Google Search Console Now Shows How Often AI Search Features Are Showing Your Site

A new report inside Search Console breaks out impressions from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI-powered Discover, plus a toggle to opt content out entirely. Here's what it actually shows, what it still doesn't, and how a small business site should use it.

What Actually Showed Up in Search Console

Google's Search Central team announced a new standalone section in Search Console on June 3, 2026, built to separate a site's visibility inside generative AI search features from its regular organic performance. The report covers impressions inside AI Overviews, the newer AI Mode experience, and the AI-powered version of Discover, and it can be sliced by page, country, and device, plus a day-by-day view.

For a small business owner used to checking the regular Performance report, the format will look familiar, but the data behind it is thinner for now. There's no click count, no click-through rate, and no query-level breakdown yet, just impressions. Google has said more metrics are coming, but hasn't committed to a date, so for the moment this is a visibility gauge rather than a full traffic report.

Why the Missing Pieces Matter

Impressions alone answer one question: is a site showing up inside an AI answer at all. They don't answer whether anyone actually clicked through afterward, which is the number most business owners actually care about. SEO consultant Brodie Clark, who got early access to the report, summed it up bluntly, calling the numbers 'nowhere near actionable' on their own without clicks and queries attached.

There's also a data gap on the calendar side. Historical numbers only go back to May 18, 2026, roughly two weeks before the feature launched publicly, so there's no way to compare against last year or even most of this year. And the initial rollout has been limited to UK-based sites first, with a wider global rollout planned but not yet scheduled, so a lot of US small business owners checking their own account may not see the section appear at all yet.

The New Opt-Out Toggle

Alongside the reporting, Google added a genuinely new control: a setting under Settings, AI controls, Search generative AI, that lets a verified site owner choose whether their content is eligible to appear inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. It defaults to 'include' for every site, and switching it to 'exclude' takes effect without touching a site's regular blue-link search rankings, according to Google's own documentation on the feature.

That separation is worth noting because it removes an old objection. For years, the only way to keep content out of an AI summary was blocking it from search entirely, which meant giving up traditional traffic too. Now a business can, in theory, keep ranking normally while opting its pages out of AI feature eligibility specifically, though for most small business sites still trying to build any visibility at all, staying opted in is the more sensible default.

What a Small Business Should Do With This Right Now

Even with the gaps, there's a reasonable first move: check whether the section has shown up in Search Console yet, and if it has, use it to set a baseline. Compare which pages are already showing strong organic clicks in the regular Performance report against which ones are picking up AI impressions, since a mismatch there can point to content that's technically visible but not written in a way AI systems want to summarize.

Pairing that impression data with whatever's already tracked in Google Analytics is the more useful move for now, since it at least gives a directional sense of whether AI-driven visibility is translating into any site traffic. This is squarely the kind of measurement layer we build into client sites from the start, so that when Google does eventually add clicks and queries to this report, there's already a clean baseline to compare against instead of starting from zero.

5 Things to Do With the New AI Performance Report

Whether or not the section has appeared in your own Search Console account yet, these are the moves worth making once it does.

1. Check if the section exists yet: Look under the Search results area in Search Console for a new AI-related report; the initial rollout started with UK sites, so it may take time to appear elsewhere.
2. Set a baseline, not a verdict: Since there's no historical data before May 18, 2026, treat the current numbers as a starting point to track change from, not a final judgment on how visible a site is.
3. Cross-reference with your top organic pages: Compare pages that already rank and get clicks against pages showing AI impressions; a gap between the two can flag content worth rewriting for clearer, more quotable answers.
4. Leave the AI controls toggle on include for now: Unless there's a specific competitive or legal reason to opt out, staying included keeps a small business site eligible for visibility most competitors aren't opting out of either.
5. Pair impressions with your analytics tool: Layer the new impression data against whatever traffic and conversion tracking is already running so an eventual click metric has real context to land on.

← More from the CyTek Studios blog