Search Console now reports AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions everywhere, and lets you opt out
Search Console now shows AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI impressions for every site, plus a property-wide opt-out. What it counts, and why to stay in.
The short answer
Since 31 August 2026, Search Console reports impressions from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features for all sites, by page, country and date, but not clicks. A property-level setting now removes a site from those features. For most brands, opting out gives up visibility and keeps none of the clicks.
Key takeaways
- Search Console's AI reports count impressions in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features, broken down by page, country and date, with no click data yet.
- The new opt-out works for a whole property and removes the site's links and content from all three AI surfaces.
- Google says the opt-out is not used as a ranking signal elsewhere in Search and does not change AI training, which has a separate control.
- In Seer Interactive's data for 53 brands (January 2025 to February 2026), pages cited in an AI Overview earned about 120% more organic clicks per impression than uncited ones.
- Pair the Google report with Bing's AI Performance report and a prompt-level monitor, because impressions alone do not show what the answer said.
In this article
What rolled out on 31 August
Every site in Search Console can now see how often its pages appeared in Google's AI features. According to Search Engine Journal, Google completed the worldwide rollout on 31 August 2026, after a phased start in June.1 The reports cover AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover.
Each report shows impressions by page, country and date, and the Search reports add a device breakdown. They do not include clicks yet. Google's help pages also said some properties were still waiting for access, and sites with very few AI impressions may not see a report at all.1
Our view: this is the most useful free AI search data Google has given site owners, and it is still only half a funnel. Impressions without clicks tell you that you were present, not what the answer said or whether anyone came to your site. Google's own click claims are platform totals, as our note on Alphabet's AI click figures explains; these reports start to show what happens on your own pages.
What the reports count, and what they don't
An impression means your page was shown as part of an AI feature for a query. It does not tell you where in the answer the link sat, whether your brand was named in the text, or whether the answer described you correctly.
What Search Console's AI reports answer
They show
- Impressions per AI surface
- Which pages appeared
- Country and date, plus device for Search
They don't show
- Clicks from AI features, for now
- What the answer said about you
- Competitors named instead of you
The split by surface is the most valuable part. AI Overviews and AI Mode behave differently, cite different kinds of pages and serve different queries. Our guide to tracking AI Overviews and AI Mode as two channels made the case for separating them; Google's own report now does.
Microsoft already reports on its own engines. Bing Webmaster Tools added an AI Performance report in public preview in February 2026, showing citations, cited pages and a sample of grounding queries across Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and some partner integrations.2 Microsoft's report counts citations; Google's counts impressions. They are not the same measure, so do not add them together.
The opt-out, and what it removes
The same day, Google launched a property-level control that removes a site from all three AI surfaces. It sits in Search Console settings. When it is switched on, the site's links and content are excluded from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features, which also means no impressions or traffic from them.1
Two limits matter. First, it is all or nothing for the property: there is no page-level version yet. Second, it is separate from AI training. As Search Engine Journal reports it, Google confirmed that the setting is not used as a ranking signal elsewhere in Search and does not govern training, which stays under the separate Google-Extended control.1
So the opt-out is a visibility decision, not a data-protection one. A publisher worried about its content training models needs the training control. A brand that opts out of AI features simply disappears from them.
Should a brand opt out of Google's AI features?
Rarely. For most companies, being cited in an AI Overview is worth more than the clicks it might take away. In Seer Interactive's data for 53 brands from January 2025 to February 2026, pages cited in an AI Overview earned about 120% more organic clicks per impression than pages that were not cited.3 That is a correlation, and cited pages may differ in other ways, but it points the opposite way from the fear behind opting out.
The calculation differs for publishers whose business is the page view itself, such as news sites and some recipe or review sites. If an AI answer fully replaces the visit, they may lose more than they gain. Even then, removing a whole property is a blunt tool. Most of them will want to wait for page-level controls rather than switch off every AI surface at once.
Our view: for a business that sells something, opting out removes you from the answer while your competitors stay in it. The traveller, buyer or patient still gets an answer. It just no longer mentions you.
How to use the new data this month
Start with a baseline and a split. Export the AI reports for the last available weeks, by page and surface, and keep the export, because the interface may change.
- Find your AI pages. List the pages with the most AI impressions. They are often guides and comparison pages, not product pages.
- Compare surfaces. Pages that appear in AI Overviews but not AI Mode, or the reverse, tell you which query types each surface trusts you for.
- Check the countries. AI features reach markets at different times, so a country with no AI impressions may simply not have the feature yet.
- Match with prompts. For your top pages, run the related buyer prompts and read what the answers say. That is the part the report leaves out.
For a board report, AI impressions belong next to AI referrals and branded search, not in place of them. Our note on which AI search number belongs in a board report sets out how to combine them. Re-run your prompt checks on the usual weekly rhythm, as our cadence guide suggests, and treat the Search Console data as the outer frame.
The reports will change. Search Engine Journal noted that click data is not included as of the rollout, and Google may add it.1 When it does, the gap between impressions and clicks per surface will become the number to watch.
