On 3 June 2026 Google announced a separate performance report in Search Console for generative AI features, and on 31 August 2026 it reached every site worldwide. Until then, an appearance in AI Overviews or AI Mode was invisible in your own data: it was folded into the ordinary performance numbers with no way to separate it. Now it has its own view.
Where to find it
Open Search Console, pick your property and look in the Performance section for the generative AI view. There is one report for Search and one for Discover. The same impressions are still included in the overall performance report, so nothing was removed; a filter was added.
What the report shows
- Impressions: how often addresses from your site were shown inside AI Overviews, AI Mode or the AI features in Discover.
- Pages: which of your addresses appeared. This is the number to start with.
- Countries: where the people who saw you were.
- Devices: mobile or desktop, for Search only.
- Dates: hourly, daily, weekly and monthly views.
Google says more metrics will be added over time. What is missing today is clicks per AI feature and any indication of what was said about you. You see that a page was used, not how.
What it does not tell you
An impression in this report means one of your addresses was part of an AI answer. It does not mean your text was the answer, and it does not mean anyone clicked. Google's own figures, in the same announcement, are 2.5 billion monthly users of AI Overviews and over a billion of AI Mode, so the impressions can be large while clicks stay small. Judge the report by which pages appear, not by the size of the impression number.
The report also says nothing about ChatGPT, Perplexity or other assistants. It is Google's AI features only.
The new switch: opting out of AI answers
In the same update Google added a control in Search Console that lets a site owner decide whether the site may appear in, and help ground, generative AI answers. A site that opts out gets no traffic and no impressions from those features. Google states the switch is not used as a ranking signal outside the AI features.
For most businesses opting out is the wrong call: the AI answer is where a growing share of questions get answered, and being absent from it is not neutral. The realistic exception is a publisher whose income depends on the visit itself. If that is not you, leave the switch on and work on being the page that gets used.
Three things to do with the report
- List the pages that appear. Those are the pages the AI already trusts. Keep them accurate and current, because a stale price or an old opening hour in an AI answer costs you more than it does in an ordinary result.
- Compare with the pages that bring visitors. A page with many ordinary clicks and zero AI impressions usually answers too slowly: the useful sentence sits under three paragraphs of introduction. Move the direct answer to the top.
- Check whether prices and facts are text. A price that only exists in an image, or a service list in a PDF, is invisible to the AI. Put them in plain text on the page.