For two years the most important question in SEO could not be answered cleanly: how often does my website actually appear in Google's AI answers? Impressions from AI Overviews sat invisibly inside the normal performance report, mixed in with the classic blue links. Since 3 June 2026 there has been a report of its own — and since August 2026 practically every property owner can see it.
That is real progress, but it is not a cockpit. The report shows exactly one metric, and it leaves the most important questions open. So that you place it correctly, here is what is in it, how Google counts, which setting decides whether you see any data at all — and which measurement gap you have to close yourself.
1. What Google rolled out in June 2026
On 3 June 2026 Google announced two new reports on the Search Central blog: one for Search, bundling AI Overviews and AI Mode, and one for the AI features in Discover. Both sit under "Performance", right next to the familiar search performance report.
One point belongs at the very start, because it changes the reading of every curve: these impressions were already being counted. They sat in the "Web" search type of the overall report and still do. What is new is the separate view, not the data. Your totals do not rise — they finally become legible.
The rollout began with a subset of UK websites, reached the USA, India and Switzerland on 23 June, and was visible in almost all properties by August 2026. Officially Google still calls it a gradual test — in practice the report now turns up almost everywhere.
2. Five metrics you get — and six that are missing
Five dimensions are available: impressions, pages (the final URL after redirects, assigned to the canonical address), countries, devices (Search only, not Discover) and date, with hourly to monthly granularity.
The list of what is missing is longer and more revealing: no clicks and no CTR, no queries, no position, no separation between AI Overviews and AI Mode — both run together in a single curve — no API field and no BigQuery export, and no data from running Search Labs experiments. The only way out is the manual CSV export, and that ends at 1,000 rows.
3. How Google counts an AI impression
The counting rules are documented, rarely quoted — and they explain almost every discrepancy between Search Console and external visibility tools:
- An impression occurs when a link to your website is displayed. Links hidden behind an expandable element only count once users expand it.
- A brand mention without a link produces no impression. For the user the recommendation is there; for Search Console it does not exist.
- Aggregation happens at property level: two hits for your website in the same answer count as one impression.
- An AI Overview occupies one position; every link inside it inherits that position.
- In AI Mode every follow-up question counts as a new search with its own metrics.
- A click on an external link in an AI answer is counted — but lands in the classic performance report, never in the AI report.
- The freshest values are provisional, marked as a dotted line, and can change within hours.
Knowing these rules saves a lot of argument: a tool that counts brand mentions without links will inevitably report higher numbers than Search Console. Both can be right — they are measuring different things.
4. How to find the report — and what to do if it is missing
In Search Console: left-hand navigation, Performance, then the entry for the generative AI features. If the menu item is missing, append `/ai` to the URL of your performance report — the same trick works for the Discover report.
If you still see nothing, check three things in this order: is your property covered by the rollout? Does the selected period start before 18 May 2026? And is your website included at all in the setting for generative AI features? The third point is the one most often overlooked — more on it in a moment.
5. The setting that decides your visibility
Alongside the reports, Google introduced a setting called "Generative AI in Search". It sits in the Search Console settings and has two values: include or exclude, inherited from a parent property. The default is include.
Excluding prevents your content from being visible and linked in AI Overviews, AI Mode and the AI features in Discover. Google stresses that the setting is not a ranking or indexing signal for the rest of Search — your organic positions are untouched.
One detail got lost in the noise: Google's official guide to optimising for generative AI features states that a website must be included in order to appear in those features at all. That makes the setting no longer a convenience but a precondition — on a level with indexability and snippet permission.
6. Evaluating it in six steps
A report with a single metric is quickly evaluated — if you know what to look at. This routine has proven itself:
- Calculate the AI share. Impressions in the AI report divided by web impressions for the same period. That is your AI ratio — the one number worth tracking over time.
- Sort pages by AI impressions and cross them with your conversions. The pages that feed AI answers are rarely the ones that sell. That gap is your first project.
- Filter by country if you work internationally. The AI features have been live for different lengths of time; a market without history is not a market without potential.
- Export CSV weekly and file it. Without an API you are your own data archive. A year-on-year comparison is possible from May 2027 at the earliest.
- Check technical eligibility — indexing, snippet permission, the generative AI setting — before you blame the content.
- Measure in parallel what Google will never show: mentions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and the rest. More on that next.
7. What the report will never see
Search Console measures Google surfaces. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and the Gemini app never appear there — and that is exactly where a growing share of brand discovery happens. According to current analyses, the large majority of measurable referral traffic from standalone AI tools falls to ChatGPT; at the same time, AI usage inside Google via AI Overviews and AI Mode sends more traffic than all chatbots combined.
On top of that comes the attribution problem at the other end of the measurement: many visits from AI answers arrive without a referrer and land in GA4 as direct traffic. So you have a blind spot in impressions and one in traffic. How to separate AI traffic more cleanly in GA4 is covered in a separate article.
In practice that means three sources instead of one. Search Console for Google surfaces, Bing Webmaster Tools for Bing and Copilot, plus monitoring for the answer engines — whether a tool or a disciplined set of prompts you work through manually each month.
8. What Google itself says about AI optimisation
Alongside the reports Google published an official guide to optimising for generative AI features. It clears up several assumptions that are being sold at a high price:
- llms.txt is ignored by Google Search. The file does no harm, but it does not help there either. It may still make sense for other providers — for Google rankings it does not.
- Chopping content into tiny fragments is unnecessary. There is no ideal page length.
- There is no dedicated schema markup for AI features. Structured data remains useful for rich results but is not a precondition for AI answers.
- Rewriting texts specifically for models achieves nothing. The systems understand synonyms and related intents.
- Bought mentions scattered across the web are worth less than assumed: the spam systems apply to generative features too.
Technically Google describes two mechanisms: retrieval augmented generation — the answer is grounded in current pages retrieved through core ranking — and query fan-out, where one question is broken into several parallel searches. In plain terms both mean: whoever ranks well classically and is cleanly readable is also in the best starting position for AI answers. There is no second, secret channel.
9. Conclusion: a beginning, not a cockpit
The generative AI report is real progress — as long as you know what it is: a segmentation of impressions that were already being counted, exclusively on Google surfaces, without clicks, without queries, without an API, with a history starting 18 May 2026.
For mid-sized companies the consequence is organisational rather than technical. The question is no longer whether AI answers stand between you and your customers — it is whether, in a year's time, you can show how your visibility inside them developed. That history is not created retroactively. It begins on the day you file the first export.
Also worth reading: GA4: measuring AI traffic cleanly and Generative Engine Optimization: visible in AI answers.
10. FAQ: the key questions about the generative AI report
Where do I find the generative AI report in Search Console?
The report sits in Search Console under "Performance" as a separate entry next to classic search performance. If the menu item is missing, it can usually be opened directly by appending "/ai" to the URL of your performance report. If nothing appears even then, your property simply has not been reached by the gradual rollout yet, or there is no data in the period.
Does the report show clicks from AI Overviews?
No. The generative AI report delivers impressions only, broken down by page, country, device and date. Clicks, CTR, queries and positions are missing. A click on a link in an AI answer is counted, but appears only in the classic performance report. Google has announced further metrics without giving a date.
Do AI impressions increase my overall numbers?
No. Impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode were already included in the classic performance report. Only the separate view is new, not the volume of data. Adding the two reports together counts twice.
Can I exclude my website from the AI features?
Yes, through the "Generative AI in Search" setting in Search Console. Google states that this setting is not a ranking signal for classic search. Excluding, however, costs all visibility in AI answers and in our experience does not protect traffic — the answer is then simply produced without your brand.
