Does your keyword trigger an AI Overview — and WHO does Google cite in it? Enter a keyword (and optionally your domain) to see the live AI Overview sources: the exact pages Google's AI quotes instead of the blue links.
We measured the tools in our own niche in August 2026. The rival with 4,516 monthly organic visits held one citation across seven AI engines. A competitor with 1,339 visits — roughly a third of the traffic — held 46, and was cited by all seven. If rankings predicted citation, that pair could not exist.
| Domain | Organic traffic | Engines citing | Citations | Google AI Mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| otterly.ai | 1 339 | 7 / 7 | 46 | 12 |
| peec.ai | 4 516 | 1 / 7 | 1 | 1 |
| ahrefs.com category yardstick | 4 016 261 | 7 / 7 | 15 846 | — |
| seomatrix.ai (us) | 0 | 0 / 7 | 0 | 0 |
Where these numbers come from, and their limits. They are Ahrefs' figures, not ours — a different methodology from the live check above, so do not merge the two into one metric. It is one snapshot, one geography, one young category of four domains: enough to disprove "traffic implies citation", not enough to be a law. And the last row is us: seo·matrix is cited by nobody, 0 of 7. We publish that because a tool that hides its own reading is not worth trusting with yours.
Google shows an AI Overview when a query looks informational and answerable — how-to, what-is, comparison, multi-step questions. It largely stays away from navigational and hard transactional queries, where a list of links serves better.
Which means the presence of an AI Overview is itself a signal: it tells you this keyword is being answered rather than merely listed, and that ranking first no longer guarantees the click.
The sources under an AI Overview are frequently not the top three organic results. Google lifts the passage that answers the question most directly, wherever it sits — which is why a page at position 8 can be cited while position 1 is skipped.
Citability is earned by structure more than by authority, and that is the practical opening: structure can be fixed this week, authority cannot. The table above is the same effect at category scale.
No — not the way a rank tracker means it. The cited sources are a short unordered set: your domain is in it or absent, and the order changes between runs of the same keyword. Tracking a "position" inside an AI Overview measures noise.
What is worth tracking is presence over time and share of citations against named rivals — the same two numbers the table reports. A tool that promises you rank 3 inside an AI answer is selling a number the surface does not produce.
AI Overviews are unstable by design. The same keyword can trigger one today and nothing tomorrow, and the cited set shifts between runs. One check is a sample, not a verdict — the finding lives in the sequence.
Re-run the same keywords on a fixed cadence, keep one row per run, and watch two transitions: cited to not-cited, and rival appearing where you were. Both are early signals that a page stopped being the clearest answer, and both are invisible in a single check.
It reports one query, in one country, at one moment, for Google's AI Overview only. It does not cover ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot or Grok — those are separate indexes with separate answers, and a domain cited by one is routinely absent from the others.
Nor does a citation promise a visit. Being named inside an answer often satisfies the question on the results page; the value is attribution and downstream recall, not a guaranteed click. Anyone selling AI citations as traffic is describing a different mechanism than the one that exists.
Enter the keyword above. The checker runs a clean, non-personalised search and reports whether an AI Overview appeared, plus the sources Google cited inside it.
Usually structure rather than authority: the answer is buried below setup, spread across paragraphs, or the heading does not match the question. Engines lift a passage that stands alone — give them one.
No, not in the sense a rank tracker means. The cited sources are a short unordered set, not a ranked list — a domain is either in it or absent, and the order shifts between runs of the same query. Measure presence and share of citations over time instead of a position number.
Not reliably. In our own category, measured in August 2026, the tool with 4,516 monthly organic visits held one citation across seven AI engines, while a rival with 1,339 visits held 46 across all seven. Search traffic and citation are different surfaces and need separate measurement.
For informational queries, yes — the answer is on the results page. That is why being cited inside it matters more than holding a position beneath it.
AI Overviews are unstable: the same keyword can trigger one today and not tomorrow, and the cited set changes between runs. A single check tells you today's state, so re-run on a fixed cadence and treat one result as a sample, not a verdict.
Want the same question across ChatGPT and Perplexity rather than Google? Use the GEO checker. To see whether AI crawlers can reach your pages at all, run the crawler-access check — a page they cannot fetch is never cited. Tracking positions instead of citations is the rank checker.
An AI Overview check tells you two things for a search query: whether Google shows its AI-generated Overview at the top of the results, and which URLs that answer pulls in — including whether your own domain is one of them. Because AI Overviews sit above the classic blue links and resolve many queries without a click, being one of the cited sources is often the difference between staying visible and disappearing beneath the fold.
No — Google shows AI Overviews for a subset of queries, mostly informational and how-to searches, and rarely for navigational or purely transactional ones. The check confirms whether your specific keyword produces one before looking at sources.
It means Google is answering that query using competitors' pages, not yours, so you get no visibility from that AI Overview even if you rank in the classic results below it. The listed source URLs show which pages you need to outmatch.
Publish clear, answer-first content that directly resolves the query in extractable passages, backs claims with specifics, and covers the topic at least as thoroughly as the currently cited sources. Study the pages Google already quotes and match their structure and depth.
Not always — AI Overviews can vary by location, personalization, and over time, and Google frequently reshuffles the cited sources. Treat any single check as a snapshot and re-run it periodically to track whether your citation status holds.
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