• Search Console’s generative AI performance report shows how many times links to your site appeared in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, grouped by page, country, date and device. It reports impressions only, with no clicks, click-through rate or position.
  • Google introduced the report in June 2026 and says it reached all websites worldwide on 31 August 2026. Sites with too few AI impressions, or sites excluded from Google’s generative AI features, may see no report.
  • The new Search generative AI control can remove a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features. Most businesses should keep the default, because exclusion removes all traffic and impressions from those features while other sites keep appearing in the answers.

You opened Search Console to pull the monthly numbers and found a new entry among the Performance reports. It counts appearances in AI Overviews and AI Mode, which is exactly what your CEO has been asking about since AI answers started taking a share of organic clicks.

The report answers one question well and leaves several open. As of October 2026, Google’s help page describes it as available to all sites worldwide, with impressions as its only metric.

What does the Search Console generative AI report show?

The generative AI performance report counts impressions: how many times links to your site were shown to a user in AI Overviews or AI Mode on Google Search. You can group that count by page, country, date and device, and export the chart and the table.

Google announced the reports on its Search Central blog in June 2026, and on 31 August 2026 said it had “rolled out these insights to all websites worldwide”, as Search Engine Journal reported.

According to Google’s help page for the report, four tabs sit above the table: Pages, Countries, Dates and Devices. Pages groups data by the final URL a generative AI feature linked to, which is the page Google chose as a supporting link inside the answer. Preliminary recent data appears as a dotted line, so leave the last few days out of monthly reports. Generative AI features in Discover have a separate report.

What does the generative AI report leave out?

The report has no clicks, no click-through rate, no average position and no query data, and some sites will not see it at all. It tells you that your pages were shown; whether anyone clicked has to come from other data.

The missing clicks matter because a link beside an AI answer earns less than it used to. Ahrefs found that an AI Overview correlated with a 58% lower average click-through rate for top-ranking pages, comparing December 2025 with December 2023 across 300,000 keywords. Google’s page on AI features and your website says clicks from these features are included in the overall Performance report under the Web search type, blended with classic results.

If the report is missing, the help page gives three reasons: the rollout reaches properties over time, the site has too few impressions in generative AI features, or the site was excluded from them. For a small B2B site, low volume is the usual cause. A manual prompt test is then the faster way to check whether your site appears in AI Mode, as part of a wider approach to measuring zero-click content.

How do I read AI impressions by page and country?

Start with the Pages tab to see which URLs Google links inside AI answers, use Countries to see which markets those impressions come from, and compare both with the same period in the standard Performance report. The AI report alone has no clicks, so the comparison carries the insight.

This is our routine for the first session with a property. We are tracking content-managers.com this way and will add our own figures once we have a full quarter of data.

Step Where What to look for What it means
1. Confirm access Generative AI performance report, Performance section Data, or a “not seeing the report” message No report: low AI volume, rollout gap or exclusion
2. Check the control Settings, Search generative AI Which of the three options is selected The default includes the site
3. Read the trend Dates tab, longest range, by week Direction, ignoring the dotted tail A rising line means more answers draw on your pages
4. Find your AI pages Pages tab, sorted by impressions Top 20 URLs and their page type These pages already work as sources; update them first
5. Compare with web search Standard Performance report, same dates High AI impressions, low web clicks Google answers with the page and users may not click
6. Split by market Countries tab AI impressions versus your sales markets Visibility where you do not sell is noise
7. Save a baseline Export button Chart and table, dated Monthly comparisons need a fixed start

Step 5 does most of the work. A guide with strong AI impressions and falling clicks is being read inside the answer. A commercial page missing from the Pages tab means Google answers buying questions with someone else’s content. Our analysis of how AI Mode changed SEO traffic explains why this pattern appeared.

Should you use the Search Console AI opt-out control?

Most businesses should leave the Search generative AI control on its default, which includes the site, because exclusion removes every impression and click those features would send while other sites keep filling the answer. Exclusion suits a narrow group of publishers, and they should test it first.

Google’s help page for the Search generative AI control places it under Settings, Search generative AI, with three options: include the site (the default), exclude it, or inherit the setting from a parent property. It covers AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features. Google states the control is not a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search, and exclusion takes effect within one to two days.

Two lines on that page settle the decision for most companies. If you exclude your site, “you won’t receive any traffic or impressions from these features”, and content from other sites “may appear similar to yours”. The AI answer stays; only your link leaves it. The control also does not restrict AI training, which Google handles through the separate Google-Extended token.

Exclusion fits publishers whose revenue depends on pageviews and who have evidence that AI answers replace their visits. Because child properties can inherit or override the setting, such a publisher can exclude one section through its own URL-prefix property and compare traffic first. A B2B service company has the opposite incentive: being named in the answer is the goal.

How do I pair the AI report with GA4 referrals?

Use the Search Console report for visibility inside Google’s AI features and GA4 for sessions that arrive from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. One covers being shown, the other covers being visited.

Because Google counts AI feature clicks as Web search traffic, expect them in GA4 inside Google organic sessions without a separate label. Other assistants pass a referrer you can isolate: create a custom channel group, or an exploration filter, where the session source matches chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com or copilot.microsoft.com, and place it above the default referral channel.

Then keep one monthly view per page: AI impressions, web clicks, and AI assistant sessions and conversions from GA4. Pages with impressions and no visits need a clearer next step, such as a tool or a template the summary cannot give.

Frequently asked questions

Does Search Console show clicks from AI Mode?

No, the generative AI performance report shows impressions only. Google includes clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode in the standard Performance report under the Web search type, blended with regular results. Use the AI report to see which pages are shown and the standard report to see whether total clicks to those pages move.

Does opting out of AI Overviews hurt my regular Google rankings?

Google says it does not: the Search generative AI control is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search. The cost sits inside the AI features themselves. Your site receives no traffic or impressions from AI Overviews, AI Mode or Discover’s AI features, while other sites can still appear there.

Does the AI report show which queries triggered AI Overviews?

No, the help page lists four dimensions only: pages, countries, dates and devices. You see which URL Google linked and where the search came from, without the question itself. To learn which questions surface your pages, run a fixed set of buyer prompts in AI Mode each month and record the cited domains.

Does the Search generative AI control stop Google from training AI on my content?

No, it only controls whether your links and content appear in Search generative AI features. Google’s help page points to Google-Extended for training, and notes your content may still help Search as a whole, for example in understanding query language. Treat visibility and training as two decisions with two settings.

Where does the AI report fit in your measurement?

The generative AI report is the first number Google itself provides on AI visibility, and it works best next to web clicks, AI referrals and manual prompt tests. Read it monthly, keep the exported baseline, and judge each page by whether AI exposure turns into branded searches or leads. To see which of your pages are likely to be cited before the impressions arrive, run them through our Citation Probability Scorecard.

Sources

Add Content Managers as a preferred source on Google