Checked 30 October 2026
Search Console’s generative AI performance report tells you how often links to your pages were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It doesn’t tell you how many people clicked them, or which searches triggered them. So it can answer “are we showing up in Google’s AI answers?” and it can’t answer “is AI search sending us traffic?”
That’s the question most people get asked. Here’s what the report covers, and how far you can get without the missing pieces.
What Google shipped, and when
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 3 June 2026 | Generative AI performance reports announced; first rolled out to a subset of sites, UK first | SER |
| 3 June 2026 | CMA imposes its publisher conduct requirement on Google, including tools to stop content being used in AI features | GOV.UK |
| 17 June 2026 | The Search generative AI control starts taking effect, UK sites first | SER |
| 31 August 2026 | Report and control rolled out to all sites worldwide | Google: report · Google: control |
There are two reports: one for Search (AI Overviews and AI Mode) and one for Discover’s generative AI features. Search Labs experiments aren’t included.
What the report shows
- Impressions only. Google defines them as how many times links to your site were shown in a generative AI feature on Search.
- Grouped by page, country, date and device, with a filter for text-based or multimodal searches.
- No report at all if your site hasn’t had enough generative AI impressions, or if you’ve excluded it with the control.
What it doesn’t show
| Question you’ll be asked | Can the AI report answer it? |
|---|---|
| How often do our pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode? | Yes, as impressions by page |
| Which searches trigger them? | No. No query data |
| How many clicks did we get from AI answers? | No. No click data |
| What position were we in the AI answer? | No |
| Is AI Mode or AI Overviews doing it? | No. They’re combined |
| What about the Gemini app? | Not covered |
| How does this compare with Bing’s AI? | Bing Webmaster Tools has its own AI Performance report (see below) |
Google told Search Engine Roundtable in June that more metrics would come over time. As of 30 October 2026, Google’s help page still lists impressions as the only metric.
The clicks are in your main report, mixed in
AI clicks aren’t missing from Search Console. They’re blended into the main Performance report. Google’s Performance report help says a click on an external link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode counts as a click, every link in an AI Overview shares one position, and a follow-up question in AI Mode counts as a new query. Its AI features guide says the traffic is included in overall Search traffic under the Web search type.
So the clicks exist in your data. You can’t separate them from blue-link clicks.
What you can still work out
Three things, all with limits:
- Which pages are AI-visible. Sort the AI report by impressions. These are the pages Google’s AI answers use as links. That’s useful for content decisions even without clicks.
- A rough comparison with clicks. Export AI impressions and main-report clicks for the same page and date range. If AI impressions rise on a page while its clicks don’t, that’s a signal worth noting. It isn’t a click-through rate: the two numbers count different things and the main report includes non-AI clicks.
- What happens if you opt out. The control excludes your links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features. Google says it isn’t a ranking signal for the rest of Search, doesn’t affect AI training (that’s Google-Extended), and generally takes a few days. A dated before-and-after on your own site is the only way to see what it costs you. I haven’t found one published with raw data.
Bing shows more
Bing Webmaster Tools launched an AI Performance report in public preview on 10 February 2026, covering Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and some partners. It reports citations, cited pages and a sample of the grounding queries that led to them. Bing’s announcement doesn’t mention clicks either. But it shows queries, which Google’s doesn’t.
How to report AI visibility to your boss this month
1. Impressions in Google AI features (GSC generative AI report), by page, monthly. Label it: "times our links were shown, not visits".
2. Citations in Bing AI (Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance), by page, monthly.
3. Referral sessions from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, claude.ai (analytics). Label it: "visits we can attribute; undercounts".
4. A fixed list of 10 customer questions run by hand on a stated date, recording named, linked or absent. Run each twice.
5. One line on what you can't measure: clicks from Google's AI features.Item 4 is the one you control. It’s slow and small, and it’s the only number on the list where you know exactly how it was collected. Run each question twice, date it, and label it with the five labels.
The bigger point
Google controls the only data that can say how much traffic its AI answers send. It reports impressions to site owners, clicks blended with everything else, and no queries. Third-party rank trackers have their own problem: Google is serving some of them fake results pages. And the commercial AI visibility trackers don’t publish how accurate they are.
So for now, measurement of Google’s AI answers is mostly Google’s own account of itself. Note the date on anything you report, because Google has said this report will change.
This is already on the scoreboard as P25, called on 17 October 2026: Search Console will report clicks, not only impressions, from Google’s generative AI features. It gets checked on 3 December 2027.
Limits
- This is a reading of Google’s and Microsoft’s documentation and of press coverage. I haven’t tested the report against server logs.
- Google’s help pages don’t show a last-updated date. The AI features guide was last updated 10 December 2025 and doesn’t yet mention the new control.
- Search Engine Roundtable is the source for the June rollout dates. Google’s own blog post on the launch didn’t open for me.
- Bing’s report is in public preview and may have changed since February.
Related: Google is lying to your rank tracker on purpose · Five labels every AI visibility number needs · The ultimate regex guide to steal · Does ChatGPT give the same answer twice?
Sources
Opened on 30 October 2026.
- Google Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report (Search)
- Google Search Console Help: Search generative AI control
- Google Search Console Help: Performance report (Search results)
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website
- GOV.UK: CMA secures fairer deal for publishers (3 June 2026)
- Search Engine Roundtable: AI performance report and blocking controls (3 June 2026)
- Search Engine Roundtable: Search generative AI control explained (25 June 2026)
- Bing Webmaster Blog: Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools (10 February 2026)