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AI in Google Search Console: What the Generative AI Report Shows

AI in Google Search Console arrived as the Generative AI performance report, which shows how many times links to your website appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It reports impressions only — no clicks, no click-through rate, no average position and no query data. AI Overviews and AI Mode are combined into a single figure that cannot be separated.

AI in Google Search Console: quick summary

  • What it is: a Generative AI performance report inside Google Search Console, announced by Google on 3 June 2026.
  • What it gives you: impressions for AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, date and device.
  • What it does not give you: clicks, click-through rate, position, or the queries people searched.
  • Who it affects: any site owner with a verified Search Console property — though Google’s documentation still describes the rollout as reaching “a subset of website owners”.
  • What to do: export the pages list and treat it as evidence of which pages Google’s AI already trusts.

What is the AI in Google Search Console report?

It is a report inside Google Search Console that counts how often your site’s links were shown inside Google’s generative AI features. Google announced it on the Search Central Blog on 3 June 2026, introducing what it called new Search Generative AI performance reports with dedicated reports for Search and Discover.

It is worth being precise about the name. The feature is widely being shared as “AI Visibility in Search Console”. That is not what Google calls it. Google’s own documentation calls it the Generative AI performance report, and the distinction matters because the report measures far less than the phrase “AI visibility” implies.

What data does the Generative AI report actually show?

Impressions, and nothing else. Google’s documentation defines the metric plainly: impressions are how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search.

You can break those impressions down by four dimensions:

  • Pages
  • Countries
  • Dates (by day, week or month)
  • Devices (desktop, tablet, mobile)

There is no query dimension. You cannot see what someone asked in order for your page to be surfaced. There are no clicks and no click-through rate, so you cannot calculate what that visibility is worth. And there is no average position, so you cannot tell whether you were the first link cited or the fifth.

Can you separate AI Overviews from AI Mode?

No. Google’s documentation states that the report includes impressions for both AI Overviews and AI Mode, and it presents them as one combined number. There is no feature-level filter.

That limitation matters more than it first appears. AI Overviews sit above traditional search results and are seen by a very large audience. AI Mode is a conversational surface used by a much smaller one, and the intent behind it is usually different. Merging the two into a single impressions count means a rise in the number tells you almost nothing about which behaviour changed.

Has AI in Google Search Console rolled out to everyone?

Google has not said so. As of 12 August 2026, Google’s live help documentation still describes the rollout as reaching “a subset of website owners”, with the stated reason being thorough testing before rolling it further.

The SEO press has reported it appearing across all properties. Search Engine Roundtable published on 11 August 2026 that the report seemed to be fully live, while noting in the same piece that Google had not announced a full rollout. That is an observation, not a confirmation, and it is worth keeping the two apart.

The practical takeaway: if you cannot see the report in your property, you have not misconfigured anything.

Where do you find the AI report in Google Search Console?

Open Search Console, then go to Performance → Generative AI. It sits alongside Search results and Discover rather than inside them.

There is also a related control at Settings → AI controls → Search generative AI, which lets a site owner opt out of appearing in generative AI features. Opting out means you no longer receive this data.

Does the report show traffic you were not seeing before?

No. This is the most common misreading of the release, and it is worth correcting.

Google’s documentation confirms the Generative AI performance report draws its data from the Web search type already present in your Performance report. Google has separately documented that AI features are included in overall search traffic in Search Console and reported within the Web search type.

In other words, this data was already counted in your totals. The report is a filtered view of numbers you already had, not a new source of traffic. Adding it to your Web totals would double count.

What should you do with the AI data in Google Search Console?

One thing, and it is genuinely useful: export the pages list.

Those pages are the ones Google’s AI systems already consider credible enough to surface. That is a signal you could not get last month, and it turns an abstract question — what does AI reward on my site? — into a list you can study.

Work through them and look for what they share:

  • Structure — do they answer a specific question early, in a passage that can stand alone?
  • Specificity — do they contain dates, figures, exact steps or named sources that a model can quote?
  • Attribution — do they cite primary sources rather than asserting claims?
  • Freshness — are they maintained, or is the surfaced set weighted toward recently updated pages?
  • Format — are they guides, comparisons, definitions or troubleshooting pages?

Then apply what you find to the pages that are not showing up. That is a content brief grounded in your own data rather than in general advice about AI search.

What you should not do is treat the impressions number as a performance metric. Without clicks, you cannot tell whether AI visibility is sending you anything. Reporting it to a client as though it were traffic would be misleading.

Is the AI in Google Search Console data available in the API?

Not currently. The Search Console API’s searchAnalytics.query method documents the search types discover, googleNews, news, image, video and web. There is no generative AI type and no documented search appearance value for it.

Google’s help documentation offers a manual export button for the chart and table data instead. If a tool is selling you automated “AI visibility tracking” built on this report, it is worth asking exactly where the data is coming from.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Generative AI performance report the same as “AI visibility”?

No. “AI visibility” is a marketing phrase, not a Google product name. The report Google shipped measures one thing — impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode — and does not measure whether that visibility produced any visits.

Why can’t I see the AI report in my Google Search Console?

Google’s documentation still describes the report as rolling out to a subset of website owners. A property also needs enough impressions for the report to appear, and opting out via the Search generative AI control removes the data entirely.

Do AI Overviews impressions count differently to normal search impressions?

Yes. Google’s Performance report documentation states that for an AI Overview impression, the link must be scrolled or expanded into view. Google also documents that an AI Overview occupies a single position in search results, so every link within it shares that position.

Should I add Generative AI impressions to my total search impressions?

No — that would double count. The data is drawn from the Web search type that is already in your Performance report totals.

Will Google add clicks and query data later?

Google has indicated that more metrics will be introduced over time, but has not committed to which metrics or to a timeline. Plan around what the report contains today, not around what it might contain.

Where this fits in a wider search strategy

Being cited by an AI assistant is only worth something if what the customer finds next holds up — an accurate business profile, real reviews, and a page that answers the question they arrived with. Impressions in an AI feature are the top of that chain, not the whole of it.

If you want to understand how AI systems currently describe your business, our AI Visibility Check looks at what assistants actually say about you and where the underlying data is wrong. For the organic foundations underneath it, see our SEO services on the Gold Coast, and if paid search is part of the mix, our Google Ads specialists work alongside the same strategy. You can see the full picture of how we work on the DMKT Performance home page.

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Need someone to read your Generative AI report with you?

We pull the report across client accounts, work out which pages Google’s AI already trusts, and turn that into a content plan for the pages it doesn’t. No jargon, no vanity metrics, and we will tell you plainly when a number does not mean what it appears to mean.

Get in touch and we’ll take a look at your Search Console.

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