Can poor grammar stop your website appearing in AI Overviews?

Lia Bartley

Poor grammar and spelling have always weakened content, but now, they do far more than undermine professionalism.

They directly reduce your chances of appearing in AI Overviews across Google, Bing, ChatGPT and other answer engines, which is why many businesses now look at AI Overview SEO (search engine optimisation) as a core part of their content strategy.

These systems depend on clean, clearly structured language to interpret meaning. If your content is unclear, inconsistent or riddled with errors, you are simply less likely to be featured.

AI Overviews work by scanning a page, breaking the text into small, meaningful units, and selecting the clearest, most authoritative snippets. Strong grammar helps the system understand your intent. Weak grammar makes that process harder. It is the difference between becoming the answer and being ignored.

Search engines have always cared about clarity, but AI (artificial intelligence) makes this dependency sharper. Google’s AI systems favour content that communicates cleanly because it reduces the risk of misunderstandings in the summary.

Bing has already confirmed it uses grammar and spelling as signals of content quality. Errors muddy context, disrupt meaning and prevent AI from confidently extracting information. Even a small mistake can change the meaning of a sentence, which means AI may skip it entirely.

Poor grammar also damages user trust, which feeds back into visibility. If readers bounce quickly or fail to engage, algorithms read that behaviour as a sign the content is not helpful. To compete in AI-driven results, the writing must be concise, accurate and easy to interpret at a glance. Clear headings, sharp sentences and correct punctuation also allow the system to recognise what each section is about. This improves your chances of being selected for an Overview, especially when your content answers a question directly.

In short, clean grammar is no longer only about looking polished. It is one of the simplest levers you can control to improve how AI reads, ranks and repurposes your content.

If you want content that performs well for humans and AI alike, get in touch with Engage Web. Our expert editors can write and refine your website content so that it meets the quality signals modern search engines trust.

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Lia Bartley

Content Editor at Engage Web

With years of experience in the financial sector, Lia has swapped the world of mis-sold PPI in exchange for life as an eagle-eyed editor at Engage Web, ensuring our wonderful clients have equally wonderful content on their websites.