Some of the features described in this article might be available only for Tracked Campaigns. Learn more.
The Visibility trend explainer answers what moved your Visibility over this timeframe, and by how much. Open any Visibility trend and the sidebar breaks the number down into the things that caused it, then lists the keywords behind each one, ordered by how much they impact the overall trend.
The four views
Your site can show up in search in more than one way, and each way is measured on its own. You have a separate Visibility number, a separate trend and a separate breakdown for each of them:
Google organic. The standard results, where you hold a rank. More on how the number is built in the reliable Visibility metric.
SERP features. The other result types Google can return on the results page: Product Grid, Local pack, Questions, Images pack and the rest. SEOmonitor measures whether you are present in it. More in the SERP feature Visibility metric.
AI Overviews. The AI-generated answer Google returns on the results page. It is not returned on every keyword. Your brand can be named in the answer text, or your site cited as one of its sources. More in daily AI Overview insights.
AI Search. The answers generated by AI models. SEOmonitor tracks three, ChatGPT, Gemini (AI Mode) and Perplexity, each holding its own data. Again your brand can be named in the answer, or your site cited as a source. More in AI Search tracking.
In the explainer these are the tabs across the top, with the SERP features sitting under Google alongside the organic results. The rest of this article calls them views. Every view is broken down the same way, using whichever drivers apply to it.
How does this work?
The explainer works on two levels:
How much of the trend came from each type of change in that view.
Which keywords drove each of those changes, ordered by how much they affected the Visibility.
The rows sum exactly to the headline number. If your Visibility moved +0.8%, the rows underneath account for all 0.8 of it.
The kinds of change
Your Visibility can move for four different reasons. The explainer separates them, so you can see which one you are dealing with:
You moved. The result was there the whole time and your place in it changed. Depending on the view, that is your organic rank going up or down, your site being listed in or dropped from a SERP feature, or your brand being named or your site cited in an answer where it was not before.
The result changed. Google stopped returning the AI Overview or the SERP feature, or started returning it where it had not been. Or the answer still comes back but no longer names any brand. Your site did nothing, but there is now more or less opportunity to be present in.
Your tracking changed. You added keywords part-way through the period.
Search volume changed. Bigger keywords count for more. When a keyword's search volume grows, it carries more weight in your Visibility, and when it drops it carries less. Rank well on a keyword whose demand is growing and your Visibility rises. Rank low on a keyword whose demand is growing and your visibility can also drop. Neither needs a ranking to move.
The difference matters most when you are reporting. Say your AI Overview number went up. If it went up because you were named in more answers, that is your work. If it went up because Google returned fewer AI Overviews on keywords where you were never named anyway, nothing about your site changed, the baseline ("opportunity") shrank. On the chart the two look identical. In the explainer they sit in different rows.
Below you can find the types of changes applicable to each view:
View | You moved | The result changed | Your tracking (added keywords within the selected timeframe) | Search volume |
Google organic | Rank changes | Non-applicable. Blue links always exist | Keywords are back-mapped to the start of the analysed timeframe | Search Volume changes |
SERP feature | Brand in feature | Feature presence | Does not apply | Search Volume changes |
AI Overview | Your brand mentions / Your citations | AI Overview changes | Does not apply | Search Volume changes |
AI Search | Your brand mentions / Your citations | AI Search response changes | Does not apply | Search Volume changes |
The count and the percentage are different things. The count is how many keywords changed. The percentage is what those changes did to your Visibility, weighted by search volume. A handful of big keywords can outweigh a long list of small ones.
Google organic
Rank changes: keywords whose position in the organic results improved or dropped. A keyword added part-way through the timeframe is counted as if it had been ranking from the start date, so only its genuine movement shows here.
Search Volume changes: keywords whose search volume changed. Visibility is weighted by search volume, so a keyword's weight in the calculation moves with its volume, and your Visibility can move even when your rankings did not.
SERP features
Under the Google tab you can switch to any SERP feature present on your keywords: Product Grid, Local pack, Questions, Images pack and the rest. SERP feature Visibility is built on whether your site is listed in the feature rather than on a rank, so the drivers change accordingly.
Feature presence: keywords where Google started or stopped returning the feature. Your listing did not change, there was simply more or less of the feature to be listed in.
Brand in feature: keywords where the feature was returned the whole time and you were listed in it or dropped out of it. This is your performance.
Search Volume changes: keywords where only the search volume moved.
Full detail on how the metric itself is built is in the SERP feature Visibility metric article.
AI Overviews
The AI Overview breakdown can be read two ways:
% Mentioned: of all the search volume where an AI Overview names brands, how much of it is on keywords where one of the brands named is yours.
% Cited: of all the search volume where an AI Overview appears, how much of it is on keywords where your site is one of its sources.
Your performance
Your brand mentions changes (% Mentioned): keywords where an AI Overview was present throughout the whole period and your brand started or stopped being named in it.
Your citations changes (% Cited): keywords where an AI Overview was present throughout the whole period and your site started or stopped being cited as a source in it.
Google changed the AI Overviews, not your performance
AI Overview changes covers four things. Each one is split by what it meant for you, so you can see the good and the bad inside the same row:
AI Overview appeared. Google started showing an AIO on these keywords, which changes the baseline.
AI Overview disappeared. Google stopped showing an AIO. If you were in it you lose that, but nobody outranked you.
Responses stopped naming brands. The AI Overview still shows but has stopped naming any brand. If you were named you lose it, but no one outranked you.
Responses started naming brands. It has started naming brands. If you are one of them you gain a mention. If only competitors are named, your share falls without you doing anything as the basline changes.
Note: an AI Overview that names no brand at all does not count towards % Mentioned, which is why crossing into or out of that state is a change worth its own rows. Neither row appears on % Cited, because an answer that names no brands can still cite your site.
You changed what is tracked, not how you perform
Your tracking changes: keywords you added part-way through the period. . If the AI Overview names you on them, your number goes up. If it does not, they still count towards the total, so your number goes down. Either way it is your keyword list that changed, not your performance.
Search Volume changes: keywords where the only thing that changed is search volume. None of the changes above happened on them. Their volume moved, so their weight in the calculation moved your number.
More on how AI Overview data is collected and reported is in Daily AI Overview insights.
AI Search
Every tracked keyword gets an answer, so unlike an AI Overview there is nothing here that appears and disappears. What changes is what the answer says.
Your performance
Your brand mentions: keywords where your brand started or stopped being named in the AI Search response.
Your citations: keywords where your site started or stopped being cited as a source in the AI Search response.
The answers changed, not your performance
Responses stopped naming brands. The answer still comes back but has stopped naming any brand. If you were named you lose it. If you were not, your share goes up.
Responses started naming brands. It has started naming brands. If you are one of them you gain a mention. If only competitors are named, your share falls without you doing anything.
You changed what is tracked, not how you perform
Your tracking changes: keywords you added part-way through the period, and may move the numbers up or down depending on whether you are present in the response or not.
Search Volume changes: keywords where the only thing that changed is search volume.
All of this is for the model you have selected in the LLM switcher: ChatGPT, Gemini (AI Mode) or Perplexity. Switch model and the breakdown switches with it, so what moved your number on one model may not be what moved it on another.
Note: AI Search updates once per week, so comparisons run between crawl points rather than between calendar dates.
Performance-only Visibility trend
Your keyword list changes over time. You add keywords, you archive others. If the trend counted those as gains and losses, the number would tell you how much your list moved rather than how much you moved.
So when the Visibility trend is shown as a number rather than as a graph, for example "+34%", it is built to answer one thing: did your performance change. The explainer shows it as Your visibility change.
In Google organic, a keyword you added part-way through is counted from the start date at the rank it actually held. It does not arrive as Visibility appearing out of nowhere, and only its real movement counts. Every keyword you track is in the number, and none distort it.
On AI Overviews and AI Search there is no rank to carry back, so this is not possible. An added keyword counts from its first tracked day, and that moves your number either way: if the answers name you it goes up, if they do not it still counts towards the total so it goes down. Instead of burying that in your performance, the explainer puts it in its own row, Your tracking changes. Your performance rows on those two views cover only the keywords tracked for the whole period.
When you remove keywords from a group or archive them, the Visibility is recalculated as if they had never been tracked. Adding keywords to a group that are already tracked in the campaign works the same way. A keyword archived and then reactivated inside the timeframe is treated like any other addition: counted from the start date, with the data it stored.
We call this the performance-only Visibility trend. Each device gets its own breakdown.
What each change is measured against
Everything is compared against the start of the timeframe you picked. Look at 09 July to 08 August and a keyword is measured against where it stood on 09 July, not against the day its AI Overview first appeared or the day we first crawled it.
Use-case
Your Visibility drops and you need to know why. Without the explainer you would filter and sort keywords by search volume and rank change and hope the picture assembled itself, and even then it would not tell you whether the drop was yours or the result page's.
With the explainer, click the trend and the first thing you see is which of the four reasons is responsible. Open the row and you get the keywords behind it, biggest impact first. That is the root cause, not a list of clues.