AI search and SEO in the UAE: AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT

Yes, a company website in the UAE can appear in AI answers on Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity, and nothing has to be bought or specially “registered” for that. The AI systems link to pages that are already easy to find, read and trust. In practice, that means solid SEO fundamentals, pages that answer real customer questions plainly, and making sure you are not blocking the crawlers these services use.

What AI Overviews and AI Mode are

AI Overviews is the AI-generated summary that sometimes appears above the usual results, with links to sites for further reading. According to Google Search Central, it appears only when Google’s systems judge it useful on top of the classic results. AI Mode is a separate tab in Google Search for longer questions, comparisons and follow-up questions. It also links to supporting websites.

Both may use “query fan-out”: several related searches run behind the scenes, so a page can be cited for a question it was never written for, as long as it answers part of it clearly.

Are they available in the UAE, and in which languages?

• AI Overviews. On 20 May 2025 Google announced AI Overviews in more than 200 countries and territories and more than 40 languages, “with support added for Arabic, Chinese, Malay, Urdu and more”. Gulf News confirmed the UAE launch that same week.
• AI Mode in English. Rolled out across the Middle East and North Africa in August 2025, reaching UAE users over a few days, as Gulf News reported.
• AI Mode in Arabic. On 8 October 2025 Google’s MENA blog announced AI Mode in 36 more languages, including Arabic, with a gradual rollout.
• AI Mode in Russian. In February 2026 Google expanded AI Mode to 53 more languages. Search Engine Roundtable, citing Google’s Nick Fox, lists Russian among the supported languages. We found no Google page confirming Russian for the UAE specifically, so check on your own device.

For a Dubai company this means each language version of your site needs to answer questions properly on its own.

What Google says about getting into AI answers

Google’s official page “AI features and your website” is direct: there are “no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary”. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet.

Google’s guide to generative AI features and a Search Central blog post from May 2025 recommend the same things as ordinary SEO:

• original content that adds something of your own rather than repeating what every other site says;
• a site Googlebot can crawl, pages returning a normal 200 status, and internal links;
• good page experience: works on phones, loads quickly, main content is easy to tell apart;
• important information in text, supported by good images and video;
• structured data that matches what is visible on the page;
• an up-to-date Google Business Profile and, for shops, Merchant Center.

Google warns that mass-producing near-identical pages for query variations can breach its scaled content abuse policy, and that no third-party tool has access to its ranking or AI systems. Be wary of guaranteed AI Overviews placement.

How to limit what Google’s AI shows

If some content should not be quoted, Google’s standard preview controls apply to AI features too. According to the robots meta tag documentation, nosnippet also prevents content being used as direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and max-snippet limits how much of it can be used. data-nosnippet excludes a specific block of text from snippets, and noindex removes the page from Search entirely. Blocking Google-Extended controls AI training and grounding in some of Google’s other systems, not Search.

In 2026 Google announced a Search Console setting that lets a site opt out of generative AI features in Search; it was tested in some countries first, so check whether your Search Console already shows it. Google’s announcement says it is not used as a ranking signal outside those features, but sites that opt out receive no traffic or impressions from them. For most businesses that want customers, keeping it on makes sense.

How ChatGPT and Perplexity find sources

OpenAI documents separate crawlers, each controlled independently in robots.txt:

• OAI-SearchBot is used for search, to show websites in ChatGPT search answers. Sites that block it will not appear in those answers, though they can still appear as plain navigational links.
• GPTBot collects content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models. Blocking it is the way to opt out of training, and it does not affect search.
• ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a user asks ChatGPT to open it. It does not crawl the web automatically.

So you can allow OAI-SearchBot and block GPTBot: visible in ChatGPT, not used for training. Changes take about a day to apply.

Perplexity works similarly. PerplexityBot finds and links websites in Perplexity results, follows robots.txt and, according to Perplexity, is not used to train AI models. Perplexity-User fetches pages when a user asks a question and generally ignores robots.txt, because a person requested the fetch.

Security plugins, firewalls and CDN “bot protection” often block these crawlers by default, so check those settings too, not just robots.txt.

What about llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposal made by Jeremy Howard in September 2024: a Markdown file at the site root with a short description of the site and links to its key pages, written for AI tools. It is not a Google standard. Google’s guide states that Google Search ignores such files, and that creating one “will neither harm nor help” your visibility in Google.

What makes a page worth citing

For a typical UAE service business, that means:

• A direct answer near the top. A page on office network installation prices in Dubai should say what the price depends on in the first paragraph.
• Concrete facts with sources. Licence types, regulatory requirements, timelines: link to the government or vendor page you took them from.
• Clear authorship and company details. Who wrote the page, what the company does, where the office is. An “About us” page with your licensed company name, address and phone helps people and search engines alike.
• Up-to-date content. Show the date of the last update and actually revise pages when prices, laws or products change.
• Organization structured data. Google’s documentation says it helps Google understand your company’s details and tell it apart from others. Add it to your home page or About page with your name, URL, logo, address, phone and links to official profiles (sameAs). Structured data is not required for AI features, but it should always match what is visible on the page.

How to measure results

Google Search Console. Impressions and clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the Performance report under the “Web” search type, together with regular results. According to Google’s help page, a click on an external link in an AI Overview or AI Mode counts as a click, and all links in one AI Overview share the same position. Since June 2026 Search Console also has a separate generative AI performance report, available to all sites since 31 August 2026. It shows impressions in AI features by page, country, device and date, but not clicks.

Analytics. In Google Analytics 4, look at referral traffic from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai. Links opened from ChatGPT usually arrive with utm_source=chatgpt.com in the address, so these visits are easy to filter. What matters more than visit numbers is what those people do: calls, forms, WhatsApp clicks.

What to check

1. Key pages are indexed: check with URL Inspection in Search Console.
2. robots.txt, firewall and CDN do not block Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot. Decide separately whether to block GPTBot.
3. No accidental noindex, nosnippet or very small max-snippet on pages you want cited.
4. The generative AI setting in Search Console is not switched off by mistake.
5. Each service page answers the main customer question in the first paragraph, in every language.
6. Facts, prices and legal requirements have a date and a source.
7. The About and Contacts pages give the company name, address, phone and the people behind it.
8. Organization structured data on the home page matches the visible details.
9. Google Business Profile is complete and current.
10. GA4 has a segment or report for referrals from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai, tied to conversions.

How we can help

We can review your site against this checklist and fix what blocks it from search and AI answers, as part of our SEO and search promotion work or as website development changes. We can also set up analytics so you can see which enquiries come from AI search. If you have questions, get in touch.

Sources: Google Search Central: AI features and your website
Google Search Central: Guide to optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search
Google Search Central Blog: Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google’s AI experiences on Search (May 2025)
Google Search Central: Robots meta tag specifications
Google Search Central: Organization structured data
Google Search Central Blog: Introducing Search generative AI performance reports in Search Console (June 2026)
Search Console Help: How are impressions, position and clicks counted?
Google: New opportunities, control and insights for website owners (June 2026)
Google: AI Overviews expansion, May 2025
Google MENA blog: AI Mode in Arabic (October 2025)
Gulf News: UAE users can now see AI Overviews at the top of Google Search results
Gulf News: Google’s AI Mode launched in UAE, MENA region
Search Engine Roundtable: Google AI Mode works in 53 new languages
OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers
llmstxt.org: The /llms.txt file