On this page8 sections
- Why it matters
- What does Google Search Console show?
- How do you see AI Overviews data in Search Console?
- The AI Impression Share Check
- How do you opt out of AI Overviews in Search Console?
- Google Search Console vs Google Analytics: what's the difference?
- Common mistakes with Google Search Console
- Related terms
Why it matters for founders and small teams
Search Console is the only place Google tells you first-hand which searches show your pages, how often people click, and now how often your pages appear inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. It’s free and takes minutes to verify, which makes it the highest-return hour a small team can spend on measurement — and in 2026 it also holds the switch that decides whether Google’s AI features can use your site at all.
What does Google Search Console show?#
Google Search Console shows how Google sees and serves your site: the queries that earn impressions and clicks, your CTR and average position, which pages are indexed and why others aren’t, and — since 2026 — how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
| Report | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Performance (Search results) | Clicks, impressions, CTR and average position by query, page, country, device and date — for web, image, video and news search |
| Generative AI performance | Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date; no clicks or queries |
| Page indexing & URL Inspection | Whether a page is indexed, the canonical Google chose, and the HTML it rendered |
| Sitemaps | Which XML sitemaps Google has read, and how many URLs they list |
| Settings → Search generative AI | Whether your site may appear in Google’s generative AI features at all |
Two limits shape everything you read in it. Anonymized queries — ones not issued by more than a few dozen users over two to three months — are left out of the tables, though they count in chart totals. And the interface exports at most 1,000 rows; the API and Looker Studio connector go up to 50,000 rows per day per site per search type. For a small site, that means part of the long tail of conversational queries, the ones most like AI prompts, stays invisible.
How do you see AI Overviews data in Search Console?#
See AI Overviews data in Search Console’s generative AI performance report, launched on 3 June 2026 and rolled out worldwide by 31 August 2026: it shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date, but no clicks and no queries.
- What counts: an impression is a link to your site shown to a user in an AI feature. In the chart, two links from your site in one answer count as one impression; filter by URL and the count is per page.
- How it overlaps: Google says the report “includes data from the Web search type in the Performance report” — AI impressions are a subset of your web impressions, not extra ones.
- What’s missing: clicks, CTR, position and queries. AI clicks are counted in the web Performance report, blended with classic results.
- Discover is separate: a second generative AI report covers Discover’s AI features.
- Not seeing it? Google says not every property has access yet, and sites with too few AI impressions — or excluded from AI features — won’t see data.
Worked example
The AI Impression Share Check
A monthly check of how much of a page’s Google visibility now comes from AI features, and whether its clicks are keeping up. It works because Google says the generative AI report draws on the same web search data. The inputs are illustrative, for the pricing page of a fictional tool called Plannora.
- 1
Web impressions for the page
Performance → Search results, search type Web, filtered to
plannora.io/pricing, last 28 days.40,000
- 2
AI impressions for the same page
Generative AI performance report, same URL filter, same dates.
12,000
- 3
AI impression share
12,000 ÷ 40,000 — the share of the page’s impressions that came from AI Overviews and AI Mode.
30%
- 4
Web CTR
880 clicks ÷ 40,000 impressions, from the Performance report.
2.2%
- =
Change against the previous 28 days
Then the AI share was 18% and CTR 2.9%: AI share up 12 points, CTR down 0.7 points.
−0.7 pts
The result: An AI impression means a link to the page was shown in an AI answer, so a rising share with a falling CTR usually means more of the page’s queries now carry an AI answer that cites it but satisfies searchers on the spot. Decide by outcomes, not clicks: compare the page’s sessions and sign-ups in GA4 across both periods, and check which prompts cite it with a prompt panel, since Search Console won’t list the queries.
Free to use and adapt. If you cite it, link to rankbox.xyz/glossary/google-search-console.
How do you opt out of AI Overviews in Search Console?#
Opt out of AI Overviews under Settings → Search generative AI in Search Console by choosing Exclude: within a few days your site’s links and content stop appearing in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features, while classic rankings are unaffected.
The Search generative AI control rolled out to all websites worldwide on 31 August 2026. It has three settings — Include (the default), Exclude, and Inherit control from parent for child properties — and works per property: a domain, a subdomain or a URL prefix, so a URL-prefix property can scope it to one folder. Google says it “isn’t used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search.”
| If you want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Leave AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI but keep classic results | Search Console → Exclude |
| Keep one passage out of AI answers | data-nosnippet on that element — see snippet controls |
| Stop Gemini training and Gemini-app grounding | Google-Extended in robots.txt — no effect on AI Overviews |
| Leave Google Search entirely | noindex |
Google Search Console vs Google Analytics: what's the difference?#
Google Search Console measures what happens on Google before the click — impressions, queries, position and AI Overviews visibility — while Google Analytics measures what visitors do after they arrive from any channel, including AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
| Search Console | Google Analytics 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Covers | Google Search only | Every channel, including AI assistants |
| Measures | Impressions, clicks, CTR, position | Sessions, engagement, conversions |
| AI Overviews & AI Mode | Impressions in the AI report; clicks blended into web totals | Clicks arrive as Organic Search from google.com and can’t be separated |
| ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity | Not covered | AI Assistant channel or Referral — see AI referral traffic |
| Search queries | Yes, minus anonymized queries | No |
Use them in sequence: Search Console to see which pages gain impressions and lose click-through rate, GA4 to see whether visits to those pages still convert. Neither shows which AI answers cite you on engines other than Google — that takes prompt tracking.
Common mistakes with Google Search Console#
The most common Search Console mistakes are expecting table rows to add up to the chart total, reading AI impressions as if they came with clicks, and judging average position across every query at once — each produces numbers that look precise and mislead.
Myth
The table rows should add up to the total.
Reality
Anonymized queries are left out of the table but counted in chart totals. Google’s own worked example shows 450 itemized clicks against 550 in total.
Myth
More AI impressions means more AI traffic.
Reality
The generative AI report has no clicks. Check the same pages’ clicks in the web report and their sessions and conversions in analytics.
Myth
Average position tells me how I rank.
Reality
It’s averaged across every query and impression in the view. Filter to one query or one page before reading it.
Myth
The AI setting defaults to Include, so I can ignore it.
Reality
Owners can change it and child properties inherit it. One wrong setting removes a whole property from Google’s AI answers.
Related terms#
- CTRMeasurementClick-through rateThe percentage of people who click a result after seeing it — clicks divided by impressions — and in search it is falling for many queries as AI Overviews and other answer features resolve the question on the results page.Read the entry
- AI search & GEOAI OverviewsAI-generated summaries shown at the top of some Google search results, written by a Gemini model from pages in Google’s search index and linked to their sources — so they are won through ordinary Google eligibility, not a separate submission or special markup.Read the entry
- MeasurementAI referral trafficThe visits a website receives from links inside AI assistants and answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot, identified in analytics by referrer domains like chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai.Read the entry
- Technical SEOIndexingThe step in which a search engine processes a crawled page and stores it in its searchable database; only indexed pages can rank, or be retrieved for AI answers built on that index, and being crawled does not guarantee being indexed.Read the entry
- Technical SEOSnippet controlsRobots directives and HTML attributes — nosnippet, max-snippet and data-nosnippet — that limit how much of a page search engines may quote in results, and in Google they also limit what AI Overviews and AI Mode can use.Read the entry
- AI crawlersGoogle-ExtendedA robots.txt product token, not a separate crawler, that lets site owners stop Google from using their content to train Gemini models and to ground answers in the Gemini app, without affecting Google Search — including AI Overviews and AI Mode.Read the entry
Go deeper
Sources
- 1.Introducing Search generative AI performance reportsGoogle Search Central Blog · developers.google.com ↗
- 2.Generative AI performance report (Search)Search Console Help · support.google.com ↗
- 3.Search generative AI controlSearch Console Help · support.google.com ↗
- 4.How Search Console counts position, clicks and impressionsSearch Console Help · support.google.com ↗
- 5.Performance report (Search results)Search Console Help · support.google.com ↗
- 6.A deep dive into Search Console performance data filtering and limitsGoogle Search Central Blog · developers.google.com ↗
