Search Console now counts your AI impressions but not the clicks. What is an AI impression worth?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. AI impressions are a subset of Web impressions. Divide to get a share. Never add.
2. AI clicks are already counted in the Web total and in GA4 Organic Search. Only the split is missing.
3. Two groups of pages with different AI shares give an implied click rate. It is an estimate, not a measurement.
4. Export both reports monthly. There is no documented API and the metrics are expected to change.

Google announced a generative AI performance report for Search Console on 3 June 2026, first for some UK site owners. Its announcement now carries a note that the report reached all websites worldwide on 31 August 2026. The report has one metric. It counts impressions and leaves out clicks, queries and position. Most guides stop at telling you to watch the gap. This one shows where the clicks are, how to estimate them, and what to do page by page.

What does the report count?

An impression here means a link to your site was shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search. The features covered are AI Overviews and AI Mode. Search Labs experiments are excluded.

You can split the number by page, country, device and date. You can filter by URL and by text-based or multimodal search, the same split described in our note on the multimodal filter. You cannot see which query triggered the answer, which of the two features showed it, or where the link sat.

Two counting rules matter before any arithmetic.

• Several links to one site in one response count once in the chart total. The page table is aggregated by page, so its rows can sum to more than the headline. One consultant's published export shows 431 across page rows against a 429 total.
• The export writes zeros where the interface shows "~" or "-". Treat those cells as unknown.

Are AI impressions extra, or part of the total?

Part of the total. Google's help page says the report includes data from the Web search type in the Performance report. If the Web report shows 400,000 impressions and the AI report shows 30,000, the site had 400,000 impressions and 7.5% of them involved a link in an AI answer.

So the useful number is a share. For each page, divide AI impressions by Web impressions for the same dates. Carolyn Shelby put the warning plainly in Search Engine Journal: "They are not interchangeable units, no matter how convenient the chart may be."

Where did the clicks go?

They were counted. Google's guide to impressions, position and clicks says a click on a link to an external page in an AI Overview counts as a click, and the same holds in AI Mode. Those clicks land in the Web total of the ordinary Performance report. What is missing is the label.

Google Analytics does not supply it. GA4 added an AI Assistant channel on 13 May 2026. Its definition lists sources such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok, and it excludes Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Those two are filed under Organic Search. Pairing AI impressions from Search Console with AI Assistant sessions from GA4, as some guides suggest, compares Google surfaces with ChatGPT visits.

Which report answers which question?

Bing's report is the mirror image of Google's. It gives citations and a sample of grounding queries, and since June 2026 a query-to-page mapping. Google gives pages and impressions without queries. Neither gives clicks. For the last row, see how to measure AI visibility when the answers keep changing.

What do outside studies say an AI-linked impression earns?

Less than an ordinary impression, and more than the alternative.

Seer Interactive studied 53 brands and 2.43 billion organic impressions from January 2025 to February 2026. On informational queries, organic click-through rate was 3.35% with no AI Overview, 2.07% when the brand was cited in the AI Overview and 0.94% when an AI Overview appeared without citing it. Seer notes it cannot claim causation, and one account supplies 47% of the not-cited impressions.

Ahrefs compared 300,000 keywords between December 2023 and December 2025 and estimated a 58% lower click-through rate at position one where an AI Overview appears. The data is desktop only and correlational. An earlier edition of the same study gave 34.5%, and that older figure is still widely quoted.

Pew tracked 900 US adults in March 2025. Users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits to a results page with an AI summary against 15% without one. They clicked a link inside the summary on 1% of visits.

Google's documentation says clicks from AI Overview pages are higher quality. That is a claim about each click, with no figure attached. The studies measure clicks per impression. Both can be true. The evidence supports fewer clicks per impression. The quality claim is yours to test against your own conversions.

One caveat on the studies. All three measure AI Overviews. We found no traceable click-rate study for AI Mode.

Does a link count if nobody saw it?

Sources disagree. One Search Engine Journal guide says a link in an AI Overview must be scrolled or expanded into view. Google's own rule for Search says standard impression rules apply, and the standard rule counts an item on the current page whether or not it is scrolled into view, provided no click is needed to reveal it. John Mueller said in late June 2026 that a link needing activation counts only when a user activates it.

The help text settles it for Search. Scrolling is not required. Expanding is. The scroll condition belongs to the Discover version of the report. The practical effect is that AI impressions in Search overstate what people looked at.

How do you estimate the click rate the report leaves out?

No single page can tell you. Two groups of pages can, with assumptions.

Take a hypothetical software company. It exports both reports for the same 28 days, joins them on URL, keeps informational pages at similar average position, and splits them by AI share.

Assume one click rate for impressions without an AI link (call it n) and one for impressions with an AI link (call it a), the same in both groups.

• Low group: 2.50% = 0.97 n + 0.03 a
• High group: 1.76% = 0.60 n + 0.40 a

Solving gives n = 2.56% and a = 0.56%. Check the high group: 60,000 x 2.56% is 1,536 clicks and 40,000 x 0.56% is 224, which sum to 1,760.

The reading: about 5.6 clicks per 1,000 AI-linked impressions against 25.6 otherwise. Across both groups, 46,000 AI impressions imply about 258 of the 6,760 clicks. That is 3.8% of clicks from 15.3% of impressions.

A shortcut works when the low group's share is near zero. Treat its click rate as n. Then a is roughly (1.76% - 0.60 x 2.50%) / 0.40, or 0.65%.

The limits are real. The method assumes the two groups would earn the same click rate without AI answers, which is only roughly true after matching intent and position. Small sites break it. In one published export from a small UK site, the page with a 33% AI share had a higher click rate than the page with a 6% share, because the pages differed in everything else. As a working rule of our own, skip the calculation below about 100 clicks per group, and report a as a range across two or three months.

How should you read each page?

Expect concentration. In one site's published data a single page held 84% of AI impressions. In another, 8 of 76 pages held 75%. Work on those pages first and do not average across the site.

A seven-step method

1. Export the Pages table from the generative AI report and from Performance, Web, for the same dates. Use at least 28 days.
2. Join on URL and compute AI share per page. Treat "~" and "-" as unknown.
3. Sort by AI impressions and note how many pages hold three quarters of them.
4. Group pages of one intent and similar position into low and high share, pool each group, and solve for the implied click rate.
5. Classify each top page with the table above before editing anything.
6. Borrow the missing dimensions. Read each top page's queries in the ordinary Performance report and its grounding queries in Bing. Read outcomes from GA4 key events under Organic Search. Label both as indirect.
7. Save the exports each month with the date range in the file name.

Why archive now?

Because the report will change and there is no documented way to pull it automatically. Google's Search Analytics API reference lists no generative AI search type. Mueller has said position reporting for these features will evolve.

Regulation points the same way. The UK Competition and Markets Authority's conduct requirement, dated 3 June 2026, obliges Google to give publishers clear and detailed metrics on user engagement with their content in generative AI features. Most of it comes into force six months after the notice, which by our count is about 3 December 2026. The CMA consulted on impressions, clicks and click-through rate and says it did not reduce what it expects. Whether Google meets that with a UK-only change is unknown. A baseline saved now is the only way to compare before and after.

Where this stops

The report counts links to your own pages. It says nothing about whether an AI answer named your brand, or whether it cited a publication writing about you. In digital authority terms it is a first-party reading for AI visibility and a slice of search presence. Press coverage and brand entity need other evidence.

If you want that wider baseline alongside the Search Console numbers, the waitlist is open.

Questions

Does the Search Console generative AI report show clicks?

No. It shows impressions only, by page, country, device and date, for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Clicks on links in those features are counted, but inside the Web total of the ordinary Performance report with nothing to separate them. Google says more metrics will come and has given no date.

Should I add AI impressions to my Search impressions?

No. Google's help page says the generative AI report includes data from the Web search type in the Performance report. The AI figure is a subset. Divide it by Web impressions for the same dates to get an AI share. Adding the two counts the same searches twice.

Where do AI Overview and AI Mode clicks appear in GA4?

In Organic Search. Google's channel definitions place traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode there. The AI Assistant channel, added on 13 May 2026 for sources such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok, excludes both Google features.

Why does my site have no generative AI report?

Google gives two reasons. The site has not received enough impressions in generative AI features, or the property is set to Exclude in the Search generative AI control. Google says the report reached all websites on 31 August 2026. Search Labs experiments are never included.

Sources

1. Google Search Console Help, Generative AI performance report (Search) support.google.com
2. Google Search Console Help, What are impressions, position, and clicks? support.google.com
3. Google Search Console Help, Generative AI performance report (Discover) support.google.com
4. Google Search Console Help, Search generative AI control support.google.com
5. Google (The Keyword), New opportunities, control and insights for website owners blog.google
6. Google Search Central, AI Features and Your Website developers.google.com
7. Google for Developers, Search Analytics query developers.google.com
8. Google Analytics Help, What's new in Google Analytics support.google.com
9. Google Analytics Help, Default channel group support.google.com
10. Competition and Markets Authority, Publisher Conduct Requirement notice, 3 June 2026 assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
11. Competition and Markets Authority, Publisher Conduct Requirement final decision, 3 June 2026 assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
12. Bing Webmaster Blog, Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview blogs.bing.com
13. Practical Ecommerce, Bing's AI Performance Report Gets Better practicalecommerce.com
14. Seer Interactive, AIO Impact on Google CTR, 2026 Update seerinteractive.com
15. Ahrefs, Update, AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% ahrefs.com
16. Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results pewresearch.org
17. Search Engine Journal, Google Search Console AI Reports Rolled Out Worldwide searchenginejournal.com
18. Search Engine Journal, Google's Mueller Explains How AI Search Impressions Get Counted searchenginejournal.com
19. Search Engine Journal, Google Now Reports AI Search Impressions. Here's How To Read Them searchenginejournal.com
20. Search Engine Roundtable, Google Search Console AI Position Reporting Will Evolve Over Time seroundtable.com
21. Chris Ungureanu, What Search Console's New AI Report Shows and Hides chrisungureanu.com
22. CriticNest, Google Search Console's Generative AI Report, What 33,600 Impressions Actually Show criticnest.com
23. chudi.dev, Search Console's Generative AI Report, 3 Things It Hides chudi.dev

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