Search Console's generative AI report: what it counts and what it leaves out

On 31 August 2026 Google finished rolling out a Search Console report I had been telling clients did not exist.

It is called the generative AI performance report. It counts how often your pages were shown inside AI Overviews and AI Mode.

That makes one line on this blog wrong, and I will get to it.

It also makes a lot of GEO dashboards look expensive, because Google now gives you part of what they sell for free. Only part.

The complication is in the column list. There is no query column.

So the report tells you which of your pages Google's AI features showed. It does not tell you what anyone asked.

Check 1: know what an impression means here

Google's help page for the report defines an impression as a link to your site shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search.

Two details matter more than the headline.

First, the charts aggregate by property. If two of your pages appear in the same AI answer, that counts as one impression for the site, not two.

Second, the data is Web search only. Search Labs experiments are left out, and Discover has its own report.

So an impression here is a link that was on screen. It is not a mention of your brand in the generated text, and it is not a click.

Check 2: accept what is missing

The help page, read on 29 September 2026, lists impressions as the metric.

The dimensions are pages, countries, dates and devices.

No clicks. No click-through rate. No average position. No queries.

Google's own announcement of 3 June 2026 says it plans to keep working with site owners on what to add, "such as adding additional metrics over time." That is a statement of intent with no date.

I would plan as if the missing columns stay missing for a while.

The same announcement confirms that this data is still counted inside the normal Performance report. The new report separates it out. It does not add traffic you were not already being credited with.

Check 3: correct the older page

In our post on what local businesses can influence in Google AI Overviews, we wrote that there is no dashboard for AI Overviews.

That was true when it was written. Since 31 August 2026 it is not.

What that post says about inputs still stands: Overviews are generated from Google's existing index, and there is no separate submission path. Only the measurement line has moved, and that post is flagged for correction.

We try to do this in public at NovaTechRay because the whole field runs on claims that were true for a month.

Check 4: mark the August gap before you read a trend

Search Console's data anomalies page records a logging error that reduced impressions in the generative AI report for 13 to 17 August 2026.

An update dated 21 August says the missing data was restored.

Restored is good. But if you exported a chart before 21 August, the dip in it is Google's, not yours.

Add an annotation for that week in Search Console and move on.

One more thing the report cannot see: whether the answer said anything good about you. An impression is a link on screen. The text around it could recommend you or could quote you as the example of what not to do. You still have to read the answers.

Check 5: use the multimodal filter if customers photograph things

On 24 September 2026 Google added a multimodal search type to both the Search results report and the generative AI report.

It covers searches made with an image: Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search and the Chrome option to search an image.

For most B2B sites this will be near empty.

For a restaurant, a boutique hotel or a shop, it may not be. A person pointing a phone at a storefront or a dish and asking about it is a real path to an AI answer, and until last week you had no way to see it.

Five ways to use the report without over-reading it

1. Compare the page list against your normal top pages. Pages that appear in AI features but rank modestly in blue links are telling you something about how extractable they are. Pages that rank well and never appear are the ones to rewrite first.

2. Pair every page with the question it answers. The report will not give you the query, so write it down yourself. If you cannot name the one question a page answers, the AI feature probably cannot either.

3. Read devices separately. AI Mode and AI Overviews do not look the same on a phone and a laptop. If one device dominates, check that page on that device before you touch the copy.

4. Watch direction, not size. An impression count with no clicks attached is a weak number on its own. A page going from zero to steady over eight weeks, after you restructured it, is a strong signal.

5. Keep sampling the other engines. This report covers Google. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity publish nothing like it. The method in our post on tracking AI search visibility, a fixed prompt set checked on a schedule, is still the only way to watch them.

What I would tell a client this week

Open the report. Export the page list. Note the 13 to 17 August gap.

Then do nothing dramatic for a month.

If your numbers are small, expect them to bounce. A week of noise is not a strategy change.

The contrarian part: I would not buy a tool this month because of this report. I would also not cancel one. The report answers where you were shown on Google. A GEO tool, if it is any good, answers what was said about you across several engines. Those are different questions, and pretending one replaces the other is how budgets get wasted.

If you post on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or X as well, Search Console now has a second new property type for that, and VALORAE Arc wrote up how a podcast can use it to find which Google searches reach its clips.

The short version

• The generative AI report went live for every site on 31 August 2026.
• It counts links shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode, grouped by page, country, device and date.
• It has no clicks, no position and no query column.
• Two of your pages in one AI answer count as one impression.
• Annotate 13 to 17 August 2026 as a logging gap.
• Try the multimodal filter if customers search with a camera.
• Keep sampling ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity separately; this report does not see them.

This is the kind of measurement setup we build at NovaTechRay.