Google Search Console has a new Generative AI section. It reports how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, separate from classic results. Google announced it on June 3, 2026, in the UK first and in more countries over the following weeks. Before you draw conclusions from it, it is worth knowing what the report actually measures, and what it does not.
Where it is and what it shows
The section lives in the Performance report, under the Search results view, as a separate Generative AI entry. The data breaks down by pages, countries, devices and dates, down to hourly granularity. History goes back to May 18, 2026 at most, because Google did not collect it in this form before then.
The rollout is gradual. If you do not see the section on your account yet, that is normal. Selected domains got it first, and the rest are arriving in batches.
What the report leaves out
This is the part that matters most. The report shows impressions only. There are no:
- clicks,
- CTR,
- average position,
- queries.
So you learn which pages are cited in AI answers, but not whether anyone clicked through. For judging return on investment, that is not enough. The UK regulator CMA has required Google to provide clicks and CTR within nine months, so a fuller picture should follow. For now you have half the answer.
The key caveat: this is not new data
It is easy to assume Google has revealed a new traffic source. It has not. These impressions were already counted in the standard Performance report. The Generative AI section is a filtered view of the same data, just better organised.
That has a practical consequence. If you see thousands of impressions in this section, do not add them to your existing traffic. They were already there.
How an impression is counted
Two things are worth remembering:
- A link has to be scrolled or expanded into view, not just present in the background of an answer. Being among sources the user never expanded does not count.
- Aggregation per service. If two URLs from your site land in one AI answer, that counts as a single impression.
Without that context it is easy to over or under read your presence in AI.
What to do with it in practice
Since all you have is impressions, get what you can from them:
- Work out the AI share of your impressions. Compare the Generative AI section against the total in the Performance report. In the sample accounts the source authors analysed, AI traffic was around 17 percent of all impressions. Your number tells you how much visibility already depends on generative features.
- See which pages get cited. The pages dimension shows what AI picks from your site. That is a real signal for which content to expand and which to rewrite so it gets cited more often.
- Do not optimise for clicks you cannot see yet. Until Google adds CTR, treat impressions as a presence signal, not a conversion one.
The report is a measurement tool, not a strategy. If you want AI to cite your pages more often, that is content and structured-data work, which we cover in the GEO guide. If you want it implemented and measured on your site, that is our GEO/LLMO optimization service.
