Generative AI performance report (Search Console)

The Generative AI performance report in Google Search Console counts how many times links to a site were shown in Google’s generated-answer features, AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google defines an impression here as “how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search”. It is the only first-party data Google provides on a site’s AI-feature visibility. Our case studies label the same data “the Generative AI features filter”, after the way it appeared when we exported it.

What it shows

Impressions only, grouped by page (the final URL linked, after redirects), country, device and date, with a search-type filter that separates text queries from multimodal ones such as Google Lens. Dates are in Pacific Time, and the newest days can be preliminary.

What it does not show

• Clicks. Google’s help page describes impressions only. Clicks from AI features are counted inside the Web search type of the main Performance report, mixed with ordinary results.
• Queries. There is no query dimension, so you cannot see which question produced an impression.
• Quoting and accuracy. Whether the page was quoted or merely linked, which passage was used, or how the company was described.
• Search Labs experiments, which Google excludes.

How we use it

As one of three sources for AI visibility: this report for Google, Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report for Copilot, and sampled prompts for the assistants that report nothing. Our guide to reading the report covers the exports and the comparisons worth making.