Generative Snippet
Also called: ai snippet, ai-generated snippet, ai-generated search snippet
A generative snippet is a search result description that Google's AI writes from scratch instead of extracting verbatim text from your page or meta description. It summarizes the page to fit the query, and Google labels these AI-composed snippets with a Gemini icon.
How it differs from a featured snippet or AI Overview
A traditional snippet is extracted: Google lifts your meta description or an on-page passage word for word. A generative snippet is composed. The model reads the page and writes a fresh one or two sentence summary aimed at the exact query, then marks it with a Gemini icon. This is narrower than an AI Overview, which fuses several sources into one block at the top of the page. A generative snippet still sits under a single blue link and points at one URL.
Google has been publicly spotted testing these since October 2025 (observed by Brodie Clark, Paul Shapiro and others), in two forms: fully replacing your description, or condensing the existing snippet.
Your leverage is the same lever that governs normal previews. The nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet robots directives limit what Google can show, but there is a trade-off. Restricting preview text also pulls the page out of AI features, because eligibility requires that a page “be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet.” You cannot opt out of generative snippets while keeping a rich standard snippet, so the practical move is to shape the source text rather than block it.
How it affects your traffic
When Google rewrites your snippet, it controls the first impression of your page, and a generated summary can raise or flatten click-through depending on how well it frames your value. You lose the ability to hand-craft the description, so the win moves upstream: the page body has to state your answer clearly enough that the model summarizes it accurately instead of guessing. AI SEO work structures pages so the passage Google would summarize is the passage you want quoted, protecting CTR as more of the SERP shifts to AI-written text.
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