What is Search Console's generative AI performance report?

The clicks and impressions a store earns in Google's AI have been in Search Console for a while, but mixed in with the classic results. This report is the first figure Google gives, firsthand, on your site's presence in AI Overviews and in AI Mode. It is not the usual performance report, where the clicks from those features were already counted, nor Bing's citations report, nor a dashboard that asks several assistants about your brand. It measures one specific thing, impressions, and knowing exactly which one keeps you from drawing conclusions it does not contain.

What it includes

A single metric: impressions. Google defines them as the times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature of Search. The report gives no clicks, no queries and no position.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)} It is the most important difference from the general performance report, and the one most often forgotten when reading it.

Four dimensions. Impressions can be cut by page (grouped by the canonical URL), by country, by device (desktop, tablet or mobile) and by date, in days, weeks or months and in Pacific Time. A search type filter separates text searches from multimodal ones, the ones that start from an image.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)} For a fashion or home decor store, that second view says whether its product pages show up when the search starts from an image.

Two features. The report covers AI Overviews and AI Mode, and its data comes from the web search type of the performance report.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)} That is why the clicks have not disappeared: the clicks and impressions from those features were already included in total search traffic, within the web search type.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. AI features and your website} The new report does not add traffic; it pulls out and shows the part that happened in AI features.

The counting rules are the usual ones. In AI Overviews and AI Mode the standard impression rules apply; clicking an external link counts as a click; and an AI Overview takes up a single position in the results, so all of its links get that same position.⁠^{[3]Search Console Help. What are impressions, position, and clicks?} What does not change is that a search impression is the chance of being seen, not the certainty of having been.

The usual limits. The most recent data is provisional, drawn with a dotted line, and can change over the following hours. The table has the same 1,000-row cap as the performance report, and when you export, values that are not available become zeros.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)}

Not everyone sees it yet. Google opened it to all sites worldwide on August 31, 2026, though it warns that the rollout is gradual and not every property has access yet. To appear, the site has to gather enough impressions in those features and not be excluded from them.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)} That exclusion is decided with the Search Console generative AI control. Google's guide to optimizing for these features points to this report for measuring performance in them, and warns of something worth keeping in mind when you compare: no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.⁠^{[4]Google Search Central. Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search}

In a store

A backpack store compares, for the same month, the impressions of four pages in the generative AI report with their impressions in the web search type of the performance report. It is a fictitious example: the pages and the figures are invented to show how to read the two columns together.

Three readings that work for any store. The second column includes the first, because the generative AI report comes out of the web search type, so they do not add up. The pages that show up most in AI features are not necessarily the ones that sell the most: here it is the guide, which answers an informational question. And the "no data" in the last row does not mean zero: it may be that the page does not gather enough impressions, and if you export the table, Google will turn it into a zero that is not one.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)}

How to check it

1. Open Search Console and look for the report among the performance reports, under the name generative AI performance report.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)} If it does not appear, do not conclude anything yet: the rollout is gradual and a minimum of impressions is needed.
2. Check in the settings that the site is not excluded from the generative AI features of Search. An excluded site does not meet the conditions for the report to be shown.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)}
3. Filter by a page and compare it with the performance report in the web search type, with the same dates. AI impressions are a part of the web search ones, never an addition. The clicks, if you are looking for them, are in the second report.⁠^{[2]Google Search Central. AI features and your website}
4. Look at the country and the device. If you sell in several countries, the country filter separates what happens in each market, and the device filter separates mobile from desktop.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)}
5. If someone asks about the visits, go to Google Analytics. There, the organic search channel includes the visits that arrive from AI Overviews and AI Mode, and the AI assistants channel explicitly leaves them out.⁠^{[5]Google Analytics Help. Default channel group} The entry on attributing the visits that arrive from AI explains what can be measured and what cannot.

Related concept: AI citation

An AI citation is a generated answer naming a page as a source. It is what the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools counts: the total of citations shown as sources in AI-generated answers in Copilot, in Bing's summaries and in some partner integrations.⁠^{[6]Microsoft, Webmaster Tools blog. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview} Google, in this report, counts impressions of links in its AI features.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)} They are different units and are not compared with each other. Both share one limit: Bing makes clear that its citations reflect frequency without indicating the placement or presentation within the answer.⁠^{[6]Microsoft, Webmaster Tools blog. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview}

To go on, the measurement and verification reading path puts the rest of the terms in order, and the Search Console entry explains the other reports a store needs.