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How to read Search Console’s generative AI report

Search Console’s Generative AI performance report shows how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says it rolled out to all websites worldwide as of August 31, 2026. It counts impressions only, so it tells you whether Google’s AI features are showing your links, and on which pages, but not what the answer said or whether anyone clicked. Used weekly with the regular Performance report, it answers the question most owners actually have: are Google’s AI answers using my pages at all?

This report covers Google only. A Citebase Snapshot covers the answer text across four engines, which no Google report shows. The two fit together: the report says where your links appear, and the Snapshot shows what the answers say. The guide to what Google says about AI Overviews explains the include and exclude setting. This page is about reading the numbers.

Where to find it

Google’s help page for the report says you can open it from the Performance reports section of Search Console. If you have several properties, open the domain property, so all your subdomains and both http and https are counted together.

If the report is missing, Google gives two usual reasons. Your site has not had enough impressions in these features, or your site is excluded from Search generative AI features. Check Settings, then Search generative AI, before you assume the first.

What one impression means

The help page defines an impression as how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search. Three points follow from that wording:

  • It counts links, not mentions. If an AI Overview names your company in a sentence but links somewhere else, that is not an impression for you.
  • It covers two features today. The page lists AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says it expects to update the list. Discover has its own report. Search Labs experiments are not included.
  • It is not a click. The help page describes impressions and nothing else. For clicks, use the regular Performance report or your analytics.

The five ways to slice it

The help page lists these dimensions:

  • Pages. The final URL after redirects, assigned to the canonical URL. This is the most useful view for a small site.
  • Countries. Where the search came from.
  • Dates. By day, week, or month, in Pacific Time.
  • Devices. Desktop, tablet, or mobile.
  • Search type. “Web: text-based” is ordinary typed queries. “Web: multimodal” is searches that start from an image, such as Google Lens, Circle to Search, an uploaded image, or Chrome image search.

Multimodal matters more than it sounds if you sell physical products. Someone who points their camera at an item and asks a question is a buyer. If those impressions are zero and your product pages have no clear photos, that is a gap you can fix.

Three counting quirks

The help page explains these. Each one can make the numbers look wrong when they are not.

  1. Chart totals and table totals can differ. In the chart, impressions are counted per property, so two links to your site in one AI answer count once. In the table, rows by country, device, and date are counted per property, but rows by page are counted per page. Two of your pages in one answer give two page rows, and still one impression in the chart.
  2. The latest days are preliminary. They show as a dotted line and may change over the next few hours. Do not compare yesterday with last week.
  3. Exports turn blanks into zeros. Values shown as ~ or - in the report become zeros in the downloaded file. A zero in your spreadsheet may mean “not available”, not “none”.

The usual Performance report limits also apply, including a 1,000-row cap on tables.

A 15-minute weekly routine

  1. Record one number

    Set the date range to the last full week. Write down total impressions. Over a few months this line tells you whether Google’s AI features are using your site more or less.

  2. Look at the top ten pages

    Switch to Pages. Note which pages get shown. For most small sites it is not the homepage. It is a pricing page, a help article, a comparison, or a guide. Those pages are doing work for you in AI answers. Keep them accurate and current.

  3. Compare with the regular Performance report

    Open the standard Performance report for the same week and the same pages. Google’s AI features page says sites that appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted there too, under the Web search type. Look for pages with many AI impressions and few clicks. Read the AI answer for the queries those pages rank on. Is your page answering the question, or only being shown next to an answer that already did?

  4. Check the pages that should appear and do not

    Write down the three pages you most want buyers to see. If they are absent from the AI report, run them through URL Inspection. Each should be indexed, and should not carry nosnippet or a tight max-snippet. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear in these features.

  5. Note anything you changed

    Keep one line per week: “rewrote pricing page”, “added comparison page”. Without it you will not know what moved the number.

What the report cannot tell you

  • What the answer said. It does not show the AI text. An impression can sit next to an answer that describes you wrongly.
  • Which queries. The help page lists pages, countries, dates, devices, and search type. It does not list queries as a dimension for this report.
  • Other engines. Nothing here covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Copilot. Bing has its own report for Copilot. The Copilot and Bing guide covers it.
  • Mentions without a link. If an answer names you and links a review site, the impression belongs to the review site.

To see the text itself, ask the questions by hand. The manual check guide shows a fair way to do it.

Reading changes honestly

Google’s AI features change often. On October 15, 2026 Google said it was adding more inline links and showing them higher in AI responses. The October AI Mode guide covers that update. A design change like that can move your impressions without anything changing on your site. Before you credit or blame your own edits, check whether Google announced something that week. Google’s Search Central updates page lists documentation and ranking updates.

Also compare like with like. A week with a holiday in it is not the same as a normal week. Compare four-week blocks, or the same week a year later once you have the data.

If you excluded your site

Google’s help page for the Search generative AI control says that if you exclude your site, you will not receive traffic or impressions from these features. The report will be empty or missing. That is the expected result, not a bug. The same page says the control is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal for the rest of Search.

On a small site

On a small site the numbers are small too. A few things help when they are low:

  • Use monthly totals. A site with a few hundred AI impressions a month will see daily numbers jump around for no reason. A monthly view smooths that out.
  • Read the blanks as unknowns. Cells shown as ~ or - are not available, not zero. With small numbers you will see more of them.
  • Count pages, not impressions. For a small site, the number of different pages that appear in AI features at all is a better health check than the total. Going from two pages to six means Google’s AI features are finding more of your site useful.
  • Keep a list of the pages that appear. When one of them drops out, check what changed on it. A rewrite that removed the plain answer, a new redirect, or a template change that hid the main text are the usual causes.

If the report does not appear at all, that is also data. It means Google’s AI features are not yet showing your links often enough to report, or your site is excluded. Check the exclude setting first, then work on the pages buyers need.

Related guides: what Google says about AI Overviews, how to track AI search traffic in GA4, and Google’s October 2026 AI Mode link changes.

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