Does Google AI Overview cite your page? Check 50 English keywords for $1.50, no API key

Disclosure: I built the Apify Actor in this post. Written with AI assistance.

When Google shows an AI Overview for a search, it lists the sources behind it. Is your site one of them, or is it a competitor, a Reddit thread or a review site? Checking by hand, keyword by keyword, is slow.

Google AI Overview Citation Checker on Apify does it for a whole keyword list. It reads the Google results page the way a visitor sees it, so you need no Google account, no API key and no browser of your own.

The check (5 minutes)

1. Open the Actor page. The form is prefilled with three everyday keywords and spotify.com.
2. Keywords to check: paste your searches exactly as a person would type them (up to 200 per run).
3. Your domain(s): bare hostnames like example.com. Subdomains of a domain you list count as yours.
4. Competitor domain(s): optional, but add a few. The Actor looks for them in the same overview.
5. Google country: us by default. AI Overviews differ by country, so set the market you sell in.
6. Tick Free sample run for your first look (first 3 keywords, no keyword fee), then untick it and run the full list.

Read the result in three piles

Every keyword comes back as one row, ready for a spreadsheet:

• aiOverviewShown: did Google show an AI Overview for this search?
• youCited and yourCitedUrls: is one of your domains a cited source, and which pages?
• yourBestPosition: where your best source sits in the overview's source list (1 is first).
• competitorsCited: each competitor found in the same overview, with its position and URL.
• allSourceDomains: every website the overview cites, in Google's order.

Sort the list into three piles: no overview (nothing to win on that keyword yet), overview without you (your priority: study allSourceDomains and the competitor pages cited), and overview with you (keep an eye on yourBestPosition).

What it costs

$0.03 per keyword checked. Fifty keywords = $1.50; the maximum of 200 is $6.00. You are charged only for keywords whose Google page was actually read; a keyword that fails (for example on a bot check) is marked FAILED and is free. Set a maximum charge on the run and it stops cleanly when the budget is used up. Typical speed is about 10 to 20 seconds per keyword, three at a time.

Good to know

• It reads English-language Google; the country setting changes the market, not the language.
• Google decides per query, per country and per moment whether to show an overview, and each keyword is one snapshot. Put the same list on an Apify schedule and compare the datasets to see the trend.
• "Position" means the order in the source list.

Want the same question for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini? That is what the AI Brand Monitor is for.

Check your keywords for Google AI Overview citations. You can try it in one minute with the prefilled input.