Google AI Overview Brand Monitor — Multi-Engine GEO / AEO Tracker (AI Overviews + AI Mode + Brave)

Is your brand visible in Google's AI answers? This Actor checks any list of keywords for Google AI Overviews — and optionally Google AI Mode, the conversational search tab — and tells you — per keyword and in an aggregate report — whether your brand gets cited, whether competitors get cited instead, and where the gaps and opportunities are. Built for SEO agencies, in-house SEO teams, and anyone doing Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).

Classic rank tracking is no longer enough: when Google shows an AI Overview, it absorbs most of the clicks. The new question every client asks is "does the AI mention us?" — this Actor answers it, at scale, on a schedule.

What it does

For every keyword you provide, the Actor:

1. Runs a real Google search (country + language of your choice, via residential proxies in that country).
2. Detects whether an AI Overview is shown.
3. Extracts the full AI Overview answer text (structured into paragraphs, headings, and list items).
4. Extracts every cited source — URL, domain, title, and citation position.
5. Extracts the top classic organic results so you can compare AI visibility vs. organic rankings.
6. Analyzes brand visibility: is your domain cited? Is your brand name mentioned in the answer text? Which competitors are cited, and where?
7. Optionally checks Google AI Mode too (includeAiMode): full conversational answer, comparison tables (parsed into structured data — brands usually appear right there), every cited source, and the same brand/competitor analysis. You see where AI Overviews and AI Mode disagree about your brand — they often do.
8. Builds an aggregate report: AI Overview coverage rate, brand citation rate, competitor share of voice, top-cited domains in your niche, gap keywords (competitor cited, you absent) and opportunity keywords (you rank top-10 organically but are invisible in the AI answer).

Why teams use it

• Agency reporting — add an "AI visibility" section to every monthly SEO report. Clients ask for this now.
• GEO/AEO strategy — find the exact keywords where competitors are cited and you are not, then fix the content gap.
• Content strategy — the top-cited-domains report shows which sites Google's AI trusts in your niche; study and out-do them.
• Monitoring — schedule daily/weekly runs and watch your AI citation rate move as you publish.
• Research — the full answer text + citations is a clean dataset for any AI-search analysis.

Input example

{
    "queries": ["best crm for small business", "hubspot alternatives", "email marketing software"],
    "brandDomains": ["hubspot.com"],
    "brandNames": ["HubSpot"],
    "competitorDomains": ["salesforce.com", "zoho.com", "pipedrive.com"],
    "competitorNames": ["Salesforce", "Zoho", "Pipedrive"],
    "countryCode": "us",
    "languageCode": "en"
}

Works for any country/language combination where Google shows AI Overviews (US, UK, most of Europe including Spanish/German/French/Italian/Portuguese queries, India, Japan, Brazil, and more).

Output example (per keyword)

{
    "kind": "query-result",
    "query": "hubspot alternatives",
    "countryCode": "us",
    "languageCode": "en",
    "aiOverviewPresent": true,
    "aiOverviewText": "Pipedrive: Best for sales teams seeking simplicity. Pricing starts at roughly $14–15 per user/month...",
    "textBlocks": [
        { "type": "list_item", "text": "Pipedrive: Best for sales teams seeking simplicity..." }
    ],
    "citations": [
        { "position": 1, "url": "https://www.zoho.com/crm/", "domain": "zoho.com", "title": "Zoho CRM" },
        { "position": 2, "url": "https://reevo.ai/...", "domain": "reevo.ai", "title": "reevo.ai" }
    ],
    "citationCount": 8,
    "organicResults": [
        { "position": 1, "url": "https://...", "domain": "...", "title": "..." }
    ],
    "brandAnalysis": {
        "brandCited": false,
        "brandMentionedInText": true,
        "brandTextMentions": ["HubSpot"],
        "competitorsCited": { "zoho.com": [1], "pipedrive.com": [5] },
        "brandOrganicRank": { "hubspot.com": 2 },
        "competitorOrganicRanks": { "zoho.com": 4 }
    }
}

Aggregate report (last dataset row + run OUTPUT)

{
    "kind": "summary",
    "totals": {
        "queriesAnalyzed": 50,
        "aiOverviewPresent": 38,
        "aiOverviewRate": 0.76,
        "brandCited": 11,
        "brandCitationRate": 0.289
    },
    "shareOfVoice": {
        "brand": { "domains": ["hubspot.com"], "citedOnQueries": 11 },
        "competitors": { "salesforce.com": 17, "zoho.com": 9 }
    },
    "topCitedDomains": [ { "domain": "zapier.com", "citations": 21 } ],
    "gapKeywords": [
        { "query": "hubspot alternatives", "competitorsCited": ["zoho.com"], "brandOrganicRank": { "hubspot.com": 2 } }
    ],
    "opportunityKeywords": [
        { "query": "crm with email automation", "brandOrganicRank": { "hubspot.com": 3 } }
    ]
}

gapKeywords = the keywords to attack first: a competitor is cited in the AI answer and you are not. opportunityKeywords = you already rank top-10 organically, but the AI ignores you — usually a content-format problem, and usually fixable.

Three AI surfaces, one report — and they disagree

Turn on includeAiMode and includeBrave and every keyword is checked on three AI answer surfaces: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode (the conversational tab), and Brave Search's "Answer with AI". Each row then carries a crossEngine block:

"crossEngine": {
    "enginesWithAnswer": ["aiOverview", "aiMode", "brave"],
    "enginesCitingBrand": ["aiOverview"],
    "brandCitedOnAllEngines": false,
    "citationOverlap": { "aiOverview_vs_aiMode": 0.16, "aiOverview_vs_brave": 0.05 }
}

Why it matters: in our own 25-keyword study, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode shared only ~16% of their cited sources (every comparable query was under 25% overlap). Being cited on one surface tells you almost nothing about the others. Each extra engine bills as one additional analyzed query — so a 3-engine check costs 3 units.

Change tracking (for scheduled monitoring)

Set trackChanges: true and each run is compared to the previous one (per trackingKey). You get a changes report row listing, per keyword: brand citations GAINED or LOST, AI Overviews appearing or disappearing, citation-set diffs, and new competitor citations. This is the "did our AI visibility move?" alert every scheduled run should carry — and it's free (no extra charge). Pipe brandCitationsLost to a Slack alert and you'll know the moment Google drops you from an answer.

Scheduling & integrations

• Schedule it — run daily/weekly from the Apify Console (Schedules → cron). Each run appends fresh rows, so you get a time series of your AI visibility.
• API — start runs and fetch results from any language (POST /v2/acts/.../runs); see the API tab.
• Google Sheets / Looker Studio — export the dataset as CSV/JSON or connect via the Apify Google Sheets integration for live dashboards.
• n8n / Make / Zapier — trigger runs and pipe gapKeywords into Slack alerts, client reports, or task managers.
• MCP / AI agents — this Actor works as an MCP tool: your Claude/agents can call it directly ("check if brand X is cited for these 20 keywords").

Pricing

Pay per keyword analyzed. Each analyzed keyword includes: AI Overview detection + full text + all citations + organic comparison + its slice of the aggregate report. With includeAiMode: true, the AI Mode analysis bills as one additional analyzed query per keyword. No subscription, no minimums — pay only for what you run.

FAQ

Is scraping Google search results legal? This Actor only collects publicly available search results — the same pages any user sees. It collects no personal data and accesses nothing behind a login. Publicly available SERP data collection is standard industry practice (rank trackers have done it for 20+ years).

Why do some keywords show no AI Overview? Google doesn't show AI Overviews for every query — coverage varies by topic, country, and language. That's data too: the report tells you what share of your keyword set triggers AI answers at all.

Does it work outside the US? Yes. Set countryCode/languageCode (e.g. de/de, es/es, gb/en). Requests are routed through residential proxies in the target country, so you see what a real local user sees.

How accurate are the citations? Citations are extracted directly from the AI Overview block, deduplicated, in on-page order. The Actor uses a two-tier fetch: a fast HTTP tier, plus a real-browser verification tier that expands "Show more" to reveal the full citation set whenever the fast tier can't already confirm your brand's citation status — so "brand not cited" verdicts are always browser-verified (no cheap false negatives).

How is this different from a plain "AI Overview scraper"? Plain scrapers give you raw overview text per query. This Actor is built for the actual workflow: brand + competitor analysis, share of voice, gap/opportunity keyword detection, and report-ready aggregates — the deliverable an SEO team needs, not just raw HTML soup.

Does it cover Google AI Mode? Yes — set includeAiMode: true. Each keyword then gets a second analysis of the AI Mode tab: answer text, structured comparison tables, all cited sources, brand/competitor visibility. An AI Mode check counts as one additional analyzed query in pricing. Multi-engine tracking (Perplexity, Bing Copilot) is next on the roadmap.

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Keywords: Google AI Overview scraper, AI Overview tracker, AI Overview API, brand monitoring AI search, GEO tool, generative engine optimization, AEO, answer engine optimization, AI SEO, LLM visibility, AI share of voice, track brand in Google AI, AI citation tracker, SGE tracker.