Generative AI Features report in Google Search Console

Learn what the Generative AI Features report measures and how its data can help your site.

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The Generative AI Features (Beta) report is a performance report in Google Search Console. It shows how often links to your site appear in supported Google generative AI features.

The report helps you measure the visibility of your site in AI search results. It does not create content for your site. It does not change your pages.

Google is testing the report with a limited number of Search Console properties. Thus, the report is not available for all sites.

What the report includes

Google has two reports for generative AI features:

Report	Google features	Metric	Data groups
Search	AI Overviews and AI Mode	Impressions	Page, country, date, and device
Discover	Generative AI features in Google Discover	Impressions	Page, country, and date

An impression means that a link to your site appeared in a supported generative AI feature. An impression does not mean that a person selected the link.

The Search report includes data from the Web search type in the standard Performance report. Do not add the generative AI Search impressions to the Web impressions. If you add the numbers, you count some impressions two times.

Google does not include data from Search Labs experiments in these reports.

What the Google features are

AI Overviews

An AI Overview is an AI-generated answer on a Google Search results page. The answer can contain links to source pages.

AI Mode

AI Mode is a Google Search experience for longer questions and follow-up questions. AI Mode can show links to source pages in its answers.

Generative AI features in Discover

Google Discover can use generative AI to show information about a topic. The information can contain links to source pages.

What value the report gives

The report gives you evidence about the AI visibility of your site. You can use this evidence to make better content and SEO decisions.

1. Confirm that your site has AI visibility

The total number of impressions shows whether links to your site appear in supported Google AI features. The date chart shows if this visibility increases or decreases.

This information gives you a starting value. You can use the value for future comparisons.

2. Find pages with high AI visibility

Use the Pages group to find the pages with the most impressions. These pages can bring important visitors to your site.

Review these pages first. Make sure that each page has:

Correct and current information.
A clear title and clear headings.
Useful original information.
Links to related pages on your site.
A clear next action for the reader.

Do not copy the format of a high-impression page only because it has many impressions. The report does not tell you why Google selected the page.

3. Find pages that need investigation

A page can lose impressions or have no visible impressions. This result is a reason to investigate. It is not proof of a content problem.

Check the following items:

Google can index the page.
The page has the correct canonical URL.
The important information is current.
The page answers its main topic clearly.
The Search generative AI control includes the site.

Google can also change the availability and design of its AI features. Such changes can affect the report.

4. Learn where the visibility occurs

Use the Countries group to find where the impressions occur. This information can help you choose markets and languages for additional work.

Use the Devices group in the Search report to compare mobile, desktop, and tablet impressions. A large difference can help you choose which device experience to review first.

The Discover report does not have a device group.

5. Measure changes after content work

Record the date of a content change. Then compare equal periods before and after the change.

For example, compare 28 complete days before the change with 28 complete days after the change. Use the same page, country, and device filters for both periods.

An increase can suggest that the change helped. It does not prove that the change caused the increase. Google can change its AI features during the same period.

6. Set work priorities

The report can help you select pages for content review. For example:

Keep pages that have many impressions correct and current.
Review pages that have a large decrease.
Improve pages that are important to the business but have low visibility.
Create related content for a topic that has good visibility.

Also consider the business value of each page. A page with fewer impressions can be more valuable if it supports an important product or service.

Questions that the report can answer

Question	Report answer
Does my site appear in supported Google AI features?	A value larger than zero shows that Google displayed a link.
Which pages appear most frequently?	Use the Pages group.
In which countries do the appearances occur?	Use the Countries group.
On which devices do the links appear?	Use the Devices group in the Search report.
Did visibility change with time?	Compare equal periods in the date chart.

Questions that the report cannot answer

The report does not show:

AI-specific clicks.
AI-specific click-through rate (CTR).
Search queries or user prompts.
Separate data for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The text of an AI answer.
The position or order of a source link.
Use of your content when Google does not show a link.
Conversions, leads, sales, or revenue.
The reason that Google selected a page.

Do not call impressions AI traffic. Traffic requires a visit to the site. The report only confirms that Google showed a link.

Do not call every impression an AI citation. The report does not show the source text, link position, or context.

How to connect visibility to business value

Search Console cannot show the complete business result. Use other data with the generative AI report.

Use the standard Search Performance report to measure total Web clicks. Use a web analytics tool to measure visits and actions on your site. Use your sales or customer system to measure leads, sales, and revenue.

The tools answer different questions:

Tool or report	Main question
Generative AI Features report	Did Google show links to the site in supported AI features?
Standard Search Performance report	How many total Search impressions and clicks did the site get?
Web analytics	What did visitors do on the site?
Sales or customer system	Did the visits help the business?

Do not calculate AI CTR with standard Web clicks and generative AI impressions. The clicks can come from many types of Web search results. The two numbers do not measure the same group of events.

A simple review procedure

Do this procedure once each month:

Open the correct Search Console property.
Open the Generative AI Features report for Search.
Record the total impressions for the last complete month.
Compare the total with the previous complete month.
Open the Pages group.
Record the pages with the largest increases and decreases.
Review the Countries and Devices groups.
Review the Discover report separately, if it is available.
Add notes for content changes, site changes, and Google updates.
Compare important pages with web analytics and business data.

Keep Search and Discover data separate. The two reports use different impression rules.

Important data rules

Google usually assigns page data to the canonical URL. The URL in the report can be different from the URL that you expect. Use URL Inspection to check the canonical URL.

The Search chart counts impressions at the property level. If two links from the same property appear in one AI result, the chart can count one impression. The Pages table can count an impression for each page. Thus, the chart total and the sum of the page rows can be different.

The tables have the usual Search Console row limits. A table can show a maximum of 1,000 rows.

Dates use Pacific Time. New data can be preliminary. This means that the data is not complete and can change. Google marks preliminary data with a dotted line. Use complete periods for comparisons.

Why the report can be absent

You might not see the report for these reasons:

Google has not included the property in the beta test.
The site does not have enough impressions for the report.
The selected property does not contain the canonical URLs.
The site is excluded from Search generative AI features.
The selected date range does not contain report data.

A missing report does not prove that the site has zero AI visibility.

The Search generative AI control

Search Console also has a control at Settings → Search generative AI. This control is separate from the performance report.

The default choice includes the site. With this choice, links and content from the site can appear in these Google features:

AI Overviews.
AI Mode.
Generative AI features in Discover.

You can exclude the site. If you exclude the site, Google prevents its links and content from appearing in the covered AI features. The site will not get impressions or traffic from these features.

This choice does not remove the site from standard Google Search. It does not control the use of content for AI model training. Google provides a separate Google-Extended control for AI training.

A child Search Console property can get the control choice from a parent property. Check the parent and child properties before you change the choice.

Google states that a control change usually takes a few days to take effect.

Recommended action

For most sites, keep the default Include choice. Then use the report to learn which pages get AI visibility.

Do not make large content changes only to increase the impression number. First, create correct and useful content for people. Then use the report to measure visibility.