Google says there's no special process or extra markup required to appear in AI Overviews: it draws on the same indexed pages that already rank in ordinary search. Clear content, structured data, an accurate Google Business Profile, and outside mentions don't guarantee a mention, but they help Google understand and trust your site.
Where Do AI Overviews Pull Their Information From?
An AI Overview is the summary Google sometimes shows at the top of search results, generated by Google's AI instead of a plain list of links. It is drawn from pages already sitting in Google's regular search index, the same index that ordinary search results come from. There is no separate index or submission form just for AI Overviews. Google's own documentation on AI features states that no additional requirements or special markup are needed to appear in one: the same page that ranks well in ordinary Search is what AI Overviews draw from.
That means the groundwork is familiar: a page still has to be crawled, indexed, and judged relevant and trustworthy enough to earn a place in search results in the first place. If a page would struggle to rank in an ordinary search result, it's unlikely to show up in an AI Overview either.
This guide focuses on Google specifically. Divorce clients also ask questions in ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity, and those tools weigh signals differently. Our guide to GEO for law firms covers that broader picture.
Add Structured Data So Google Can Read Your Site Correctly
Structured data is a standardized way of labeling the parts of a web page so a computer program, not just a human reader, can tell what each piece of text means. Instead of a program guessing whether "123 Main Street" is an address or just a string of words, structured data tags it explicitly as an address.
For a law firm, the most relevant vocabulary comes from schema.org, a shared set of labels search engines agreed to support, which includes a type built for firms like yours, called LegalService. Adding this markup lets you label your firm's name, address, phone number, areas of practice, and attorneys in a format Google's systems can parse without ambiguity. Google maintains its own documentation describing the technical format structured data takes, including the LocalBusiness category that legal services markup builds on.
You don't need to write this code by hand. Most website platforms have plugins or developer tools that generate it for you. The point is to remove guesswork: a correctly marked-up page tells Google exactly what kind of business you are and what you do, rather than leaving it to infer that from prose. Structured data doesn't buy a mention on its own, but it removes a layer of ambiguity for Google's systems. For a deeper walkthrough, see our guide to schema markup for law firms.
Strengthen Your Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows your firm's name, address, phone number, hours, and reviews in Google Search and Maps. It's a separate system from your website. In our checks, an accurate, verified profile makes it easier for Google to match your firm to a specific location and confirm you're a real, operating business, rather than a guarantee of any particular placement.
Keep the basics consistent: the same firm name, address, and phone number on your Google Business Profile, your website, and every directory listing you control. Mismatched details, a different suite number on one site, an old phone number on another, make it harder for Google to confirm you're a real, single, verifiable business.
Choose practice area categories that match what you actually do. A firm that only handles divorce and family law should be categorized that way, not under a generic "lawyer" or "legal services" label that could describe almost anyone. Keep your hours current and respond to client reviews. An actively maintained profile reads as a real, operating office, not an abandoned listing.
Write Content That Directly Answers Divorce Clients' Questions
Write pages the way a client actually asks a question, then answer it in the first sentence or two. A heading like "How is property divided in a divorce?" followed immediately by a direct, plain-English answer is far easier for an AI system to lift and summarize than a heading like "Our Approach to Asset Division" followed by three paragraphs of firm history before the actual answer appears.
In our checks, an answer stated plainly near the top of a page is easier for an AI system to quote cleanly than an answer buried under a long lead-in. A page that states its answer early, in plain words, and only then adds detail and nuance, gives the system something it can lift without having to dig for it. Save the caveats and the "every case is different" disclaimer for after the direct answer, not before it.
Organize these questions the way a client would actually think about them: how divorce works in your state, how custody and support get decided, what happens to the house, what counts as grounds for divorce where you practice. Our guide to structuring an FAQ page for AI search covers this question-and-answer format in more depth.
Earn Mentions From Sites Google Already Trusts
Google doesn't take your word for the fact that you practice divorce law in a given city. It looks for confirmation elsewhere: mentions on legal directories, your state or local bar association's own materials, local press coverage, or other sites Google already treats as credible sources about lawyers.
These outside mentions work as a kind of independent check. A firm that only talks about itself, on its own website, is harder for Google to verify than a firm whose name, location, and practice area show up consistently across a few credible third-party sources. There's no fixed number of mentions that unlocks anything. The goal is consistency and credibility, not volume.
Should You Add an llms.txt File?
llms.txt is a proposed text file, placed at the root of a website, that lists the pages an AI system might want to read and gives a short plain-English summary of what the site covers. The idea, set out in a specification published for this purpose, is to give AI crawlers a simpler, curated map of a site instead of making them parse an entire page's HTML.
It's worth being honest about what llms.txt is not: it is not a confirmed input to Google's ranking or AI Overview systems. It's a proposal that some AI tools may choose to support, not a standard Google has adopted for Search. Adding one to your site costs little and can't hurt, but it isn't a substitute for structured data, a verified Google Business Profile, or content that actually answers client questions well. Treat it as a small, optional extra, not a priority.
What to Avoid While Chasing AI Overview Visibility
A few habits work against a firm trying to build credible visibility:
Keyword stuffing. Repeating "divorce lawyer [city]" unnaturally throughout a page reads as spam to both human visitors and to Google's systems, and it doesn't make a page a better answer to anything.
Fake or incentivized reviews. A Google Business Profile with reviews that don't reflect genuine client experience undermines the signal reviews are supposed to provide, and erodes trust with the clients you actually want to reach.
Overstating results. Describing outcomes, settlement amounts, or guarantees in marketing copy is a credibility problem with readers, and lawyer advertising rules vary by state. Check your own state bar's rules before publishing anything about results, guarantees, or comparisons, and don't rely on a marketing guide, including this one, to tell you what's allowed.
Check Whether Your Firm Already Appears in AI Overviews
Before making changes, find out where you stand. Search a handful of real client questions in Google (how to file for divorce in your state, how custody works in your county) and see whether an AI Overview appears, and whether your firm, or any local firm, is mentioned in it.
Checking manually only shows you Google's answer, though, and clients increasingly ask these same questions in ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity too. Kudu's free AI visibility check looks across those tools at once, so you can see what each one currently says about your firm before you decide what to change. If you check and don't see your firm anywhere, our guide on why a law firm might not appear in AI search results walks through the common causes to rule out first.