Search Console’s generative AI performance report shows how often your pages appear inside AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features, but only as impressions: no clicks, no queries and no position. Read it as a measure of how citable your content is, and pair it with the classic Performance report to see which pages earn both citations and visits.
Google introduced the report on 3 June 2026 on the Search Central blog, with separate views for Search and Discover. This guide covers what it measures, what it leaves out, and a simple framework for turning it into decisions.
What the report measures
| Included | Not included (yet) |
|---|---|
| Impressions in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features | Clicks and click-through rate |
| Pages that appeared | Queries that triggered the appearance |
| Countries and devices | Average position |
| Dates, from hourly to monthly | Data before 18 May 2026 |
According to NP Digital’s breakdown, data begins on 18 May 2026 with no backfill, and the first rollout went to a subset of UK sites before expanding. If you don’t see the report yet, your AI appearances are still counted inside the normal Performance report; they just aren’t separated.
Since 24 September 2026, the report also supports the new Web: multimodal search type, so you can separate AI appearances triggered by image searches such as Google Lens and Circle to Search. We cover that in a separate guide to Search Console’s multimodal reporting.
How to read AI impressions without click data
An AI impression means Google’s system chose your page as one of the sources behind a generated answer. It does not mean anyone visited. So treat the number as a citability signal, then cross-check each page against the clicks it earns in the classic Performance report. Every page falls into one of four groups:
| AI impressions | Organic clicks | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | High | Your strongest, non-commodity pages | Protect: refresh quarterly, link to them from new content |
| High | Low | Quoted, but the answer satisfies the reader | Add depth the summary can’t carry: tools, templates, data, next steps |
| Low | High | Ranking traffic that AI hasn’t absorbed yet | Restructure answer-first so it becomes citable before AI covers the query |
| Low | Low | Not ranking, not cited | Merge, improve or retire as part of your topical map work |
A 20-minute monthly routine
- Export the last 28 days of AI impressions by page.
- Export the same 28 days of clicks by page from the classic Performance report.
- Join the two in a sheet and sort each page into the four groups above.
- Note which topical map section each top page belongs to. Sections with many cited pages are where you have authority; sections with none are where to invest.
- Annotate the month with any Google updates. The September 2026 spam update and the new multimodal filter both landed on 24 September, so movement around then has more than one possible cause.
What makes a page more likely to earn AI impressions
Google AI Mode overwhelmingly cites pages that already rank: one 2026 benchmark found 93% of AI Mode citations came from Google’s organic top 10. In practice the pages that show up in this report share a few traits:
- They answer the question in the first two or three sentences of a section.
- They cover the sub-questions a prompt fans out into. See query fan-out explained.
- They belong to a site with complete coverage of the topic, not a one-off post. That is topical authority.
- They contain specific facts, numbers and named entities rather than general advice.
Should you use the AI opt-out toggle?
Alongside the report, Google added a setting that removes your content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features. NP Digital reports that Google confirmed opting out does not affect classic rankings. For most sites it is still the wrong move, because it gives up a growing visibility channel for nothing in return. We weigh the trade-off in detail in Should You Opt Out of AI Overviews?, publishing on this blog shortly.
For the wider picture of measuring visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude as well as Google, read the LLM visibility guide. If you are new to Search Console’s newer features, our deep dive on Search Console platform properties covers how social and video content is measured too.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Search Console AI report show clicks?
No. As of October 2026 it shows impressions only, by page, country, device and date. Clicks from AI features are still counted in the classic Performance report, mixed with regular web results.
Can I see which queries triggered an AI Overview for my site?
Not in the current report. It has no query dimension, so pair it with your own prompt testing and the classic Performance report.
When does the AI performance data start?
Data starts on 18 May 2026, with no historical backfill before that date.
Does opting out of AI features hurt my rankings?
Google has said the opt-out does not affect classic organic rankings. It only removes your content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features.