The best free AI Overviews tracker is already in your Google Search Console account: the generative AI performance report shows how often your pages were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date. What it can’t tell you is which query triggered the AI Overview, whether a competitor was cited instead, or where you sat among the sources, and that is the gap the paid trackers fill.
So the right setup depends on what you need to prove. Here is a pick for each situation, then the comparison and how to use each option.
Which tracker to use
- You run one small business site. Use the Search Console report plus a monthly manual check of 10 to 20 queries. Cost: $0.
- You want to know which keywords show an AI Overview at all. Seobility’s free Basic plan flags whether an AI Overview appears for the keywords it monitors (10 keywords on that plan).
- You report to clients or a boss on specific keywords. Use a rank tracker that records AI Overview citations per keyword: Semrush Position Tracking or SE Ranking.
- You care about your brand across thousands of queries you didn’t pick. Ahrefs Brand Radar, starting with its free one-off preview.
- You’re technical and want your own data. Pull the SERPs yourself from a SERP API and store the AI Overview sources. At DataForSEO’s live price that is $0.002 a search, plus $0.002 when you ask it to wait for the AI Overview to load.
The options compared
| Option | Cost | Which queries | Shows you’re cited | Shows competitors | History |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search Console generative AI report | Free | Not shown | Impressions per page | No | Yes |
| Manual spot checks | Free | You choose | Yes | Yes | Only if you log it |
| Seobility | Free plan; Premium from €59.90 a month | Your tracked keywords | Premium only | Premium only | Daily on Premium |
| Semrush Position Tracking | From $139 a month | Your tracked keywords | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SE Ranking | From $129 a month | Your tracked keywords | Yes | Yes | Yes, with cached SERPs |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Free preview; from $199 a month | Ahrefs’ own prompt index | Yes | Top cited domains free, comparisons paid | Monthly trend |
| SERP API you script | From $0.0006 a search | You choose | Yes | Yes | What you store |
Prices are the vendors’ monthly list prices, checked November 2026. Semrush and SE Ranking are cheaper billed yearly. Seobility shows its prices in euros.
Search Console: start here
Since August 31, 2026, Google has rolled the generative AI performance report out to all sites. It sits with the other Performance reports in Search Console and covers AI Overviews and AI Mode on Google Search. Discover has its own report.
What you get:
- Impressions only. Each impression is a time a link to your site was shown in a generative AI feature. There are no clicks in this report.
- Four tabs: pages, countries, dates and devices. A search type filter splits text searches from multimodal ones such as Google Lens and Circle to Search.
- No queries. You can see that a page was shown in AI answers, but not for which search.
If the report is missing for your property, Google says the site may not have had enough generative AI impressions yet. That is common for a new site, and it’s a result in itself.
Clicks do exist, in the normal Performance report. Google’s AI features guide says AI feature traffic is counted inside the Web search type, and its performance data notes say a click on an external link in an AI Overview counts as a click. They also say the whole AI Overview occupies a single position, and every link in it shares that position. So a page cited in an AI Overview at the top of the page can show an average position near 1 even if its blue link sits much lower.
That leaves one practical trick. In the Performance report, filter to a page that has generative AI impressions, open the Queries tab, and look for informational queries where impressions held steady or rose but clicks fell. Those are the queries to check by hand. It’s a lead, not proof.
Google Analytics won’t separate this traffic either. GA4’s default channel group puts visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode into Organic Search, while visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and similar tools go to a separate AI Assistant channel.
Manual checks: the free way to see competitors
A spreadsheet and 30 minutes a month answers the questions Search Console can’t, for the queries that matter most to you.
- Pick 10 to 20 queries your customers type, starting with the ones the Performance report trick above flagged.
- Search each one in a private window while signed out, so your history doesn’t shape the result. Use normal Google, not the Web filter, which strips AI Overviews out (our guide to search engines without AI explains that filter).
- Record five columns: date, query, AI Overview shown (yes or no), your URL cited (yes or no, and its place among the sources), and the other sites cited.
- Take a screenshot of each AI Overview.
- Repeat on the same day each month, and on mobile as well as desktop for your top five queries.
Step 3 is the one that pays off. The “other sites cited” column tells you who Google trusts for that answer, and opening those pages usually shows what yours is missing: a direct answer near the top, a number, a clearer heading. Our guide to optimizing content for AI search covers what to change.
Treat each row as a sample. AI Overviews change a lot between checks, which is why a single screenshot proves little and why the paid tools check daily.
Ahrefs also reports that content in an AI Overview persists for about 2.15 days on average. If that holds for your queries, a monthly manual check catches a moment, not a position. Count how often you’re cited across checks (“cited in 3 of 5 months”) rather than reporting a single yes or no.
The paid trackers
Semrush Position Tracking
Semrush treats the AI Overview as a SERP feature. Its help page on AI Overviews says that when your domain is cited, Position Tracking records it as a number 1 ranking, whatever your organic position. A SERP features toggle switches between that view and your traditional organic positions only, and a filter on the Overview tab lists the tracked keywords that triggered an AI Overview with your domain as a source.
Watch that toggle when you report. With it on, a keyword can jump from position 9 to position 1 because you were cited, which looks like a ranking win and isn’t one in the usual sense.
Semrush’s Organic Research tool also counts the keywords where a domain is cited in AI Overviews, which is a quick way to size up a competitor. Plans start at $139 a month for 500 tracked keywords, and there is a seven-day free trial.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking’s AI Overviews tracker shows whether an AI Overview appears, where your site ranks within it, which domains and URLs are used as sources, and day-by-day position changes for you and competitors. It also keeps cached copies of the results pages, which is useful when a client asks what the AI Overview actually said last Tuesday.
Pricing starts at $129 a month (Core, 2,000 tracked keywords) with a 14-day trial. The pricing page doesn’t list AI Overviews tracking in each plan, so confirm it’s included in the plan you pick during the trial.
Seobility
Seobility’s AI Overview tracker is included in all its plans. The free Basic plan only shows whether an AI Overview appears for your monitored keywords. Premium adds whether your site is included, at which position, the full answer and its sources, updated daily. Premium is €59.90 a month on its pricing page, with 300 tracked keywords.
Ahrefs Brand Radar
Ahrefs works the other way round. Instead of checking your keyword list, it runs a large index of keywords and longer prompts through Google and stores the AI Overviews. The free AI Overviews tracker searches that index for your brand with no sign-up, and returns a mention count, a monthly trend, and the top topics, cited domains and cited pages around your brand.
That suits a brand question (“how often does Google’s AI mention us at all?”) better than a keyword question. Competitor comparisons, custom prompts and daily tracking are in the paid Brand Radar, listed at $199 a month for selected platforms. Ahrefs notes that coverage is strongest in English and that its share of voice figures are modeled estimates, not measured reach.
Build your own with a SERP API
If you already script your reporting, this is the cheapest way to track a fixed list. DataForSEO’s Google Organic SERP API charges $0.002 per results page in live mode, or $0.0006 in its standard queue. Some AI Overviews load separately from the rest of the page, and without the load_async_ai_overview parameter set to true you only get the ones DataForSEO has cached. Its live advanced docs say the parameter costs an extra $0.002, refunded when no separately loaded AI Overview comes back.
At live prices, 100 keywords checked weekly is about 430 searches a month, or roughly $0.90 to $1.75. You do the storage and the charts yourself. Our guide to automating SEO reporting shows how to schedule a script and send the results to a sheet.
How to report it without overselling
Whichever tracker you use, keep AI Overview numbers on their own line in a monthly report and say what they measure. “Cited in the AI Overview for 6 of our 40 tracked keywords, up from 4” is honest. “Ranking number 1 for 6 keywords” isn’t, if the number came from Semrush’s toggle.
Pair it with the Search Console AI impressions trend for the same pages, and keep clicks in the Organic Search total where Google puts them. Our SEO reporting template shows where the AI section fits. For ChatGPT, Perplexity and other assistants, which none of these Google trackers cover, use the prompt log in how to check whether AI tools cite your site.
FAQ
Is there a free AI Overviews tracker?
Yes. Search Console’s generative AI performance report is free and shows AI Overview and AI Mode impressions for your pages. Seobility’s free plan flags which tracked keywords show an AI Overview, and Ahrefs has a free one-off brand check.
Can I see clicks from AI Overviews in Search Console?
Not on their own. Google counts clicks on AI Overview links in the normal Performance report under Web search, mixed with other clicks, and the generative AI report shows impressions only.
Why does my page show position 1 when it isn't the top result?
Google says an AI Overview occupies a single position and every link in it shares that position. If your page is cited in an AI Overview at the top of the results, Search Console can record it at or near position 1.
Which tracker earns its cost
For most single-location businesses, Search Console plus a monthly manual check is enough, and costs nothing but half an hour. Pay for Semrush, SE Ranking or Seobility Premium once you report on a fixed keyword list and need competitors and history. Use Ahrefs Brand Radar when the question is about your brand across queries you never picked, and a SERP API when you’d rather own the data than rent a dashboard.
