Google's New AI Search Report Is Live. Here's What It Actually Tells You

Google's New AI Search Report Is Live. Here's What It Actually Tells You

Google switched on a new report inside Search Console on 3 June this year. It's called the Generative AI performance report, and it's the first time Google has given site owners a dedicated view of how often their pages turn up inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. For years the complaint from anyone doing this work has been the same one: your AI visibility was invisible, folded into the regular Web results with no way to pull it apart. That's changed. Sort of.

I've had a proper look at what it does and doesn't do, because half the coverage I've read treats the launch itself as the headline. It isn't. The detail is where it gets useful, or doesn't.

What the report actually shows

Once it's live on your property, you get a separate view sitting alongside your standard Performance report, split into Search and Discover. It breaks down by page, country, device, and date, down to hourly granularity if you want it. So you can see which of your pages are being pulled into an AI-generated answer, where those impressions are coming from, and whether that's trending up or down over time.

That's a real gap closed. Previously, John Mueller confirmed all the links inside an AI Overview shared a single position in the old reporting, which made it close to impossible to work out which of your placements were doing anything. Now at least the appearance itself is measurable.

What it still doesn't show

Here's the part that matters more than the launch announcement. The report gives you impressions. It does not give you clicks, click-through rate, average position, or query data. You can see that your page showed up inside an AI answer. You cannot see whether anyone actually followed the link out to your site, or what question triggered it.

Google has said more metrics will come "over time," which is the kind of phrase that means nothing until it does. For now, treat this as a visibility gauge, not a traffic report. Bing's equivalent AI Performance dashboard, which launched back in February, has the same blind spot.

And there's a second catch specific to where you're reading this from. The rollout started with a subset of UK site owners, expanded to some Swiss and US properties through June, and only started reaching other sites in the past week or so. If you're running a Cairns or FNQ business and you can't see this report in your own Search Console yet, that's very likely why. Nothing wrong on your end.

The AI features toggle

Alongside the report, Google is testing a control that lets you opt your site out of appearing in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI Overviews in Discover altogether. Google says using it won't affect your ranking anywhere else, only your AI visibility.

For almost every FNQ business I'd advise against touching it. You'd be forfeiting the exact visibility this whole report exists to measure, in exchange for nothing. This is a lever for a narrow set of publishers with real reasons to keep content out of AI training and grounding, not a setting for a local trades or professional services business trying to get found.

What this means if you're a Cairns or FNQ business owner

Don't go looking for this report in your own Search Console tonight expecting to find it. Most of you won't see it yet, and that's rollout order, not a signal your site's doing anything wrong.

What's more useful right now is the reminder underneath the launch: Google Search Console only ever measures your visibility inside Google's own AI features. It has never shown, and won't show, anything about how you're performing inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude. That's a separate exercise entirely, and one I've written about here in more detail if you want to see where your business currently sits when AI tools are asked who to recommend.

My take

I'd class this as a genuinely useful half-step rather than the reporting breakthrough some of the coverage is making it out to be. Impressions without clicks tell you that you're being seen, not that it's doing anything for you. Until Google adds the traffic side of the equation, the honest answer for most small businesses is to keep doing what already works. Content that demonstrates real first-hand experience keeps earning citations inside AI answers whether or not you can see the impression count behind it.

I'll be watching for the click data landing and will update this once it does.