The short answer. Search Console’s Generative AI performance report counts how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It reports impressions only, grouped by page, country, device and date. It has no query dimension and no clicks. Read it as “where Google’s AI features showed us”, then use the main Performance report and a sampled prompt set for everything it leaves out.
Everything below comes from Google’s help page for the report and its AI features documentation, quoted where the wording matters.
What does the report count?
Impressions in two features. Google says the report “shows data about how your site performs in generative AI features on Google Search”, and lists AI Overviews and AI Mode, adding that it expects “to update this list over time”. Google Discover has its own report, and Search Labs experiments are excluded.
An impression has a specific meaning here: “how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search”. A link being shown is not the same as your text being quoted, and it is not a visit.
Which dimensions does it have, and which are missing?
| Dimension | In this report | Notes from Google’s help page |
|---|---|---|
| Pages | Yes | “The final URL linked by a generative AI feature after any redirects” |
| Countries | Yes | Where the search originated |
| Devices | Yes | Desktop, tablet, mobile |
| Dates | Yes | Days, weeks or months, in Pacific Time |
| Search type | Yes | “Web: text-based” and “Web: multimodal” (image-based searches such as Google Lens) |
| Queries | No | Not listed as a dimension |
| Clicks, CTR | No | The page describes impressions only |
| Feature | No | AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted together |
The missing query dimension is the biggest gap. You can see which page was shown, but not for which question.
How is it different from the main Performance report?
In three ways that change how you read the numbers.
- Scope. The help page says the report “includes data only from the Web search type” of the Performance report. Image, video and News search types are outside it.
- Double counting is intended. Google’s AI features documentation says traffic from these features is also included in the main Performance report under the Web search type. The AI report is a view into a subset of those numbers, not a separate channel to add on top.
- Aggregation. Chart totals are aggregated by property. In the table, country, device and date rows are aggregated by property but page rows by page, so the chart total and the sum of the page rows can differ. That is expected, not an error.
Performance report: Web
All web impressions and clicks, by query and page.
Generative AI performance report
Only impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date.
Your comparison
AI-feature impressions as a share of web impressions, per page and per month.
Not in either report
Which passage was quoted, what the answer said about you, and the query behind an AI impression. That needs a sampled prompt set.
Why might the report be missing?
Two reasons, per Google. It “usually happens when your site hasn’t received enough impressions in generative AI features on Google Search”. It is also absent if you have excluded the site from these features with the Search generative AI control. If you have not used that control and the report is missing, the site is not yet being shown often enough.
What are the limits to know before exporting?
- The usual Search Console limits apply, including the 1,000-row limit in the interface and the time-period restrictions documented for performance data.
- The newest data can be preliminary. Google shows it as a dotted line and says it may change within a few hours.
- In exports, values shown as “~” or “-” become zeros. Small pages can look like zero when they are simply below the display threshold.
- Dates are Pacific Time. If your other sources use another time zone, monthly totals will not line up exactly at the month boundary.
Which comparisons are worth making every month?
Three, each taking a few minutes.
- AI share of web impressions, site-wide. AI-feature impressions divided by Web impressions for the same month. It tells you how much of your Google visibility now happens inside generated answers. Track it as a trend, not a target.
- AI share by page. Export pages from both reports and join them on URL. A page with many web impressions and almost no AI impressions is one Google ranks but rarely uses as a source for these features. That is the first page to check for an answer-first passage.
- AI impressions against clicks on the same pages. Clicks come from the main report, since the AI report has none. If AI impressions rise while clicks on the same pages hold or fall, the generated answer may be satisfying the question without a visit. That is a business fact, not a failure, and it belongs in the report.
What we saw on our own properties
We export this report for every site in our case studies, and two patterns are worth knowing before you read your own.
The share varies widely between sites. Over windows starting in May and June 2026, AI-feature impressions were 1.4% of all Google impressions on shopifywebdeveloper.co.uk and 17.0% on singlecrystaldiamondring.com. There is no “normal” figure to compare against.
The report can fall while the site grows. On bagassepackaging.co.uk, AI-feature impressions fell from 1,667 in June to 975 in September while Google clicks held at 121 and 129. The report alone could not tell us why, and the case study says so.
What we don’t claim
- We do not claim the report measures citations. Google defines an impression as a link being shown, and the report says nothing about quoting.
- We do not claim a higher AI share is better for every business. It depends on whether those impressions lead to the outcomes you track.
- We do not claim the details above are permanent. Google says the list of features will change; re-read the help page before relying on a dimension.