How to read the Generative AI performance report in Search Console

The Generative AI performance report in Google Search Console tells you one thing: how many times links to your site were shown inside Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. It reports impressions and nothing else. There are no clicks, no click-through rate, no position and no list of the questions people asked.

That makes it a narrow report, but a useful one. It is free, it comes from Google itself, and it is where Search Console separates AI feature visibility in Search from the rest of your search data. You can split the impressions by page, country, date and device.

This guide covers what the report counts, how to open it, what each view means, what Google doesn't state, and how to read it next to the classic Performance report so you don't draw the wrong conclusion.

What the report is and when it arrived

Google's help page is titled "Generative AI performance report (Search)." Its purpose, in Google's words: "The generative AI performance report shows data about how your site performs in generative AI features on Google Search."

Google announced the reports on June 3, 2026, first for "a subset of websites." A note on that post and on the help page now reads: "As of August 31, 2026, we've rolled out these insights to all websites worldwide." There are two versions, one for Search and one for Discover. This article is about the Search version.

The report covers two Google features. AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries that can appear on a regular results page. AI Mode is Google's conversational search experience, which we explain in Google AI Mode explained. Google says it expects "to update this list over time."

How to open it

Google's help page for the report has a button labeled "Open the Generative AI performance report." Sign in to the Google account that has access to your Search Console property and use that button. The help page doesn't describe a path through the Search Console menu, so we won't guess at one here.

What an impression means here

An impression is a count of showings, not visits. Google's definition is "how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search." A person may have seen your link and never clicked it. A person may also have read an AI answer that drew on your page and left without looking at the links at all.

So read impressions as a visibility signal. They tell you Google's systems are selecting your pages as supporting links. They don't tell you what the answer said about you, whether you were named in the text, or whether anyone came to your site.

The four ways to slice the data

A table groups impressions by one dimension at a time. Google says you choose the dimension "by selecting the appropriate tab above the table."

Google's announcement also lists hourly granularity for dates. The help page lists days, weeks and months. If you don't see an hourly option, that is consistent with the help page.

Filters, the chart and exports

Search type

A filter at the top of the report sets the search type. There are two options. "Web: text-based" covers "search traffic originating from text queries entered into the standard Google search bar." "Web: multimodal" covers searches made with images, which Google says "includes searches originating from Google Lens, Circle to Search on Android, uploaded images, and Chrome image search." Google announced the multimodal search type on September 24, 2026, for both this report and the classic one, and said it was "rolling out globally starting today."

Dates and comparison

Google says date and time work the same here as in the classic Performance report, and it points to the same filtering and comparison help page for both. That page describes comparing time periods, such as this week against last week, which is a quick way to check a change. Google gives no history length specific to this report.

The dotted line

The newest data "can be preliminary, meaning it's still being collected and might change in the next few hours." Google marks it with a dotted line on the graph. Don't report a number from the dotted part of the chart.

Export

An export button downloads the chart and table data. Values shown as ~ or - in the report become zeros in the download, so a zero in your spreadsheet may mean "not available." Google says the usual limits of the Search performance report apply, including a 1,000-row limit.

Why the chart total and the table total can disagree

This catches people out. Google counts the chart by property and the Pages table by page. Its example: "if two results from the same site appeared in a generative AI search results feature, they count as a single impression in the chart total."

In the Pages table, each of those two pages gets its own impression. Add up the page rows and you can get a bigger number than the chart shows. Neither is wrong. Use the chart total for "how often did our site appear" and the page rows for "which pages appeared."

What the report does not show

For Microsoft's side, Bing Webmaster Tools has its own report, covered in our guide to Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow for AI search. For visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, see the AI Assistant channel in GA4.

If you can't see the report

Google gives two reasons.

1. Not enough impressions. "This usually happens when your site hasn't received enough impressions in generative AI features on Google Search." No threshold is published, so a new or small site may simply have to wait.
2. Your site is excluded. Search Console has a Search generative AI control at Settings > Search generative AI. Including your site is the default. If someone switched it to exclude, Google says "You won't receive any traffic or impressions from these features." Our guide to controlling how Google uses your content in AI answers covers that setting.

A missing report on a low-traffic site is not a fault to fix. Work on being indexed and useful first. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet before it can appear as a supporting link in these features.

Reading it with the classic Performance report

The AI report is a slice of data you already had. Google says it "includes data from the Web search type in the Performance report (Search results)," and that the data "is included in the overall performance report." Three practical rules follow.

• Don't add the two. AI impressions are already inside your Web impressions. Adding them counts the same showings twice.
• Clicks live only in the classic report. Google counts a click on a link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode as a click, and those clicks sit in the classic Performance report with every other web click. There is no AI Overview or AI Mode entry among its search appearance types, so you can't pull them out.
• Queries live only in the classic report. To learn what topics a page serves, look up the same page there and read its queries.

A workable routine: take the ten pages with the most AI impressions, then open each in the classic report and note its clicks and main queries. You still won't know which clicks came from an AI feature. You will know which pages Google's AI features rely on and what those pages are found for, which is enough to decide where to improve content.

The classic report also has a branded and non-branded queries filter, which helps you see whether more people are searching for you by name. Google notes that it "isn't available for sites with a low number of impressions" and that some queries "might be incorrectly identified."

A monthly routine

This is our suggestion, not a Google procedure.

1. Wait a few days into the new month. Google says collected performance data is usually available in two to three days.
2. Set the date range to the full previous month and compare it with the month before.
3. Record the chart total for text-based search, and for multimodal if it matters to you.
4. Export the Pages table. Note pages that gained or lost the most.
5. Check the same pages in the classic report for clicks and queries.
6. Write one sentence on what changed and one on what you will do about it.

That record becomes one section of a wider report. What a monthly GEO report should include shows where it fits, and how to measure GEO performance covers the wider set of signals.

Mistakes to avoid

• Treating impressions as traffic. Impressions can rise while clicks stay flat. That isn't a contradiction.
• Calling it "AI rankings." The report has no position metric.
• Judging by a single week. AI Overviews don't appear for every search, and Google says they "often don't trigger." Short periods are noisy.
• Assuming it speaks for all AI. It covers two Google features only.
• Chasing impressions with thin pages. Google's spam policies apply to generative AI responses too. The background is in how AI Overviews affect SEO.

Conclusion

The Generative AI performance report answers a small question well: are Google's AI features showing links to your pages, and which pages? It doesn't answer whether those showings brought visitors or what the answers said. Read it as a trend, pair it with the classic Performance report for clicks and queries, and keep the two totals apart. If you want a second opinion on where your site stands, eSEOspace offers a free GEO audit of your website structure and visibility. More guides are in our GEO and AEO Guide.

Frequently asked questions