AI Overviews tracker: record when Google's AI answer names your business.

An AI Overviews tracker runs your buyers' searches on Google every day and records whether an AI Overview appeared, whether it named your business, and which pages it cited. Ours does this on paid plans, where Google AI Overviews is one of five tracked engines. Our free audit does not cover it: that one asks ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Why AI Overviews need their own tracking

This section is our own reasoning about the surface. Tracking a chat assistant and tracking an AI Overview look alike from far away, and they differ in ways that change what you record.

• It sits on a search results page. Nobody opens an app to get an AI Overview. They type a search into Google, and the summary appears above the regular results, or does not.
• It is not always there. A chat assistant answers every question it is asked. Google decides, search by search, whether to show an overview.
• The input is a search, not a conversation. There is no back-and-forth to track. We run the same buyer questions on Google that we ask the chat engines, so the engines can be compared question by question.
• It shares the page with your ranking. You can hold a top organic position on a search and be absent from the summary above it, or be cited in the summary from a page that ranks lower down.

It is also a different surface from Gemini. The Gemini app is a chat assistant that we track as its own engine. A business can be named in one and missing from the other, so the two records are kept apart. Google AI Mode is a third surface, and it is not one of the five engines we track.

The three states a tracker records

Because the overview comes and goes, every tracked search lands in one of three states on a given day.

Keeping these apart matters when you read a trend. If your count of mentions falls, the first thing to check is whether the overviews themselves stopped appearing on those searches. That is a change in Google, not in how Google treats you.

What we store for each search

• The overview's text, in full. Including overviews Google loads a moment after the rest of the page.
• Its references.Every page the overview cited, yours and everyone else's.
• Whether your business was named, and whether a cited page is on your domain.
• The other businesses named in the same overview.

The search is read from live Google results. For a business outside the United States, it is run from that business's country where the country is on our supported list, so a London shop is not measured against what a searcher in Ohio sees. The question list is written once and kept, so each day is compared with the day before on the same searches.

Which plan tracks AI Overviews

Free audit: no

The free audit runs on three fixed engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity. There is no option to add a fourth.

Solo ($149 a month): by pick

Solo tracks 3 engines chosen from 4: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews. The starting selection is ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, so to track AI Overviews you choose it in place of one of those. You pick when you set the business up and can change the selection later in settings, within the same 4. 100 questions are asked every day.

Solo Pro ($299 a month): in the default set

Solo Pro tracks 4 engines chosen from 5: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews. Google AI Overviews is in the starting selection beside the three chat engines, and stays unless you swap it for Claude. 200 questions are asked every day.

Agency (from $249 a month): always

Every client is tracked on all 5 engines, with nothing to pick: 25 questions a day per client on each engine.

The trial: yes, if you pick it

The trial lasts 7 days and asks for no card. It runs on the Solo plan, so the Solo rule applies: choose Google AI Overviews as one of your 3 engines when you set up. An agency trial, started from the agency signup, runs the Agency workspace for up to 3 clients with all 5 engines.

Full plan contents are on the pricing page.

What tracking AI Overviews cannot show

Again our own reasoning, and true of any tracker.

• Your traffic. A tracker reads the page Google returns. It does not know who clicked. Your Search Console and your own analytics hold that; the AI Overviews guide covers how that activity is reported.
• Every searcher's screen. Results differ by place and by person. A daily read from one country is a consistent benchmark, not a census.
• Searches that are not on your list. You are tracked on the questions in your list. If buyers phrase the search another way, that phrasing is not in the record until it is added.
• Why Google chose its sources. The references are visible. The selection logic is not, to us or to anyone outside Google.

How to read the record once you have one

Give it a week before drawing anything from it, then look in this order.

• How many of your searches show an overview at all. This sets the size of the surface for your business. The published figure above is an average across Google; your own list will have its own share.
• Which sites are cited again and again. If the same directory, review site, or publication keeps appearing in the references, that is where Google is reading about your category.
• The searches where you already rank and are not in the overview. The tracker does not record your organic position, so check that part yourself. In our view these are the first to work on, because Google already ranks the page.
• The same question on the chat engines. A business missing everywhere has a different problem from one missing only on Google.

What to change once you know is a separate subject, covered in the guide to Google AI Overviews optimization.