5-10 publications and creators are getting cited for your entire category in Google AI Overviews. Not 50. Not 200. Five to ten. The same names show up over and over across head terms, long tail queries, and comparison searches. If you’re not in their content, you’re not in the citations. Find them, pitch them, get covered. That’s the work.
Most brands try to do this with a backlink tool. Backlink tools tell you who linked to you. They don’t tell you who Google cites in AI summaries, and the overlap is smaller than you’d expect. The reliable method is a manual 30-query audit. It takes 90 minutes. It produces a ranked list of the publications and creators that actually matter for your category.
The 30-query setup
You need 30 queries that span the buyer journey for your category. Ten head-term queries (e.g., “best dog food for senior dogs”). Ten problem queries (e.g., “why is my senior dog losing weight”). Ten comparison queries (e.g., “blue buffalo vs. orijen senior”). Pick from real Google demand, pull from Search Console if you have brand traffic, or from a free tool like Keywords Everywhere if you don’t.
Don’t pick queries you already rank for. Pick the queries you want to be cited in. The audit is about discovering who currently owns the citation real estate, not about confirming your existing position.
Run each query in an incognito window from a US IP. Wait for the AI Overview to fully render. Note every cited source, domain, URL, anchor text, position in the citation list. Some queries will not trigger AI Overviews; skip those and add a replacement. Aim for 30 queries that all triggered Overviews.
The scoring and ranking
Build a simple spreadsheet. Columns: domain, query, position in citation list (1-7), query type (head/problem/comparison). After all 30 queries, pivot by domain. Count the citations per domain. Weight position 1 at 3 points, position 2 at 2 points, position 3+ at 1 point. Sum the weighted score per domain.
The top 5-10 domains by weighted score are your citation set. In 80% of categories we’ve audited, the top 3 domains account for 40-60% of all weighted citations. The long tail of one-off citations is mostly noise, sites Google cited once and may not cite again. Focus on the recurring citers.
Separate publications from creators. Publications are domains with editorial teams (NYT Wirecutter, The Spruce, Healthline, Outdoor Gear Lab). Creators are individual authors with personal brand sites or YouTube/Substack/podcasts. Both get cited in AI Overviews, but the pitch motion is different. Publications take pitches through editorial. Creators take pitches through DM, email, or affiliate programs.
The pitch list and the next 60 days
Take your top 5-10. Audit each one for: existing coverage of your brand (zero, mention, full review), existing coverage of your direct competitors, contact path (editorial submission, contributor form, PR contact, direct DM), and content gaps in their existing coverage of your category.
Pitch on the gap, not the brand. “You covered Brand A and Brand B in this category but didn’t include the under-$50 segment, we have data on that segment from 2,400 customers” is a pitch. “Please cover us” is not. The publications and creators that get cited in AI Overviews are the ones with original data, not the ones running press releases.
If you want help running this audit and building the pitch list, our team does it for 7-9 figure Amazon brands as a one-time engagement. For context on why AI Overview citations matter more than your Amazon listing for top-of-funnel discovery, read this. Get the audit on your calendar before Q3, citation share compounds, and the brands moving now will be ahead of the brands waiting for “AI search to mature.”