How to see AI Overviews and AI Mode data in Search Console — and what you still can't measure

Google's new Generative AI report shows AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions — no clicks, no queries, no per-feature split, and most sites can't see it yet.

As of July 2026 there are two places to see AI Overviews and AI Mode data in Search Console: blended invisibly into the Web search type (every property), and a new Generative AI report showing impressions only — if Google’s incremental rollout has reached you. Nobody gets AI clicks, AI queries, or an Overviews-vs-AI-Mode split. That gap is not abstract: on our own two-week-old property, 91% of query-attributed impressions — 126 of 138 — came from queries about AI Overviews and AI Mode, and we can’t see whether one of them rendered inside either surface (our data).

Where does AI Overviews and AI Mode data show up in Search Console today?

By default it’s blended into the regular Performance report under the Web search type, with no filter to pull it back out. Google’s documentation is explicit: “sites appearing in AI features (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode) are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console… within the ‘Web’ search type” (Google, AI features and your website).

That has been true for AI Overviews since launch, and for AI Mode since June 16, 2025, when Google started folding its data into the same bucket — with no way to filter or segment it out, as coverage noted on day one (Search Engine Land).

So every property already “has” its AI data. You just can’t see which rows it lives in.

How are AI Overviews and AI Mode counted in the Performance report?

The counting rules are documented and specific — and two of them regularly surprise people. Everything in this table comes from Google’s Performance report definitions:

Rule	AI Overviews	AI Mode
Impression	Counts only when the link is 'scrolled or expanded into view'	Standard impression rules apply
Click	A click on a link to an external page counts as a click	Same — an external-page click counts as a click
Position	The entire AI Overview occupies a single position; every link inside is assigned that same position	Follows the same methodology as a regular results page
Follow-up questions	Not applicable	A follow-up question inside AI Mode is treated as a new query
Search Labs experiments	Excluded from Search Console data	Excluded from Search Console data

The impression rule is stricter than it looks. John Mueller spelled it out on Bluesky in late June 2026: “If something needs to be ‘activated’ to see the link, it would only count when users do that” (Search Engine Journal). Medium

Brodie Clark’s long-running tracking experiment matches this: only citations actually brought into view register impressions (Brodie Clark). Medium And because every link in the box shares the box’s single position, an AI Overview citation can report a deceptively good average position.

What did Google announce on June 3, 2026?

Dedicated “Search Generative AI performance reports” — one for Search, one for Discover — showing “your site’s visibility within generative AI features on Search” (Google Search Central, June 3, 2026).

Two details matter. First, this is a new view, not a migration — per the same post, the data “is included in the overall performance report, where it will continue to be tracked.” Your blended Web totals don’t change.

Second, the reports shipped alongside a “Search generative AI” control that lets site owners exclude their site from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI Overviews in Discover — rolled out, per Google, while “engaging with regulators like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority” (The Keyword) — a plausible reason the rollout started in the UK.

What does the new Generative AI report show — and what’s missing?

It shows impressions, plus four ways to slice them. It shows no clicks, no CTR, no position, and no queries. Here’s the full ledger:

In the report	Not in the report
Impressions in generative AI features	Clicks
Pages	CTR
Countries	Position
Devices (Search report only)	Queries
Dates	An AI Overviews vs AI Mode split
A manual CSV export	API or bulk-export access

Per the announcement, dates come “with hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly granularity” (Google). One honest footnote: the help doc for the Search report lists only days, weeks, or months — no hourly. We’re flagging the discrepancy rather than pretending the two documents agree.

That help doc also confirms AI Overviews and AI Mode are lumped together with no per-feature breakdown (“We expect to update this list over time…”), and the Discover version is impressions-only too: pages, countries, dates — no devices. A preview from an enrolled property reports data going back to May 18, 2026 (Brodie Clark). Medium

Who actually has the report?

A slowly expanding subset of properties — and ours isn’t one of them. At launch, Google said it was “rolling these reports out to a subset of websites” (Search Central blog); The Keyword post was more specific: “a subset of website owners in the UK” (The Keyword).

By June 23, that was already stale. Site owners in the US, India, and Switzerland reported access, and John Mueller confirmed: “We’re just rolling these out incrementally to sites” (Search Engine Land).

Google’s help doc still carries the operative sentence: “Not all properties have access to the report, as we’re rolling out over time.” As of July 2, 2026, our property shows no Generative AI section in its Performance navigation. When it lands, we’ll publish what it says.

Can you pull AI Overviews or AI Mode data from the Search Console API?

No — and this isn’t a rollout problem, it’s a documented absence. The Search Analytics API’s allowed search-type values are web, image, video, news, discover, and googleNews — no AI type — and no AI-related searchAppearance value is documented anywhere (API reference). That page was last updated May 20, 2026 — after the new report was built — still with zero AI hooks. The new report is UI plus a manual CSV export, full stop.

We ran the probe ourselves anyway. On July 2, 2026 we queried our property with dimensions=["searchAppearance"] and got zero rows. Careful framing: zero rows is consistent with the documented absence, but it isn’t proof — a two-week-old site has no search-appearance-tagged data of any kind yet, rich results included. The docs are the evidence; our probe is a first-hand illustration. We’ll re-run it regularly, since a quiet API addition is the likeliest way this article goes stale.

What workarounds exist, and where does each one stop?

There is no reliable query-level workaround. Everything on offer is a proxy, a sample, or a dead end — useful only if you respect its limits.

Workaround	What it gives you	Where it stops
Query-regex “AI Overview filters”	A slice of question- and comparison-style queries	An intent proxy, not a measurement — GSC matches query text, not whether an AI Overview actually appeared (RankFuse)
GA4	Nothing new	Widely reported: AI Overview and AI Mode clicks arrive with a google.com referrer and land in google / organic; a custom channel group can’t split an identical referrer (seresa.io)
SERP-sampling rank trackers	The only way to know which queries show your site in an AI Overview	Sampled observation of SERPs — a different measurement from your logged impressions (Search Engine Journal)
The new Generative AI report	Real logged impressions	Impressions only, and rollout-gated

One cautionary tale. In September 2025, screenshots of a supposed “AI Overviews” filter in Search Console made the rounds. Mueller’s response: “there’s no filter like this in Search Console, and the screenshot itself is fake” (Search Engine Roundtable, ppc.land). If a screenshot shows a filter Google’s docs don’t mention, check the docs.

The demand is real — Google’s support forum keeps collecting threads like “Is there any way to identify traffic coming from ai mode or ai overview?”. For now, the honest answer is the table above.

Why does a site with 160 impressions care about any of this?

Because 91% of our query-attributed impressions came from queries about AI Mode and AI Overviews — and we cannot see whether a single one of them happened inside either surface. In our first two weeks in Search Console, this brand-new site logged 160 impressions, 4 clicks, and 27 distinct queries; one cluster — “google ai overviews”, “ai mode”, and close variants — accounted for 126 of the 138 impressions GSC ties to visible queries (our data; one site’s experience, not a universal law).

Queries like these are plausible AI-surface triggers, but the blended Web bucket can’t tell us where our links rendered: inside an AI Overview at one shared position, or on page 5 of classic blue links. It’s a small-scale preview of the measurement gap behind the great decoupling: impressions you can count, context you can’t. When the Generative AI report reaches our property, we’ll publish the before-and-after.

Frequently asked questions

Can I see AI Overviews traffic in Google Search Console?

Only partially. AI Overviews impressions and clicks are blended into the Web search type with no filter, and since June 3, 2026 a separate Generative AI report shows impressions (not clicks) — but only for properties in Google's incremental rollout, which began with a UK subset.

Does an AI Overview appearance count as an impression in Search Console?

Yes — but only when your link is scrolled or expanded into view. The whole AI Overview occupies a single position, and every link inside it is assigned that same position.

Is AI Mode traffic reported separately in Search Console?

No. AI Mode data has been folded into the Web search type with no filter since June 16, 2025, and the new Generative AI report combines its impressions with AI Overviews.

Does the new Generative AI report show clicks or queries?

No. It reports impressions only — by pages, countries, devices, and dates. Clicks, CTR, position, and queries are all absent as of July 2026.

Can I pull AI Overviews data from the Search Console API?

No. The Search Analytics API has no AI search type and no documented AI-related searchAppearance value as of July 2026, and the new report's data isn't exposed via API or bulk export — it's UI and manual CSV export only.