Using Search Console's Generative AI Report for AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google's generative AI report in Search Console counts how often your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode. As of October 2026, the only metric is impressions. You can slice them by four dimensions: pages, countries, dates and devices.

That gap matters. An impression means Google showed your page as part of an AI answer. It says nothing about whether anyone clicked, and Google AI Overviews send no referral signal you can track elsewhere. If you want to know whether clicks are visible anywhere, read whether you can see AI Overview clicks in Search Console. The report also has no query dimension, which is covered in which searches triggered your AI Overview impressions.

Two more limits are worth knowing. Google states that AI Overviews and AI Mode "may use different models and techniques" and can return different links, so treat them as separate surfaces even when they sit in one report. And the report does not cover the Gemini app, which Google governs through a different control (Google-Extended).

The practical reading: use this report to see which pages Google is putting in front of people in AI answers, and where. Do not use it to judge return on investment.

Google confirmed a bug that depressed impressions in both the standard Search performance report and the generative AI report, starting from roughly 12 to 13 August 2026. Any trend line that crosses that date mixes real data with undercounted data.

This lands at an awkward moment. The report finished its global rollout around 11 August 2026, so many sites got their first look at the data a day or two before the bug began. A site that saw strong numbers on day one and weaker numbers a week later may be looking at the bug, not a change in Google's behavior.

What to do:

• Treat 12 August 2026 onward as suspect until you confirm Google's current status for the bug.
• Compare periods that sit entirely on one side of the window, or compare pages against each other inside the same period.
• If your standard Search impressions dropped by a similar shape on the same dates, the bug is the likely cause.

If you saw a sudden fall and want the full list of causes, start with why Search Console AI impressions drop suddenly.

Run this in one sitting. It takes about twenty minutes for a site with a few hundred pages.

1. Confirm you can see the report. Open the property in Search Console and find the generative AI performance report. Google's help page still says it is rolling out to a subset of owners, though rollout completed around August 2026. If it is missing, check why the generative AI report might not appear.
2. Set a clean date range. Pick a range that does not cross the August 2026 bug window, or note clearly that it does.
3. Sort by page. List the pages with the most impressions. Then write down the pages you expected to see but did not, such as pricing, product and core explainer pages.
4. Compare with standard Search. Open the regular Search performance report for the same pages and dates. A page with healthy Search impressions and zero AI impressions is worth a closer look. A page with zero impressions in both is usually an indexing problem.
5. Break down by country and device. Check that the split matches where your buyers are. A large market with no AI impressions is a finding to investigate, not a conclusion.
6. Save the numbers. Take a screenshot or record the figures in a sheet. The Search Analytics API does not cover this report, so nothing pulls it for you later. See why tools can't pull the AI report.
7. Look at the answers themselves. The report never shows the overview text. To see what Google's AI Overview says for a given query, run it through the AI Overview Checker or search it yourself while logged out.

There is no benchmark for AI Overview impressions. Nobody publishes a base rate for sites like yours, and AI Overviews often do not trigger at all. So judge results against your own pages and your own standard Search data, not against a target number.

Signs things are working

• Your important pages appear in the report, not just one or two blog posts.
• Impressions are steady across dates outside the bug window.
• The country and device split roughly matches your standard Search report.
• Pages you recently published start appearing after they appear in standard Search.

Signs something is broken

• A key page has standard Search impressions but zero AI impressions for weeks.
• A whole section of the site drops to zero on the same date, often right after a deploy.
• Impressions fall on every page at once, outside the August 2026 bug window.
• The whole property shows nothing while standard Search looks normal.

The last pattern deserves special attention. Google's AI features control in Search Console is opt-out: inclusion is the default for every property. But a property can be opted out, and child properties inherit the parent's setting. Read how the AI features control works before assuming Google simply stopped showing you.

Remember the ceiling. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear as a supporting link, and that indexing and serving are not guaranteed. Fixing a block makes a page eligible again. It does not guarantee impressions.

Work through this list in order before reporting a decline to anyone.

• Date window: does the drop start on or after 12 August 2026? If so, suspect the bug first.
• Standard Search: did the same pages fall in the regular Search report? If yes, the cause is probably indexing or the bug, not AI specifically.
• noindex: check the page's meta robots tag and HTTP headers. A noindex removes the page from Search and from AI Overviews.
• Snippet controls: look for nosnippet, max-snippet:0 or data-nosnippet on the page or template. Google documents these as the on-page controls that keep content out of AI answers, and templates often carry them by accident.
• robots.txt for Googlebot: there is no separate token for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Googlebot rules are the control.
• AI features control: confirm the property, and any parent property, has not been opted out.
• Deindexing: use URL inspection to confirm the page is still indexed. In Otterly's 2026 test of two AI-generated sites, Google's AI surfaces stopped citing the pages once Google removed them from the index.
• Content change: did the page lose the fact or section people were searching for?

If every item passes and impressions still fell, the change is probably on Google's side. That part is outside your control.

Read the report once a month. Impressions move with demand and with Google's own changes, so weekly reading mostly shows noise.

Also read it within a few days of any of these events:

• A template, CMS or framework change.
• An edit to robots.txt or meta robots rules.
• A change to Search Console properties or the AI features control.
• A site migration or a large batch of new pages.

This report covers Google only. Bing's AI Performance report covers Microsoft Copilot and Bing AI summaries, and it exposes grounding queries, which Google's report does not. Read the two side by side using the Bing AI Performance report playbook. One being healthy tells you nothing about the other.

Keep a simple log: date, top pages, total impressions, and any site change that month. Over a few months that log becomes the only trend you can trust, because you will know which drops came from you, which came from Google, and which came from the bug.

Can I pull the generative AI report through the Search Console API? No. As of October 2026, the Search Analytics API covers classic Search data only and does not expose the generative AI surface. That is why third-party tools cannot import these impressions automatically. If you want a history, record the numbers yourself each month in a sheet or with screenshots. Google has described more metrics only as a future intention, so check the API documentation again before building any workflow on it.

Does the report show my position inside the AI Overview? No. The report has no position dimension at all. Google's guidance also states that third-party tools do not have access to its internal ranking data. So any tool reporting your rank inside an AI Overview or AI Mode answer is giving you a number with nothing to check it against. Report presence and impressions instead, and be clear that position is not measurable on Google's AI surfaces.

Does opting out of AI features hurt my normal Google rankings? Google says the AI features control is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search. Opting out removes the property from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. It is separate from training, which Google-Extended governs. Google also notes that opted-out content can still help its systems understand users' queries. Check the setting on both the property and its parent, since children inherit by default.

Does the report include the Gemini app? No. The report covers AI Overviews and AI Mode in Google Search. The Gemini app is a separate product, and site access for it is governed by the Google-Extended token in robots.txt, not by Search Console. If you care about how Gemini describes your brand, you need a separate check. Do not read a healthy AI Overviews number as a sign that Gemini answers are accurate or that they cite you.