How to track Google AI Overviews for local queries

Checking AI Overviews for a local query by hand is close to useless. You see the overview Google builds for you, from where you're sitting, on that day. Your customer three suburbs away may get a different one, or none at all. Tracking local overviews properly means asking the same questions from the right places on a schedule, and keeping the sources Google cited each time.

Here's how we'd set that up.

First, find out which local prompts trigger an overview

Google's AI features documentation says AI Overviews only appear when its systems decide they add something beyond classic results, and that they "often don't trigger". So step one isn't measuring your share of overviews. It's finding out which of your local questions produce one at all.

Write 20 to 30 prompts that a customer in one of your markets would use. Mix three shapes: the category with the city ("emergency vet in [city]"), the category with "near me", and a longer question that implies a place without naming it ("which vet is open on Sunday mornings"). Run them for two weeks. Some will show an overview most days, some never will. Keep the first group as your core set and drop most of the second, since a prompt that never triggers an overview tells you nothing about overviews. If you want ideas for wording, how to write local prompts for AI visibility tracking goes through it.

Track AI Mode as a separate engine rather than lumping it in. Google says the two "may use different models and techniques, so the set of responses and links they show will vary." We looked at how their citations differ in Google AI Mode vs AI Overviews.

Pick the right location setting

There are three levels of location, and they suit different businesses.

Country level is enough when you sell nationally and only want to know whether overviews name you for category questions. It's also the cheapest way to run the trigger test above.

City level is the default for local work. Set the city on the monitor and keep the prompt text identical across cities, so the only thing that changes between rows is the place. A business with branches in six towns gets six monitors with the same prompts.

Coordinates are for when the city is too blunt. A branch in one district of a big city, a clinic competing with others two streets away, or a "near me" prompt where the honest answer depends on the block. Coordinate targeting asks the question as if from a specific point. Google's local ranking page for Maps lists distance from the searcher as one of three main factors for local results, alongside relevance and prominence. Google doesn't say whether AI Overviews weigh distance the same way, and that's the reason to test from the exact spot instead of assuming.

Read the citations behind each overview

The overview text tells you who was named. The cited links tell you why. For each local prompt, keep the list of supporting links and sort them into three piles: your own pages, pages you could get onto (directories, local news, "best of" roundups), and competitors' pages.

Expect some citations that don't seem to match the prompt. Google's documentation says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a "query fan-out" technique, running several related searches across subtopics before writing the answer. A page that doesn't rank for your exact question can still be cited because it ranked for one of those side searches.

If your location page never appears, check eligibility before rewriting anything. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to be a supporting link, with no extra technical requirements. The URL Inspection tool in Search Console answers that in a minute.

Line it up with Search Console

Google counts traffic from AI features inside the overall Web search type of the Search Console Performance report, according to the same documentation, which doesn't describe a separate AI Overviews report. So Search Console shows a location page's clicks and impressions, but it won't tell you on its own whether an overview cited that page. You need the citation data from your tracking next to the Search Console numbers, page by page.

A setup in Promptwatch

Promptwatch monitors Google AI Overviews and AI Mode through the real search interface, alongside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and others, and runs each monitor's prompts daily. For local overviews we'd configure it like this:

One monitor per location, with the city set and the same prompt panel in each. City and state tracking need Business ($579/mo) or any agency plan; Essential and Professional are country level only.
For branches where the neighbourhood matters, use local GEO/SEO coordinate targeting. It pins a monitor to exact coordinates with a radius from 20 m to 5 km, and Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and ChatGPT answer as if asked from that point. Other models fall back to the country, state and city, so set the city too. It's on Business, Agency Scale ($799/mo) and Enterprise, and not on Kick-off or Growth.
Use citation analytics for page- and domain-level citations, and add your location pages to Page Tracker so you can follow specific URLs (or a competitor's) over time.
Connect Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Search Insights, part of 360 Insights, overlays their traffic on AI crawls and citations per page. 360 Insights is on paid brand plans; agency plans don't include it.
If competitors might be paying for placement, Ads Radar captures sponsored ads inside AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT Search answers to your tracked prompts, with the advertiser, copy, landing page and triggering prompt. It's on Business and every agency plan.

Agency teams can run the city monitors on Kick-off ($199/mo) or Growth ($399/mo) but without Search Insights or coordinates, which means lining up Search Console numbers against the citation data yourself.

Other ways to track local overviews

Local Falcon runs AI scans on a geo-grid around a location, and its platform list includes Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. That gives you a map of where you're named, paid for in credits, one per grid point. BrightLocal Local AI Visibility anchors up to 20 prompts to each business location on AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT, with weekly, monthly or on-demand runs. AIrketing runs weekly with city and language set per prompt and shows the Google local pack next to the AI results.

All three handle the "am I named here" question. The setup above goes further: daily runs, coordinates for the neighbourhood cases, the citations per page, and Search Console data next to them. On a brand plan that's Business, and it's the plan we'd start a multi-location overview program on. Details are at promptwatch.com.