The percentage of sampled Google AI Overviews citing a specific website or page.
AI Overview citation rate describes how often a target website or page is cited within a sample of observed Google AI Overviews. Under this definition, the denominator is the number of eligible Overviews collected, not every search performed during the test.
That distinction matters when some tested searches do not display an Overview. Report Overview appearance separately from citation presence within the Overviews that appeared. A rate based on all tested searches can also be useful, but it answers a different question and must be labeled accordingly.
Count each observed Overview at most once for a response-level target citation rate, even if it links to multiple pages on the domain. Record query, date, location or other relevant test context and the actual source links. If no Overviews were observed, the conditional citation rate has no denominator and is undefined.
Takeaway: Read a citation percentage together with the number of searches tested and Overviews observed. Do not interpret a small conditional sample as general market coverage.
Example
A test runs 100 searches, observes 20 eligible Overviews and finds the target site cited in 5. Citation rate among observed Overviews is 25%; target citation across all tested searches is 5%. Both calculations are valid descriptions when their different denominators are explicit.
What to check
Keep AI Overviews separate from AI Mode or other AI products. Save the observed results and apply consistent domain matching. This sampled reporting convention does not imply that Google provides an official metric with the same name.
For more detail, see AI features and your website.