Partly: in 2026 Google Search Console counts clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode inside the regular Performance report, but it does not let you separate them, so you cannot see AI Overview clicks on their own. The new Generative AI performance report, which Google says reached all websites worldwide on August 31, 2026, shows impressions only, broken down by page, country, device and date, with no clicks and no queries. To estimate the clicks, you join that report to your Performance data, then fill the gaps with GA4 and Bing Webmaster Tools.
The stakes are real. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025 and found that people who saw an AI summary on Google clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% when no summary appeared. They clicked a link inside the summary itself in just 1% of visits. If your clicks fall while impressions hold, AI Overviews are a likely suspect, and Search Console alone will not confirm it.
Search Console stops at the edge of Google. Measure your AI visibility outside Search Console.
What does Search Console report about AI Overviews and AI Mode?
Search Console reports AI Overviews and AI Mode in two places. The Performance report folds their clicks, impressions and positions into the Web search type with everything else. The Generative AI performance report, announced on the Google Search Central blog on June 3, 2026, isolates impressions from those features and nothing more.
Google’s Search Central page “AI features and your website” states the first part: sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode “are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console,” reported “within the ‘Web’ search type.”
The June 2026 post, by Hillel Maoz and Moshe Samet of the Search Console team, introduced “dedicated views of your impressions within generative AI features on Search, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode,” plus a separate report for generative AI features in Google Discover. Google says it may add “additional metrics over time,” but as of October 2026 impressions are the only one.
| Question you want answered | Does Search Console show it? | Where to get it instead |
|---|---|---|
| How often my pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode | Yes, in the Generative AI performance report | Not needed |
| Which pages appeared in those features | Yes, Pages dimension of that report | Not needed |
| Clicks from AI Overviews or AI Mode alone | No, mixed into Web totals | Estimate with the method below |
| Which queries triggered an AI Overview for me | No query dimension in the AI report | Performance report queries for exposed pages, plus manual checks |
| My position inside an AI Overview | No, every link shares one position | No first-party source exists |
| AI report data through the API | Not listed in the API reference | Export to Sheets and connect that |
| Visits and conversions from ChatGPT or Perplexity | No | GA4 referral data |
How does Search Console count AI Overview clicks, impressions and position?
Google’s Search Console Help article on impressions, position and clicks gives each feature its own rules. A click on an external link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode counts as a click, standard impression rules apply to both, and position works differently for each.
- AI Overviews take one slot. The help article says “an AI Overview occupies a single position in search results, and all links in the AI Overview are assigned that same position.”
- AI Mode follows normal page rules. Position in AI Mode “follows the same methodology as a Google Search results page.”
- Follow-ups count as new queries. If a user asks a follow-up question in AI Mode, Google counts the impressions, clicks and positions in the new response under that new query, not the original one.
Search Labs experiments are excluded, according to the same article, and an impression means a link to your site was shown, not that anyone read it.
So if a query’s average position looks too good, an AI Overview link may be lifting it while earning few clicks. Our explainer on AI Mode vs AI Overviews covers how the two surfaces differ for users.
Can you filter AI Overview or AI Mode data in Search Console or its API?
Not in the Performance report and not in the API. As of October 2026, Google has added no AI Overview or AI Mode filter to either one. The only isolated view is the Generative AI performance report, and it does not separate AI Overviews from AI Mode.
- Performance report. Search type filters cover Web (text-based or multimodal), Image, Video and News. Google added the multimodal split on September 24, 2026.
- Generative AI performance report. Dimensions are Pages, Countries, Devices and Dates, with the same Web text-based and multimodal filter. AI Overviews and AI Mode are combined into one impression count. The usual 1,000-row table limit applies.
- Search Console API. The Search Analytics query reference, last updated August 11, 2026, lists the types web, image, video, news, discover and googleNews. It lists no generative AI type and no AI dimension.
The branded queries filter, launched in November 2025 and open to all eligible sites since March 11, 2026, sounds related but is not: it splits branded from non-branded queries and does not isolate AI Overview data.
How do you estimate AI Overview clicks from Search Console data?
You estimate them by joining two exports. Take AI impressions per page from the Generative AI report, total impressions and clicks per page from the Performance report, and compare pages with heavy AI exposure to pages with little. Then confirm by hand.
1. Export AI impressions by page
Open the Generative AI performance report, set the date range to the last three months, keep the search type on Web: text-based, and export the Pages table. If the report says it has no data, Google’s help page says your site may not have enough AI feature impressions yet, or it may be excluded through the Search generative AI control.
2. Export the same pages from the Performance report
In the Performance report, use the same date range, search type and country filter, and export the Pages table with clicks, impressions, CTR and position. The AI report draws from the Web search type, so match every filter.
3. Calculate an AI exposure share for each page
Join the two files by URL in Google Sheets. Divide AI impressions by total impressions for each page. This ratio is our own method, not a Google metric, and we have not validated it against click-level data, because Google publishes none for these features. Treat it as a ranking of exposure, not a precise figure.
4. Compare CTR between high and low exposure pages
Sort pages into bands, for example under 0.2, 0.2 to 0.5 and over 0.5. Then use the date comparison in the Performance report to see each band’s CTR this quarter against the same quarter last year. If high-exposure pages lost CTR while low-exposure pages held steady, AI features are a likely cause.
5. Recover the queries by hand
The AI report has no query dimension, so filter the Performance report to one high-exposure page and open its Queries tab. Add a custom regex query filter such as ^(who|what|when|where|why|how|can|does|is|should)\b to pull question queries. Pew found that 60% of searches starting with a question word produced an AI summary, as did 53% of searches with ten or more words, against 8% of one- or two-word searches. Search the top ten of those queries yourself, in a private window, and record which show an AI Overview citing you.
Our guide to an AI Overviews traffic drop covers what to change on a page once you know it is exposed.
What do GA4, Bing Webmaster Tools and Looker Studio add?
GA4 shows what visitors did after they arrived, Bing Webmaster Tools reports citations in Microsoft Copilot, and Looker Studio puts it all on one screen. None of the three isolates Google AI Overview clicks.
GA4: behavior after the click. GA4 records visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode as Google organic traffic, and we found no Google documentation of a separate referrer for those clicks. What GA4 adds is engagement and conversion data for the pages you flagged in step 3. Google’s “AI features and your website” page says clicks from results pages with AI Overviews are “higher quality,” meaning users are more likely to spend more time on the site. Your engagement data can test that claim. For ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini traffic, which does arrive with its own referrer, see how to track AI referral traffic in GA4.
Bing Webmaster Tools: Copilot citations. Microsoft launched AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools as a public preview on February 10, 2026. It reports Total Citations, Average Cited Pages, page-level citation counts and a sample of grounding queries across Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. A June 16, 2026 update added Intents, Topics, Citation Share and a period Compare view. It reports citations, not clicks, but shows the query view Google withholds.
Looker Studio: one dashboard. Looker Studio can chart Search Console Performance data next to GA4. Because the Search Console API lists no generative AI type, the AI impressions report cannot be pulled through it. Paste the step 1 export into a Google Sheet each month and connect that sheet as a data source.
Should you exclude your site from Google’s generative AI features?
Most sites should not, because exclusion removes every impression and click those features send you. Search Console added a Search generative AI control under Settings, rolled out to all sites on August 31, 2026, and Google says to check the Generative AI performance report first to judge the traffic you would give up.
Per its help page, excluding means links to your site and its content will not appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode or generative AI features in Google Discover, and you “won’t receive any traffic or impressions from these features.” Google says content is excluded within one to two days after the control goes live, though caching can stretch that. The control is not a ranking signal elsewhere in Search and does not affect AI training, which Google-Extended governs.
- Others fill the gap. Google states that content from other sites will still appear in those features, “and it may appear similar to yours.”
- Clicks are small but not zero. Pew measured link clicks inside AI summaries at 1% of visits, so the traffic you would lose is likely modest. We know of no controlled measurement of the brand exposure’s value.
- Properties inherit settings. A property follows its parent property’s choice by default, so check the domain-level setting before you change a subfolder.
If you publish content whose value is in the answer itself, such as reference data, exclusion may be worth a test on a subfolder. For most service businesses, being named in the overview is the point.
FAQ
Can I see AI Overview clicks separately in Search Console?
No. Clicks on links in AI Overviews and AI Mode count as clicks in the Performance report, but Google mixes them into the Web search type with no filter to separate them. The Generative AI performance report, available to all sites since August 31, 2026, shows impressions only. To estimate AI-driven clicks, compare CTR trends for pages with high and low AI impression shares, using exports from both reports for the same date range and filters.
Does Search Console show AI Mode data?
Yes, in two ways. AI Mode clicks, impressions and positions are counted inside the Performance report’s Web search type, following standard results page methodology, and each follow-up question counts as a new query. AI Mode impressions also appear in the Generative AI performance report, combined with AI Overview impressions. Search Console does not split AI Mode from AI Overviews in either report, and it excludes data from Search Labs experiments.
Is the Generative AI report available in the Search Console API?
Not as of the API reference’s August 11, 2026 update. The Search Analytics query method lists six types: web, image, video, news, discover and googleNews, with no generative AI type or dimension. AI Overview and AI Mode activity is inside the web type totals but cannot be isolated. For dashboards, export the Generative AI report’s chart and table, place them in Google Sheets, and connect the sheet to Looker Studio or another tool.
Why is my average position so high for queries with AI Overviews?
Google assigns every link in an AI Overview the same position, the slot the overview itself occupies on the results page. If the overview sits at the top, a link far down inside it still reports that top position. Your average position can look better while clicks stay low, because users may read the summary and stop. Check the query yourself before you treat a position gain as a ranking gain.
Does Bing Webmaster Tools show AI citations?
Yes. Since February 10, 2026, Bing Webmaster Tools has offered an AI Performance report in public preview. It shows total citations, average cited pages, page-level citation counts and sampled grounding queries across Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. A June 2026 update added intents, topics, citation share and period comparison. It reports how often you are cited, not how many people clicked through to your site.
Does excluding my site from AI features hurt my rankings?
Google says no. Its help page for the Search generative AI control states that the control is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search. Excluding removes your links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features, and you lose all impressions and traffic from them. Content from other sites still appears there. The control does not affect AI training, which Google-Extended governs.
The short answer
Search Console now tells you where you appear in Google’s AI features and keeps quiet about what those appearances earn. Impressions by page are first-party and free in the Generative AI performance report. Clicks, queries and in-overview position are not, so treat any tool or report that claims an exact AI Overview click count with suspicion. Build the estimate yourself: AI exposure share per page, CTR trend by band, manual checks on question queries, then GA4 for behavior and Bing Webmaster Tools for Copilot.
Google sees one engine. Buyers also ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot, and none of them report to Search Console. Want to see how those assistants describe your business? Claim a free AI visibility report.
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