How do I track Google AI Overviews?

Daily SERP poll to detect when your tracked queries trigger an AIO block and whether your domain is cited inside it.

Intermediate Last updated 3 May 2026

Google AI Overviews (the AI-generated summary above the regular results) cite a small set of source URLs. Showing up there is high-leverage - it is often the only thing the user reads.

How we track it:

  1. Once a day, for every tracked prompt with a target_domain + verified site, we poll DataForSEO's SERP API with the include_ai_overviews flag.
  2. The response tells us whether an AIO block was rendered for that query, and which URLs it cited.
  3. We classify each cited URL via the same CitationExtractor used for the AI engines: owned (your domain) vs competitor.
  4. Per-poll row goes to ai_overviews; the admin observability page at /admin/aio shows polls + self-cited counts per site.

Cost control: ~0.0006 USD per query at standard DataForSEO pricing. Capped at engine.aio_daily_budget queries per cron run (default 40); skips re-polls within 20h of the last one for the same (site, query).

Turning it on:

  1. /admin/setup -> DataForSEO step -> paste login + password.
  2. Add the daily cron entry the wizard shows (30 6 * * * ... cron-aio.php ...).
  3. /admin/features -> flip feature.aio.enabled to ON.
  4. Wait until 06:30 UTC; first results show on /admin/aio + per-site detail.

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