking inauthentic 'mentions' across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem."
• Chopping pages into bits for AI. "There's no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it."
• Paying for tools that promise the moon. "Be wary of third-party tools that promise ranking success or claim to use 'internal' Google metrics."
• Mass-producing a page for every way someone might type my name. Doing that to manipulate rankings or AI answers breaks Google's scaled content abuse policy.

Your checklist

1. Curl your pages as Googlebot and read the canonical, title and H1 you get back.
2. Remove any hard-coded canonical from the HTML shell if JavaScript sets it later.
3. Replace your Base44 app name and description with plain facts.
4. Add one Person (or Organization) node with sameAs, alternateName and a disambiguatingDescription.
5. Put a one-sentence answer to "who is X?" in the first paragraph of your home page.
6. Give every profile the same name, the same line and a link back.
7. Check the Search generative AI setting, then wait and measure.

When there's something real to report, good or bad, I'll share it here. Doing the same for your own name or your app? Email hello@aatmanjain.com and tell me what you've tried.

FAQ

Do I need special schema to appear in AI Overviews?

No. Google says there's no special schema.org structured data you need to add, and no AI text files or special markup either. A page just has to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet, and your site has to be included in the Search generative AI setting in Search Console.

Does llms.txt help you get cited in Google AI Overviews?

No. Google's guide to generative AI features says Google Search itself doesn't use AI text files or Markdown files. It's fine to keep llms.txt for other AI tools that do read it, but it won't change how Google cites you.

Can I request a Google knowledge panel for my name?

No. Google's help page says knowledge panels are automatically generated from sources across the web. If one appears for you, you can claim it and suggest changes, so the practical move is making your site and profiles agree on who you are.

How do I check if my site appears in AI Overviews?

Use the Generative AI performance report in Search Console, which shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode by page. If your site hasn't had enough of those impressions yet, the report may not appear at all, which is normal for a new site. You can also search your own name in a private window and ask AI Mode directly.