Tracking Brand Visibility in Google AI Overviews Without a Paid API

Google AI Overviews now answer many commercial questions before users click any website, prompting businesses to ask whether they appear in these answers. Most AI visibility trackers charge per prompt and location through paid APIs, which is costly for small businesses. The author proposes a manual method: choose 10 to 20 real buying questions, run them weekly while signed out, and record whether an overview appears, whether the business is cited or mentioned, and which competitors are cited. To reduce the tedium of spreadsheets, the author's firm built a free browser-based tracker that stores data locally and computes visibility and share-of-voice scores. The article notes that cited businesses tend to answer target questions early on their pages, keep contact and service details consistent across the web, and receive mentions from other sites.