Google's generative AI report in Search Console shows how often your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It does not show clicks or the searches behind them, so it measures visibility, not traffic. Read it next to your normal Performance report and your analytics and it gives you a useful baseline. Read it alone and it is easy to misread. This post covers what the report contains, what it leaves out, and what to do with it this week. If you want these numbers connected to calls and form fills, that is the tracking and dashboard work in our analytics and reporting service.
Where is the report, and does your site have it?
It is one of the performance reports in Search Console, and Google says it has rolled out to all websites worldwide as of August 31, 2026. Google announced it on June 3, 2026 for a subset of sites first, so older coverage that calls it limited has been overtaken. The announcement is on the Google Search Central Blog.
If you cannot find it, Google's help page says not every property has access yet, or your site has not had enough impressions in generative AI features, which can happen if the site has been excluded from them. Check that the right property is selected before you assume it is missing.
What does the generative AI report show?
It shows impressions, grouped by page, country, device and date. Google defines an impression as a link to your site being shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search. The Search version covers AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Google Discover has its own separate report. Each grouping answers a different question:
- Pages: which URLs a generative AI feature linked to. Google groups these by the final URL after redirects, and assigns most data to the canonical URL.
- Countries: where the search came from.
- Devices: whether the person was on desktop, tablet or mobile.
- Dates: how impressions move over time, by day, week or month, in Pacific Time.
Since September 24, 2026 Google has been rolling out a multimodal search type filter for this report, which covers searches made with Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads and Chrome's right-click Search this image feature. It is worth a look if people might search for what you sell with a photo.
What does the report leave out?
It leaves out clicks and queries. Google's help page describes the report only in terms of impressions, grouped by page, country, date and device, and Search Engine Roundtable's coverage of the global rollout states it plainly: no click data and no query data. You can see which pages Google linked and from where, but not how many people clicked and not what they typed. Google's announcement says it may add metrics over time, so check the help page before you rely on this list.
Four smaller limits matter when you read the numbers. Keep them in mind before you draw a conclusion:
- Chart totals count per property. If two results from your site appear in the same AI feature, they count as one impression in the chart, while the table by page counts each page, so the totals can differ.
- The usual Performance report limits apply, including the 1,000 row limit on tables.
- Search Labs experiments are not included, because Google says those are still in active development.
- An impression means a link was shown. It does not tell you anyone clicked it or that it influenced a decision.
How do you read it next to the Performance report?
Treat the AI report as a slice of the Performance report, not a second source to add on top. Google's announcement says this data is included in the overall Performance report, where it will continue to be tracked, so adding the two together would count the same impressions twice.
The Performance report is where clicks and queries live, so put the two side by side for the same dates and the same pages. The AI report tells you which pages Google is surfacing in AI features. The Performance report tells you what happened to clicks and which queries produced them across Search as a whole. Because the AI report has no click data, you cannot assign a click gain or loss to an AI feature from these two reports alone.
How does Google Analytics fit in?
Google Analytics shows what visitors do after they arrive, which Search Console cannot. Google's guide to using the two together says Search Console covers activity before a person reaches your site, and that clicks and sessions are calculated differently, so the numbers will not match exactly. Compare the pattern, not the digits.
Analytics is where you can tie organic visits to calls and form fills, but only if those actions are tracked as key events, and a completed phone call usually needs call tracking as well. Without that, you can count visits but not whether they turned into work.
What should you not conclude from the report?
- Rising AI impressions do not prove rising traffic. The report has no click data, so check the Performance report and your analytics before you claim a gain.
- Falling clicks do not prove an AI feature caused them. The report gives impressions only, so it cannot show cause.
- Few or zero AI impressions do not mean other AI engines ignore you. The report covers Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, so ChatGPT and Perplexity are not in it.
That last gap is where a direct check helps. Our not showing up in AI answers page walks through how to check whether other engines mention you, and our GEO service reports those citations next to Search Console impressions. For the wider question of what to measure when AI answers before the click, read our post on measuring SEO when AI answers first.
What to do this week
An hour is enough to set a baseline you can compare against next month. Do these in order:
- Open Search Console, select the right property and find the generative AI performance report. If it is missing, ask whoever manages your site whether the property has had enough impressions or has been excluded.
- Pick a date range and export the Pages table with the export button. Google says values shown as ~ or - appear as zeros in the download, so do not read those zeros as real zeros.
- Open the Performance report for the same dates and pull clicks and queries for the same pages.
- Open Google Analytics and check organic sessions and key events for those pages. If calls and form submissions are not tracked as key events (GA4's name for conversions), fix that first. The reporting and marketing clarity solution describes that setup.
- Write three numbers in one place: AI impressions, organic clicks and organic key events. Repeat in 30 days and compare the direction, not single days.
The report is Google telling you where it showed your pages. What happened next is still yours to measure.