Google AI Overviews

What Google AI Overviews measures

Google AI Overviews is the AI answer Google shows above the normal search results. LumaRank treats it as one more engine alongside the assistants, so you can see whether Google's own answer mentions your brand and which pages it cites.

It is the engine closest to everyday search behaviour, so it usually matters more than its share of the dashboard suggests.

Why we search something different from your question

Your prompts are written the way people talk to an assistant: long, conversational, sometimes phrased as an instruction ("Compare X with Y and list the strengths of each"). Search engines are not asked that way. People type a few words into Google.

So for this engine we use the search term behind your question: the short query someone would actually type to ask the same thing. "Search term" is Google's own word for what a person typed, as opposed to a keyword, which is what you target.

You will see the search term under each prompt, and you can change it.

Where each search term comes from

• From keyword: it came from a keyword you already track, so it carries real search volume. This one is used by default whenever it exists.
• Derived: we built it from your question, because the question itself is not shaped like a search.
• Custom: you wrote it. We never overwrite a term you chose.
• Not applicable: we could not find a Google search that asks the same thing, so this engine skips it. Typing a brand name on its own is the clearest case: Google takes you to the site instead of answering. Asking a question about a brand is different, and we do search those. The prompt is still measured on every other engine, and you can set a search term yourself.

If you edit a prompt after choosing a term yourself, we keep your term and flag it for review rather than replacing it.

"Google showed no AI Overview" is not the same as "you were not mentioned"

Google only shows an AI Overview for some searches. When it does not show one, there is no answer to appear in, so that result is left out of your score entirely. It is not counted as a miss.

That is why you may see fewer results for this engine than for the others, and why leaving it out of the score is the honest thing to do: counting an answer that never existed as an absence would make your visibility look worse for a reason that has nothing to do with your brand.

Choosing a market

There is no location-free Google: the same search returns a different answer, or none at all, depending on where it happens. So this engine only runs once you pick the market to measure in, and you pick it per project.

A market has two parts, and the second one is optional:

1. The country. This is all most brands need, and it is the only required step.
2. A state or a city. Start typing after choosing the country to narrow it down. Worth doing if you sell locally: a shop in Cordoba and a shop in Buenos Aires are shown different results for the same search, so measuring the whole country would average away the difference that matters to you.

Accents are optional when you search: type "Cordoba" or "Córdoba" and you get the same list. Places that share a name are shown with what contains them, so you can tell a city apart from the province around it.

The language is set for you from the country, so picking Brazil searches in Portuguese rather than in the language of whoever set it up.

If you have not picked a market yet, Google AI Overviews simply does not run, and no result is reported for it. We would rather show nothing than quietly report results from a place that is not yours.

Turning it on

Two things have to be true before this engine runs, and it stays off until both are:

1. Pick a Google market. Company settings, or project settings for a single project. This is the step people miss, because nothing looks broken without it.
2. Leave the engine ticked in AI providers. It is on by default.

Once both are set, the next scan includes it. You do not need to run anything special.

Why it might not be running

If Google AI Overviews is greyed out or missing from your results, it is one of these, in this order:

• No Google market picked. The most common one. Nothing is wrong, we just do not know which country to search. Pick one in settings.
• Your plan does not include it. Google AI Overviews is available on paid plans. If you are on a free plan, picking a market will not turn it on.
• It was turned off for your company or project. Settings can only narrow the list, never widen it, so a provider switched off for the company stays off for every project under it. Check the company first.
• It is switched off for the whole workspace. Rare, and not something you can change from here. The provider shows as turned off for the deployment.

The setting itself always shows the reason next to the greyed-out option, even if you dismissed the reminder elsewhere.

Availability

Google AI Overviews is available on paid plans. See Choosing which AI providers to use for how the company, project and scan levels combine.