Google just rolled out a new Search Console report, live worldwide since August 31, 2026, that shows how often your pages show up inside AI Overviews, AI Mode, and the AI-powered version of Discover. It ships alongside a new one-click setting that lets you block your site from those three AI features entirely. Here’s what the report actually measures, how to find it in your own account, and whether opting out is a good idea.
Key Takeaways
- Google’s new AI performance report is now available to every Search Console user worldwide, after starting as a small UK-only test in June 2026.
- It shows impressions for your pages in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover’s generative AI features, broken down by page, country, date, and — for Search — device type.
- The report does not include click data yet, so you can see that AI features surfaced your content, but not how much traffic it actually sent you.
- A new “Search generative AI control” toggle in Settings lets you exclude your site from all three AI surfaces at once — Google says opting out won’t change your regular search rankings.
- The opt-out only affects AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI-powered Discover; it has no effect on whether Google’s models can train on your content, which is controlled separately through Google-Extended.
What Is Google’s New AI Performance Report, Exactly?
Search Console has always had a Performance report that shows clicks and impressions from Google’s classic blue-link results. The new report does something similar, but only for Google’s generative AI search features: AI Overviews (the AI-written summary that appears above regular search results for many queries), AI Mode (Google’s fully conversational search experience), and the AI-generated content that now shows up in the Discover feed on Android and the Google app.
In other words, it answers a question site owners have been asking since AI Overviews first launched: is Google’s AI actually reading and surfacing my content, and for which pages specifically?
What Data You Actually Get
The report breaks impressions down by individual page, by country, and by date, and — for the Search surfaces — by device type, mobile versus desktop. That’s enough to see which posts are being pulled into AI answers and whether that visibility is trending up or down over time.
The Big Limitation: No Click Data Yet
The one thing missing is clicks. At launch, the report can tell you that a page was shown inside an AI Overview, but not how many people actually clicked through to your site afterward. That’s a meaningful gap, since the entire debate around AI Overviews has been whether they help publishers by citing them, or hurt them by answering the question directly so nobody needs to click at all. Until click data arrives, impressions alone can’t settle that argument for your specific site.
Why Google Is Doing This Now
Google first tested the AI performance report with a small group of UK website owners in June 2026, expanded it through July, and finished rolling it out to every Search Console property worldwide on August 31, 2026. The timing lines up with two years of mounting pressure from publishers, who have argued that AI Overviews and AI Mode summarize their reporting and research without sending them the traffic that used to come with ranking well in search. Giving site owners visibility into their own AI impressions, and a way to opt out, is Google’s answer to that pressure, even without addressing the traffic question directly yet.
How to Check If Your Site Shows Up in AI Overviews
You don’t need any special access to see this. The report is already live on every property in Search Console. Here’s how to find it:
- Sign in to Google Search Console and open the property (domain or URL prefix) you want to check.
- Look in the Search results section for the new AI-focused report. Google has rolled out the label gradually, so it may appear as its own report or as a filter inside the standard Performance report.
- Set your date range, then check the Pages tab to see which specific URLs are generating AI impressions.
- Filter by country or device to see whether your AI visibility differs by region or between mobile and desktop.
- Compare the trend against your regular Performance report to see how AI impressions stack up against classic search impressions.
The New Opt-Out Toggle: Should You Turn Off AI Overviews for Your Site?
Alongside the report, Google added a setting called Search generative AI control, found in each property’s Settings tab. Turning it on excludes your site’s links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover’s generative AI features going forward.
What the Toggle Actually Does (and Doesn’t Do)
Google has been explicit that opting out isn’t used as a ranking signal anywhere else in Search, so your normal blue-link rankings shouldn’t change either way. It’s also narrower than it might sound: it doesn’t touch whether Google’s models can train on your content at all. That’s a separate setting, called Google-Extended, controlled through your site’s robots.txt file.
Who Should Actually Consider Opting Out
For most personal blogs, hobby sites, and small businesses, appearing in AI Overviews is still probably a net positive. It’s a form of visibility and citation, even when it doesn’t come with a click. The calculation looks different for sites whose business model depends heavily on pageviews and ad impressions, like recipe blogs, syndicated news, and reference sites, where an AI Overview that answers the question directly can plausibly divert real traffic. If that describes your site, it’s worth watching a few weeks of impression data in the new report before deciding whether the opt-out makes sense for you.
What This Means for Everyday Bloggers and Creators
Even without click numbers yet, the new report is the clearest signal so far that structuring content for AI extraction is now a measurable practice, not just a theory. Pages that answer a question directly near the top, break information into clear sections, and use FAQ-style formatting are generally easier for AI systems, including Google’s own AI Overviews, chatbots, and agentic AI tools that browse the web on a user’s behalf, to lift and cite accurately. As AI-powered browsers like Google Disco and AI shopping and research agents become more common, being the source that gets quoted, not just ranked, is turning into its own kind of SEO.
It’s also a reminder that every major AI platform is still figuring out how to balance user experience with publisher and advertiser interests. OpenAI, for instance, has taken a different approach recently, choosing to run ads inside ChatGPT itself rather than reporting on referral traffic to outside sites. Google’s new report at least gives site owners a data point to work with, even an incomplete one.
The safest move for now is simple: check the new report, see whether your content is showing up in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and hold off on opting out unless you have a clear reason tied to your own traffic and business model. As click data gets added, which Google has signaled is coming, this report should become the closest thing publishers have to real AI-SEO analytics.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Google’s new AI performance report in Search Console?
It’s a report inside Google Search Console that shows how often your pages appeared in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and the generative AI features in Discover. Google rolled it out to every Search Console user worldwide on August 31, 2026, after testing it with UK sites starting in June.
Does the new report show how many clicks I get from AI Overviews?
No. As of its global launch, the report only shows impressions, meaning how often your content appeared in an AI-generated answer, broken down by page, country, and date. It does not include click data, so you can’t yet see exactly how much traffic those appearances sent to your site.
How do I opt my site out of Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode?
Go to your property’s Settings in Search Console and look for the Search generative AI control. Turning it on excludes your site’s content from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover’s generative AI features across Google Search.
Will opting out of AI Overviews hurt my regular Google rankings?
Google says no. The opt-out is not used as a ranking signal for standard search results. It only removes your site from the three specific AI surfaces the setting covers, so your normal blue-link rankings should be unaffected.
Does blocking AI Overviews also stop Google from training AI models on my content?
No. The Search generative AI control only affects whether your content can appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI-powered Discover. Whether Google can use your content to train its AI models is a separate setting, controlled through Google-Extended in your robots.txt file.
