Search Console AI Overviews report: what it shows and what it doesn't

Search Console now has a generative AI performance report. It shows how often pages from your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode on Google Search, with a separate report for generative AI features in Discover. Google launched it on June 3, 2026, for a subset of sites and rolled it out to every website on August 31, 2026. The report shows impressions by page, country, device and date. It does not show clicks, CTR, average position or the query. And those impressions are already inside your regular Performance report total, so you never add them on top.

That answers the question every client with a website started asking in 2026: "Are we showing up in Google's AI answers?" It answers it only in part, and knowing where it stops keeps you from drawing the wrong conclusion.

What the report has and what it doesn't

The multimodal filter isolates image-based searches such as Google Lens and Circle to Search. History is short: data starts in May 2026, shortly before launch, according to coverage of the rollout. Check the first date on your own property's chart before building any long-run comparison.

Google's announcement says it plans to add more metrics over time, with no date. Until then, treat the report as a visibility measure, not a traffic measure.

Why you never add it to the total

Both the Help Center and the Search Central blog announcement are explicit: generative AI data is included in the overall Performance report. An impression for a page cited in an AI Overview already counts in your Search total.

Adding the two reports together is the easiest mistake to make in a client spreadsheet. It inflates visibility and makes the site look like it grew when it was just counted twice.

Two more reading details from the Help Center:

• Aggregation: the chart aggregates by property. If two pages from the same site appear in the same AI feature, that counts as one impression. In the table by page, each page counts. That is why the chart total and the table sum can differ.
• Time zone and fresh data: dates are in Pacific Time, and the newest data shows as a dotted line because it may still change.

How to compare it with your site's total

The most useful thing you can do with this report is measure how much of each page's visibility comes from AI features. A simple workflow:

1. Pick a closed date range of at least four weeks and use the same one in both reports.
2. In the generative AI report, export impressions by page.
3. In the regular Performance report, filter to the Web search type and export impressions, clicks and CTR by page.
4. For each page, divide AI impressions by total impressions. That is the share of visibility coming from AI Overviews and AI Mode. Since one is inside the other, the share never goes above 100%.
5. Sort by the pages with the highest share and check their CTR in the regular report against the previous period.

What to look for: a page whose AI share is growing while its CTR falls. It may mean the answer is being given right on the results page and fewer people click through. That is a signal, not proof, because the report does not show clicks from the AI Overview.

Do not take this into a results conversation without checking sessions and conversions in GA4. Impressions do not pay the bills, the same trap covered in vanity metrics.

What you can and cannot conclude

You can conclude:

• Which pages Google uses as sources in AI features, and in which countries and on which devices.
• Whether that visibility is rising or falling over time.
• How much of each page's total visibility depends on these features.

You cannot conclude:

• How many clicks or sales came from AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• Which query the page showed up for.
• Whether appearing in AI answers is better or worse than appearing only in regular results.

If the client's real question is whether to put money into content or ads, this report is one input, not the answer. The broader framework is in how to measure digital marketing results, and the paid side is easier to read when Meta and Google Ads sit in one dashboard.

How to present it to a client

One line per important page is enough: AI feature impressions for the month, share of total visibility and CTR from the regular report, with an up or down arrow against last month. Say plainly that this is a visibility number with no clicks behind it. A client who sees "AI impressions" next to "sales" will connect the two, and the next meeting gets harder. Keep three separate blocks: what Google showed, what turned into a visit, what turned into revenue.

If the report does not show up

The Help Center gives two common reasons: the site has not had enough impressions in generative AI features, or it has been excluded from them. For the second case, the Help Center explains how to include the site again. If the property is small, wait: the report only appears once there is data.

Your next step

Open the generative AI report for your main property, export four weeks by page and calculate the AI share for your top 20 pages by impressions. Do it again next month. With two reads, you will know whether reliance on these features is growing. To put organic search, GA4 and paid media into a single question, see the plans: from US$ 31.20 a month on the annual plan, with the first 7 days for US$ 2.99.