VercatusWhat Search Console reports about AI visibility
Search Console reports Google's generative AI surfaces in two ways. Links in AI Overviews and AI Mode count in the Performance report under the Web search type, blended with classic results: standard impression rules apply, clicking an external link counts as a click, and every link in an AI Overview gets the single position the AI Overview occupies, so a link's place inside the answer is not reported. Since June 2026 a separate generative AI performance report shows impressions (no clicks) of the site's links in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date, with a companion report for Discover; Google says it had rolled out to all websites worldwide by 31 August 2026, while its help page notes not every property has access yet and sites with too few impressions see no data. Neither report includes Search Labs experiments, and sites excluded with the Search generative AI control have no generative AI data. Google documents no API for the generative AI report.
Sources
- 1Google Search Central · 2025AI features and your website (Search Console reporting)developers.google.com
- 2Search Console Help · 2026What are impressions, position, and clicks? (AI Overviews, AI Mode)support.google.com
- 3Google Search Central Blog · 2026Introducing Search generative AI performance reports in Search Consoledevelopers.google.com
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AGrade A: official documentation or a standard. A grade describes the provenance of the sources above; it is not a probability that a change will work. The effect basis says how the size of the effect is known: measured by a study, taken from an industry report, only documented without a size, or not quantified.
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