# Changelog of Google AI Overview Tracker — Citation Checker (`automationnation/aeo-auditor`) Actor

- **URL**: https://apify.com/automationnation/aeo-auditor/changelog.md
- **Full Actor documentation**: https://apify.com/automationnation/aeo-auditor.md

## Changelog

### 0.3 — 3 October 2026

- Client-ready HTML report per run (REPORT in the key-value store): AI Overview coverage, citation rate and position, gains and losses, keyword by keyword, and the domains cited instead.
- Alerts: a Slack or Discord message, or JSON to any webhook, when citations are gained or lost (or after every run).

### 0.2.2 — 3 October 2026

- Prepares the per-run fee announced for 17 November 2026: $2 per run, charged once when at least one keyword is checked, on top of the per-keyword price. Until then nothing changes.
- Runs keep enough of your maximum cost per run for the run fee, and stop with a clear message if the limit is below the minimum.

### 0.2 (2026-10-03)

- **Faster checks.** Most queries are now read over plain HTTP through Apify's Google SERP proxy, in seconds instead of half a minute. AI Overviews that Google loads late, and pages that can't be read, still go through a browser, so results match. The full "Show all" source list is still resolved to real URLs.
- New optional input **Fetch method** (`fetchMode`: auto, http or browser), and a new output field `fetchMethod`.

### 0.1.20 — October 2026

Pricing

- The Actor start fee was lowered from $2 per GB of memory to Apify's default $0.00005.
- From 17 October 2026 the price per keyword is $0.04 (Silver $0.036, Gold and above $0.032), to cover resolving every citation and residential proxies.

Accuracy

- **Citations work again.** Google now hides result and citation links behind redirects. Each citation is resolved to its real URL, so `citedUrls`, `citedDomains` and `targetDomainInAI` are filled correctly.
- The AI Overview is detected by its heading, not by the phrase "AI Overview" appearing anywhere on the page, which caused false positives. The Actor waits for the answer to finish streaming and expands "Show more" and "Show all" before reading the sources.
- Organic rank is read from each result's displayed address. New `organicTopDomains` field.
- Queries Google blocked are no longer silently dropped. They're listed in `AEO_SUMMARY.failedQueries` and never charged.

New

- `country` and `language` inputs (Google `gl`/`hl`).
- `brandNames` → `brandMentioned`/`brandsMentioned`, and `competitorDomains` → `competitorsCited`.
- **Change tracking:** `citationChange` (gained / lost / unchanged / new) plus previous result and date. The summary lists the queries you gained or lost.
- Fields: `targetCitationPosition`, `aiOverviewText`, `status`, `checkedAt`, `country`, `language`.
- Views: Citation audit, Competitors & brands, AI Overview answers.

Reliability

- Residential proxy in the search country, with an automatic switch to other countries if Google keeps blocking. Images, video, fonts and trackers are blocked (~18 MB → ~1–2 MB per query). Retries with backoff, session rotation, 2 queries in parallel, time budget.

All existing input and output fields work as before.