Search Console's generative AI performance report counts how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, date and device. Google introduced it on 3 June 2026 and says it reached all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026. It reports impressions only: Google's help page describes no clicks, no click-through rate and no queries for it.
What it includes
Google's help page lists two features: AI Overviews and AI Mode, with a separate report for generative AI features in Discover. Google says the list will change as Search does. Experiments in Search Labs are excluded (Google Search Console Help).
You can filter by search type: text-based web search, or multimodal search (Google Lens, Circle to Search, uploaded images and Chrome image search).
How it counts
An impression is a link to your site shown to a user in a generative AI feature. In the chart, two links from the same site in one AI answer count as one impression, because the chart aggregates by property. The table aggregates by page when you group by page, so chart and table totals can differ.
Dates are in Pacific Time. The usual Search performance limits apply, including 1,000 rows. Pages are grouped by the final URL after redirects, and most data is assigned to the canonical URL.
It is a slice of data you already had
Google states the report includes data from the Web search type of the main Performance report. So these impressions are not extra traffic you had not seen: they sit inside the Web search figures you already have. Adding the two reports together would count the same impressions twice.
What it does not show
The help page describes impressions and four dimensions: pages, countries, dates and devices. It describes no clicks, click-through rate, position or queries for this report. Clicks that come from AI features still appear in the normal Performance report, mixed in with ordinary results and unlabelled.
Insight
The report tells you that AI features showed your pages. It cannot tell you what people asked, or whether anyone came.
If you cannot see it
Google says this usually means the site has not had enough impressions in generative AI features. It can also mean the site was excluded from Search generative AI features; Google documents a control for including or excluding a site. Before 31 August the report was limited to some properties.
How to use it without fooling yourself
Export impressions by page (the export gives the chart and the table; values shown as ~ or - download as zero). Pull clicks and click-through rate for the same pages and dates from the main report. Treat the first weeks as a baseline.
Rising AI impressions with flat clicks is consistent with what the field experiments in Guide 05 found about AI search and clicks. It does not prove it for your site.
Where it fits
It is one of three measurement layers, and none replaces another: Google's report (impressions), your own server logs (which AI referrers actually arrive), and direct testing of what each engine says about you. The free Live Check is the smallest version of the third; a Capibera audit is the full one.
Google Search Console Help, “Generative AI performance report (Search)” · Google Search Central Blog, “Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console” (3 Jun 2026) · Google Search Console Help, generative AI performance report for Discover · Google Search Console Help, including or excluding a site from Search generative AI features