The short answer. Across eight sites launched between December 2025 and June 2026, between 1.4% and 17.0% of Google impressions were recorded in Google’s AI features, with six of the eight between 11% and 17%. The page Google showed most often in those features was the home page on five sites, and on several sites reference pages such as a materials list, a standards page, a comparison page and a safety data sheet were among the most shown. From July to September, Google’s AI-feature impressions and Bing’s AI citations moved in the same direction on five sites and in opposite directions on three. Neither report on its own would have told you how a site was doing in AI answers.
This is original data. It comes from the Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools exports behind our eight case studies, taken on 14 October 2026. Every figure below can be checked against the monthly table, which you can download.
What was measured?
Eight sites, all young, all in our case studies:
| Site | Business | First Google impressions |
|---|---|---|
| bagassepackaging.co.uk | Food packaging, B2B wholesale | 2 Dec 2025 |
| castingforgingsource.com | Industrial manufacturing, B2B export | 11 Dec 2025 |
| singlecrystaldiamondring.com | Luxury jewellery, D2C | 19 Dec 2025 |
| woodcharcoal.in | Charcoal, D2C and wholesale | 3 May 2026 |
| shopifywebdeveloper.co.uk | Shopify development services | 5 May 2026 |
| firebrickssource.com | Refractories, B2B export | 19 May 2026 |
| bamboopaper.in | Consumer goods, D2C subscription | 29 May 2026 |
| onlinephotoprinting.co.nz | E-commerce, photo printing | 17 Jun 2026 |
Two first-party sources, both described in our guides:
- Google: Search Console’s Generative AI performance report, which counts impressions in 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”. Its data starts on 18 May 2026 for the sites live before then.
- Bing: Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report, which counts citations “displayed as sources in AI-generated answers” across Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and some partners.
They measure different events over different products, so we never add them together.
How much of Google visibility happened inside AI features?
Between 1.4% and 17.0%, measured as AI-feature impressions divided by all Google web impressions over the same days.
| Site | AI-feature impressions | All web impressions, same days | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| singlecrystaldiamondring.com | 541 | 3,184 | 17.0% |
| bamboopaper.in | 2,233 | 13,342 | 16.7% |
| castingforgingsource.com | 1,486 | 9,560 | 15.5% |
| bagassepackaging.co.uk | 6,008 | 39,251 | 15.3% |
| woodcharcoal.in | 5,522 | 39,719 | 13.9% |
| firebrickssource.com | 298 | 2,693 | 11.1% |
| onlinephotoprinting.co.nz | 928 | 47,528 | 2.0% |
| shopifywebdeveloper.co.uk | 681 | 49,210 | 1.4% |
Windows run from each site’s first AI-feature impression (18 May 2026 for most) to 11 October 2026.
The two lowest shares belong to the two sites with the most web impressions, an online print shop and a development agency. Both are seen for large numbers of broad commercial searches, and a share is only as meaningful as its denominator. We would not read more into it than that with eight sites.
Which pages did Google show in AI features?
The home page led on five of the eight sites, but how much it led varied enormously.
| Site | Most-shown page | Its share of the site’s AI-feature impressions | Pages with any AI impressions |
|---|---|---|---|
| singlecrystaldiamondring.com | Home page | 47.9% | 38 |
| castingforgingsource.com | Home page | 44.5% | 15 |
| bagassepackaging.co.uk | Home page | 37.0% | 30 |
| shopifywebdeveloper.co.uk | Home page | 20.6% | 46 |
| onlinephotoprinting.co.nz | Home page | 6.0% | 553 |
| bamboopaper.in | About page | 32.6% | 61 |
| woodcharcoal.in | Bamboo charcoal category page | 12.9% | 89 |
| firebrickssource.com | Quality standards page | 24.2% | 23 |
Two things stand out.
Pages that say who the company is did well. On bamboopaper.in the About page drew 727 AI-feature impressions, more than the shop (276) and the home page (257). On singlecrystaldiamondring.com the story page (202) was second only to the home page.
Reference pages did well. castingforgingsource.com’s materials page drew 359, second to the home page. firebrickssource.com’s standards page led the site. On woodcharcoal.in the comparison page (489) and the safety data sheet page (347) were among the five most shown. These are pages that answer a specific factual question, which fits Google’s description of AI Mode issuing several related searches for one question.
Search Console does not report the query behind an AI-feature impression, so these are patterns in which pages were shown, not explanations of why.
Did Bing and Google agree?
On five sites out of eight. We compared July with September, the first and last full months both reports covered for most sites.
Both rose
- bamboopaper.in
- firebrickssource.com
- onlinephotoprinting.co.nz
Both fell
- shopifywebdeveloper.co.uk
- singlecrystaldiamondring.com
Opposite directions
- bagassepackaging.co.uk: Google down, Bing up
- castingforgingsource.com: Google down, Bing up
- woodcharcoal.in: Google up, Bing down
| Site | Google AI-feature impressions, Jul → Sep | Bing AI citations, Jul → Sep |
|---|---|---|
| bagassepackaging.co.uk | 1,399 → 975 | 44 → 188 |
| bamboopaper.in | 400 → 774 | 27 → 531 |
| castingforgingsource.com | 384 → 279 | 218 → 325 |
| firebrickssource.com | 11 → 151 | 30 → 123 |
| onlinephotoprinting.co.nz | 280 → 311 | 0 → 27 |
| shopifywebdeveloper.co.uk | 278 → 113 | 108 → 56 |
| singlecrystaldiamondring.com | 159 → 100 | 11 → 8 |
| woodcharcoal.in | 876 → 2,021 | 145 → 127 |
A site owner who watched only Search Console would have reported a decline on bagassepackaging.co.uk and castingforgingsource.com over the same months that Bing’s AI citations of both sites rose. A site owner who watched only Bing would have missed woodcharcoal.in’s strongest Google quarter.
How lumpy are Bing’s citations?
Very. Bing’s citations arrive in bursts, so monthly totals can be driven by a handful of days.
- bamboopaper.in recorded 752 citations on 52 days. One day, 21 September, accounted for 196 of them.
- castingforgingsource.com recorded 1,033 citations on 121 days, the steadiest pattern of the eight, with a single-day peak of 49.
- singlecrystaldiamondring.com recorded 53 citations on 21 days and never more than nine in a day.
When one day can be a quarter of a month, compare months with care, and read the daily view before drawing conclusions.
What does this mean for measuring your own site?
Three practical points, each a direct consequence of the data above.
- Read both reports, side by side, never summed. They disagreed on three sites out of eight over the same quarter.
- Report AI-feature impressions as a share of web impressions, and by page. The share ranged more than tenfold between sites, so a raw count says little on its own, and the page view shows which pages are carrying it.
- Treat About, story and reference pages as AI-facing pages. They were among the most shown on several sites. Keep their facts current, specific and sourced.
For the assistants that publish no data at all, a sampled prompt set is still the only way to see what answers actually say.
Method and limits
- Sample. Eight sites, chosen because we measure them, not drawn at random. They are young, small and mostly B2B or D2C product sites. Nothing here generalises to large or established sites.
- Windows. Different start dates per site; Google’s AI report starts on 18 May 2026 for the sites live before then. October is partial (to 11 October) and excluded from the comparisons above; it is in the download, marked.
- Definitions. Google’s figure is impressions of links in AI features, not citations or quotes. Bing’s is citations shown as sources. Microsoft describes its grounding-query data, which we do not use here, as a sample.
- Rounding. Shares are rounded to one decimal place. Monthly totals are sums of daily exports in Pacific Time (Google) and the dates in Bing’s export.
- No causation. Work was done on these sites during the period, and each case study’s implementation section says what. This article reports what the two reports showed, not why.
What we don’t claim
- We do not claim these figures predict what any other site will see.
- We do not claim a higher AI-feature share is better. It depends on whether those impressions lead to the outcomes a business tracks.
- We do not claim either report is complete. Google’s has no query dimension; Bing’s covers Microsoft’s surfaces and unnamed partners only.
Data: ai-visibility-eight-sites-2026.csv, monthly Google clicks, Google web impressions, Google AI-feature impressions and Bing AI citations per site, December 2025 to October 2026.