AI Overview Tracker: Is Google's AI Answer Citing Your Site?

Find out which of your keywords show a Google AI Overview, and whether your site is named in it. Paste this into your agent:

Set up https://monid.ai/SKILL.md, and then use Monid to check each keyword in this list on Google (US, English), tell me which ones show an AI Overview, list the sites each overview names as sources, and say whether my domain is one of them.

One prompt checks a whole keyword list. 1 min setup · 1-2 hrs saved.

You keep a list of keywords that matter to your business, and for many of them Google now puts an AI answer above the results and names the sites it used. What you want to know is simple: for my list, which keywords show it, and is my site one of the sources? This guide gets you that as a table in a few minutes, using a real sweep of six keywords we ran on 2026-10-23, then shows how to read it and what to do next. It runs through Monid, the OpenRouter for agent tools: one key, one balance, every tool priced per call.

What is an AI Overview tracker?

An AI Overview tracker checks a fixed list of keywords on a schedule and records, for each one, whether Google showed an AI Overview and which sites it named as sources. That is the whole job, and hosted products and home-made setups do the same thing at the core.

Three facts per keyword make a useful row:

• Shown or not. Did an AI Overview appear for this keyword today. The share of your list where it did is your trigger rate.
• Sources named. The sites the overview cites. If your domain is on that list, you are being used as a source. If not, the sites that are there are the competition for that answer.
• Where it sits. Whether the overview is above the regular results, which is where it usually appears.

It is not a rank tracker, which records where your page sits among the regular results. This records the answer above them. For the regular-results side, Rank Tracking API: The Hard Part Is Not the Fetch covers storing a position over time.

What is the easiest way to track AI Overviews for a list of keywords?

Monid. Install it once, add a key, and your agent runs one Google search per keyword and reads the AI Overview and its sources out of the result. There is no tracker subscription to set up and no dashboard to log in to; you get a table back in the chat.

• Pay per call. One Google results page, with the AI Overview parsed, is billed at $0.002 per call (Verified 2026-10-23 on the SEO tools page). Buy calls as you need them: no monthly plan and no minimum top-up. Discovery and inspection are free; only a run bills.
• One install, every tool. The same key and balance call this endpoint and everything else on Monid, so the keyword research and rank checks you may want next need no new account.
• Lives inside your agent. Install the CLI, add your key, run the prompt above, and the tools are there whenever your agent needs them. Your agent reads SKILL.md and learns the rest, so setup is about a minute.

Here is what comes back. We ran six keywords on 2026-10-23, five from different industries plus one local search, and had the agent keep one row per keyword:

Six calls cost $0.014 in total (Verified 2026-10-23): $0.002 each, except "what is an api" at $0.004 because its overview loaded after the page did.

How do you set up an AI Overview tracker in five minutes?

Get a key, tell your agent to learn Monid, then give it your keyword list and the prompt.

For agents

Grab an API key at app.monid.ai, then paste this to your agent and hand it the key:

set up https://monid.ai/SKILL.md

It learns the whole discover, inspect, run workflow itself. More in the agent quickstart.

For humans

npm install -g @monid-ai/cli
monid keys add -k <your-api-key> -l main

Then give it your keywords

Paste your list into the chat, with your domain, and use a prompt like this one:

Ask for the table as a CSV or a spreadsheet so you can keep one file per week. A week of checks is a column to add, not a new project.

How do you read the AI Overview table?

Read it row by row: shown or not, named or not, and who is named instead of you. Three things in our six rows are worth acting on.

Are the named sites just the top results?

No. In three of the five overviews, at least half the named sites were not among the first ten results for that keyword: for "linkedin email finder" all six were outside it, and for "email verification tool" five of six. For "crm for small business" every named site was a first-page result. The sites an overview names are not simply the top results, so a rank tracker alone does not show your competition for the answer.

Does video show up?

Yes, often. youtube.com was named in three of the five overviews that listed sources. If a keyword of yours names a video, a video is part of what answers it.

What does a keyword with no overview tell you?

That Google answered another way. The pizza search returned a local map pack and no AI Overview. Keep that row as "No": a list that records only the days an overview appeared cannot give you a trigger rate.

What should you do with each row?

1. Overview shown, your site not named. Open the pages it names. Look at what they have that yours does not: a comparison table, a plain definition, a price, a video. That page is your brief.
2. Overview shown, your site named. Note it, and check next week. The wording of an overview is generated, so a name can come and go.
3. No overview. Your regular ranking still decides this keyword. Keep it on the list; Google changes which queries get an overview.

How often should you check, and what does it cost?

Weekly is enough for most lists, and daily only for the few keywords that decide your pipeline. At $0.002 a check, plus $0.002 more when the overview loads late (Verified 2026-10-23), a sweep of 100 keywords costs $0.20 to $0.40, and four weekly sweeps cost $0.80 to $1.60. Budget for the upper figure.

Overviews are generated text, so two checks of the same keyword can word things differently and name different sites. Read the trend over several weeks, not one difference between two Mondays.

How do you build an AI Overview tracker into your own pipeline?

Call the search endpoint once per keyword, read the ai_overview item, and store one row per keyword per check. This section is for the person wiring it into a script or a report.

Run one keyword

monid inspect -p dataforseo -e /serp/google-organic

Inspecting is free. The schema is a POST body: keyword is required, location_code (2840 is the United States) and language_code set the market, depth sets how many results you collect (billed per page of 10), and load_async_ai_overview asks for overviews that Google renders after the page loads.

monid run -p dataforseo -e /serp/google-organic -w -i '{"keyword":"linkedin email finder","location_code":2840,"language_code":"en","depth":10,"load_async_ai_overview":true}'

The item_types list at the top of the response names every block on the page: ai_overview, organic, people_also_ask, related_searches. The overview is one item made of text elements, and each element carries its own references. A reference is a source:

{ "type": "ai_overview_reference",
  "source": "AIclicks",
  "domain": "aiclicks.io",
  "url": "https://aiclicks.io/trackers/ai-overviews-tracker",
  "title": "Track Your AI Overview Visibility | 3-day trial" }

Loop it over a file with one keyword per line:

mkdir -p out
while read -r q; do
  monid run -p dataforseo -e /serp/google-organic -w \
    -i "{\"keyword\":\"$q\",\"location_code\":2840,\"language_code\":\"en\",\"depth\":10,\"load_async_ai_overview\":true}" \
    > "out/$(echo "$q" | tr ' ' '-').json"
done < queries.txt

Keep depth at 10: every further page of 10 results bills again. Building this yourself against Google directly means proxies, location handling and a parser that survives markup changes; SERP API for AI Agents shows what a maintained results endpoint hands you instead.

One row per keyword

from datetime import datetime, timezone

def aio_row(query, task, my_domain):
    items = task["items"]
    organic = [i for i in items if i["type"] == "organic"]
    aio = next((i for i in items if i["type"] == "ai_overview"), None)
    cited = {}
    for el in (aio or {}).get("items") or []:
        for ref in el.get("references") or []:
            cited[ref["domain"].removeprefix("www.")] = ref["url"]
    org = [o["domain"].removeprefix("www.") for o in organic]
    return {
        "query": query,
        "checked_at": datetime.now(timezone.utc).isoformat(),
        "triggered": aio is not None,
        "aio_rank_absolute": aio["rank_absolute"] if aio else None,
        "cited": sorted(cited),
        "i_am_cited": my_domain in cited,
        "cited_not_organic": sorted(set(cited) - set(org)),
    }

Parse the -w output file with json.load and pass run["output"][0] as task.

What went wrong in our runs

• Sources live in the elements. On "ai overview tracker" the overview-level references was null while the three elements held seven domains. Build the cited set from the elements.
• The overview takes a numbered slot. On "email verification tool" it was rank_absolute 2 and the first regular result was 1; on "linkedin email finder" it was 1. Count regular results by their own rank_group and store the overview position separately.
• The add-on bills only sometimes. load_async_ai_overview adds $0.002 when the overview loads after the page; it did on "what is an api" and not on the others (Verified 2026-10-23).
• People Also Ask answers come back empty. The questions are there; the answer behind each had items null.
• A call can fail. One of our seven calls returned a provider 502 and billed $0.00. Retry it.
• Location is a whole country. location_code 2840 is the United States. For a local keyword, pass a city and keep it fixed for the series.

For the whole-page version of this record, AI Visibility Tracking: Store the Shape of Each Results Page keeps the full shape of each page.

Which endpoint should I use for which job?

The first row is the one this guide ran; Answer Engine Optimization: Find the Pages That Get You Named covers the ChatGPT side. The second tracks AI Mode answers beside the overview; both bill per call. The current figures are on monid.ai/tools.

When is another route a better fit?

You need a dashboard for people who will not touch a terminal. Hosted trackers give a client a login and a chart. This guide gives you a table from your own agent, which suits your own report and not a finished-looking screen.

You need clicks, not citations. Whether a keyword shows an overview says nothing about how many people clicked. Click data lives in your own analytics.

You track thousands of keywords daily. At $0.002 to $0.004 a check (Verified 2026-10-23), 5,000 keywords daily is $10 to $20 a day. Check the keywords that decide your pipeline daily and the rest weekly.

And the disclosure: we resell these endpoints. The most useful habit in this post works whoever you buy from: record a row for every keyword on every check, including the ones with no overview.

Conclusion

The quickest way to track which of your keywords show a Google AI Overview, and whether your site is named in it, is one search per keyword through Monid: $0.002 a call on the endpoint we ran (Verified 2026-10-23), one key for this and every other tool, about a minute to set up and ready inside your agent whenever you want a number. A sweep of 100 keywords is about $0.20, and up to $0.40 if every overview loads late.

Two habits matter more than the tool. Keep a row for every check, including keywords with no overview, so the trigger rate exists. And look at who is named, not only whether you are: in three of our five overviews, at least half the named sites were not on the first page of results.

How we estimated the time saved: checking a keyword by hand means searching it, opening the overview and copying the sources, about 1 to 2 minutes each. For 50 keywords that is 50 to 100 minutes, so 1 to 2 hours per sweep. The 1 minute is the install, key and first call once you already have a Monid key.

Free next step: pick one keyword you care about, run the prompt above on it, and read the row. Start at monid.ai.

FAQ

Published October 2026.