Google finally shipped it. Search Console now has dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports covering both Search and Discover, which means for the first time you can see whether your pages are appearing inside AI Overviews and AI Mode rather than guessing. Google announced the reports in June 2026 and access expanded through July.
Before you get too excited, here’s the honest limitation: the report shows impressions, pages, countries, and devices. It does not show clicks, click-through rate, or the queries that triggered the appearance. So it answers “am I in there at all,” not “what is it earning me.” That’s still a real upgrade from total darkness, but it’s a narrower tool than the headlines suggest.
Here’s where to find it, how to read it without over-reading it, and what to do with what you learn.
What the Report Actually Shows You
Open Search Console and look in the Performance section for the generative AI reports. You’ll find separate views for Search and for Discover.
What’s in there:
- Impressions - how often your pages appeared within a generative AI feature
- Pages - which of your URLs are being surfaced
- Countries - where those appearances happened
- Devices - mobile, desktop, tablet split
What’s not in there, at least for now:
- Clicks and CTR - so you can’t calculate what an AI appearance is worth
- Queries - so you can’t see what someone asked to trigger it
- A breakdown by feature - AI Overviews and AI Mode aren’t separated out
That last omission matters more than people realise. AI Overviews and AI Mode are different surfaces with different behaviours, and lumping them together means a rise in your number could be either one. Treat the metric as a single blended signal until Google splits it.
How to Read It Without Fooling Yourself
The gap between impressions and outcomes is where most misreadings happen. Three rules keep you honest.
Impressions are not visits. An impression means your page was used or shown within an AI feature. The searcher may have read the answer, seen your name, and never clicked. That’s not a failure - being named inside the answer has real brand value - but it is not traffic, and you should never present it to yourself or a client as if it were.
Don’t compare it to your regular Performance report. The two reports count different things on different surfaces. Stacking a generative AI impression number beside your classic organic impressions and calling the difference “AI cannibalisation” produces a number that means nothing. Track each on its own trend line.
Watch the trend, not the absolute number. With no clicks and no queries, the useful signal is direction over time. Is your presence in AI features growing month over month? Which pages are climbing? Which have gone quiet? Those questions the report can answer well.
The most valuable view is the Pages breakdown. It tells you which of your content AI systems find quotable. Nearly always, the pattern is instructive: pages that answer a specific question directly, with clean structure and a real answer up front, dominate the list. Pages that meander, bury the answer, or exist to funnel people somewhere barely register. That is a content brief handed to you for free.
The Blocking Toggle Sitting Next to It
Alongside the reports, Google added a control that lets site owners decide whether their content appears in and helps ground generative AI features such as AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI Overviews in Discover. Google began honouring the setting on June 17, 2026.
Two things worth being clear about before anyone reaches for it.
It is a genuine opt-out, and the cost is real. Opting out removes you from the surface that a growing share of searches now ends on. For a local service business trying to be the name an AI recommends, that is usually the wrong trade. We work through the whole decision, including robots.txt, llms.txt, and the training-versus-search distinction, in should you let AI crawl your site.
Measurement and permission are different questions. The report tells you what’s happening. The toggle decides whether it happens at all. Look at your data for a few months before touching the switch, because reversing a decision you made on a hunch costs you the visibility you had while you waited.
What to Do With What You Find
The report is diagnostic, not prescriptive. Here’s how to turn it into work worth doing.
Find your quotable pages and make more like them. Sort the Pages view by impressions. Look at the top performers and identify what they share - a direct answer in the opening paragraph, clear headings that mirror how people actually ask, tables or short lists that extract cleanly, specific facts rather than general advice. Then apply that shape to the pages that aren’t showing up.
Check whether your money pages appear at all. Most businesses find their blog posts surface and their service pages don’t. That’s usually a structure problem, not a content problem. Service pages written as brochures give an AI system nothing to lift. Adding a plainly worded “what this is and who it’s for” section near the top often changes that.
Pair it with the signals the report doesn’t carry. Since you can’t see clicks, get your outcome data elsewhere: call tracking, form source fields, branded search volume, and Google Business Profile actions. If AI impressions are climbing while direct and branded traffic also climbs, the visibility is doing its job even though no line in Search Console connects the two. We lay out that whole measurement approach in traffic down, leads fine.
Set a monthly rhythm and stop checking it daily. The data is sampled, it lags, and it moves. Once a month, note the trend and the top pages. That’s the entire useful cadence.
What This Means for How You Write
The report quietly confirms what the last two years of AI search have been teaching, and now there’s data behind it rather than vibes.
Content that gets pulled into AI answers tends to lead with the answer instead of building up to it, use headings phrased the way people ask questions, keep paragraphs self-contained enough to lift as a standalone passage, include specific and checkable facts, and cover a topic properly rather than in a thin 400-word pass.
None of that is new advice. It’s the same structural discipline that has always made content useful, applied with the knowledge that a machine is now one of your readers. The businesses that were already writing clearly are finding themselves in these reports without having changed anything, which tells you most of what you need to know.
TheBomb® has been building sites and running search visibility for businesses across BC and beyond since 2014, and we’ve been tracking AI search behaviour since AI Overviews first started eating clicks. If you want the strategic picture rather than the dashboard, our guide to surviving Google AI Mode in Canada is the place to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I find the AI performance report in Search Console?
Open Search Console, go to the Performance section, and look for the Search Generative AI reports, which are provided separately for Search and for Discover. Access rolled out through mid-2026 starting with a limited group of site owners and expanding from there, so if you don’t see it yet in your property, it is likely still reaching your account rather than something you’ve configured incorrectly.
Does Search Console show AI Overviews clicks?
Not currently. The generative AI performance reports show impressions, pages, countries, and devices, but they do not include clicks, click-through rate, or query data. That means you can see whether your content is appearing inside AI features but not what that appearance earned you, so outcome measurement has to come from call tracking, form source data, branded search volume, and similar signals.
Can I tell AI Overviews and AI Mode apart in the report?
No. The reports currently group generative AI features together rather than separating AI Overviews from AI Mode, so a change in your impressions could be driven by either surface. Treat the number as a single blended visibility signal and watch its direction over time rather than trying to attribute movement to one specific feature.
Should I block my site from Google’s AI features?
For most local and service businesses, no. Google’s control lets you opt out of appearing in and grounding generative AI features, and it has been honoured since June 17, 2026, but opting out removes you from a surface where a growing share of searches now ends. Look at a few months of your own data before deciding, because being named inside an AI answer often carries real value even when it does not produce a click.
Why are my blog posts appearing in AI features but not my service pages?
This is the most common pattern, and it is usually about structure rather than quality. Blog posts tend to answer a specific question directly with clear headings, which extracts cleanly. Service pages are often written as brochures with the substance buried in marketing language, leaving an AI system nothing concrete to quote. Adding a plainly worded section near the top explaining what the service is and who it is for typically fixes it.
Want Help Reading Your Own Numbers?
A dashboard only helps if it changes what you do next. If you’re staring at impressions with no idea whether they’re worth anything, get in touch and we’ll connect the AI visibility picture to the numbers that actually pay your bills. Our SEO services cover the content structure and technical foundation that gets you into those answers in the first place.
Key Takeaways
- Search Console now reports generative AI visibility for both Search and Discover, rolled out from June 2026.
- You get impressions, pages, countries, and devices. You do not get clicks, CTR, or query data.
- AI Overviews and AI Mode are not separated, so treat the figure as one blended signal and watch its direction.
- Impressions are not visits. Being named in an answer has real value, but never report it as traffic.
- The Pages view is the most useful part - it shows exactly which of your content AI systems find quotable, which is a free content brief.
- Blog posts surfacing while service pages don’t is usually a structure problem: bury the answer and there’s nothing to lift.
- The AI opt-out toggle sits beside the report, honoured since June 17, 2026. Measurement and permission are separate decisions, so gather data first.
