What this checks
Whether Google showed an AI Overview for the keyword, as a desktop search from the country you pick; the start of its text; and the pages it lists as sources. Add your domain and we tell you whether it’s one of them, and where it ranks in the organic results for the same search.
Reading the result
- Shown or not shown. Google decides per search, so “no AI Overview” is true for that search at that moment, not for the keyword for good.
- Cited or not cited. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet to be a supporting link, and that you don’t need special files or markup (AI features and your website). So being left out isn’t usually a matter of markup. Often another page simply answers the question more directly, though only Google knows why it picked what it did.
- Cited without ranking. The same page says AI Overviews may use query fan-out, issuing several related searches, which can surface a wider range of links than the classic results. That’s one reason a cited page can sit outside the top ten, and a page in the top three can be missing. See query fan-out.
It’s a snapshot
AI Overviews vary by person, time and place. Another searcher, or the same one tomorrow, can see a different overview with different sources, or none. Treat one check as a sample: look a few times across days, and don’t read one “not cited” as a verdict. Search Console won’t settle it either: Google counts traffic from AI features inside the Web search type of the Performance report.
What to do with it
If an overview shows and cites your competitors, open the cited pages and note what they state that yours doesn’t: a direct answer in the first lines, specifics, a clear definition. To check whether ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini name you, use the AI visibility checker; to see whether a page is easy for AI crawlers to fetch and read, use the GEO checker. Autopilot tracks AI visibility, AI Overviews included, over time.
Limits
This reads the AI Overview in standard Google results, as a desktop search from a country with no sign-in. It doesn’t cover AI Mode or other assistants. The preview is the first part of the overview’s text, and the sources are the list Google gives for it. To see the rest of the page it sits on, including the other SERP features such as People Also Ask, run the keyword through the SERP checker, which reads the same cached lookup.