The short answer: open Google Search Console, go to Performance, and choose Generative AI. Since 11 August 2026 every property has that report, and it tells you how often your pages appeared inside Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. It shows impressions only — no clicks, no click-through rate, no search terms, no ranking position. A Google logging error has been under-reporting it since 13 August, so read a mid-August cliff as a reporting fault, not a collapse. And leave the opt-out switch beside it alone. It was built for news publishers who lost advertising revenue to AI summaries. You are not one of them.
For about two years the honest answer to "is Google's AI showing my business" was a shrug. You could see your traffic falling. You could not see where it went.
Two definitions before anything else, because Google uses both and means different things. An AI Overview is the written summary Google puts above the ordinary results. AI Mode is the separate conversational tab where someone asks a question and gets an answer rather than a list. Both can quote your pages and cite you by name. Until this month, neither showed up anywhere you could look.
Where the report is and what changed
Google announced the Search generative AI performance reports on 3 June 2026 and gave them to a limited set of properties. On 11 August 2026 the report appeared on every Search Console property, with no formal announcement — just a pop-up offering to open it.
You will find it under Performance → Generative AI. There is a second, separate report for generative AI features in Discover. Search Labs experiments are excluded from both.
One thing to do today rather than next quarter: there is no historical backfill. The data begins in mid-May 2026 and nothing earlier exists. Whatever range the report offers you now is the longest baseline you will ever have, so take a screenshot before the window starts rolling.
What it shows, and what Google withholds
This is the part most coverage glosses over. The report answers one question well and refuses several others outright.
| What you want to know | In the report | Where it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| How often your pages appeared in AI Overviews or AI Mode | Yes — impressions | Performance → Generative AI |
| Which of your pages got pulled in | Yes — Pages tab | Same report |
| Country breakdown | Yes | Same report |
| Mobile versus desktop | Yes, for Search | Same report |
| Day-by-day trend | Yes — hourly through monthly | Same report |
| How many people clicked through | No | Blended into the Web total in the main Performance report |
| Click-through rate | No | Not calculable from this report |
| The search or prompt that triggered it | No | Not published anywhere by Google |
| Average position | No | AI answers have no position 1 to hold |
| AI Overviews shown separately from AI Mode | No — combined | — |
| Whether ChatGPT or Copilot cites you | No | Bing Webmaster Tools, covered below |
The clicks point is the one people get wrong. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted by Search Console — someone tapping a citation is a real visit and lands in your Web search-type total in the main Performance report. What you cannot do is separate them from ordinary blue-link clicks. So the honest framing is not "Google hides the clicks". It is "the clicks are in your total, mixed in, and this report cannot pull them out".
Google's stated reason for withholding the queries is that AI prompts are long, conversational and often personal. That is a defensible privacy answer, and it is also why nobody should promise you a keyword report for AI search.
The mid-August drop is Google's bug, not your ranking
If you open the report this week and see impressions fall off a shelf around the middle of August, stop before you conclude anything.
Google confirmed a logging error that has been under-reporting Generative AI impressions since 13 August 2026 — two days after the report reached everyone. It is a data-logging fault, not a change in how often your pages appear. Search Engine Land reported the confirmation, and Google logs issues like this on its own data anomalies page, which is the page to check before you read any dip as real.
This is worth saying plainly because the timing is unkind. A large number of small businesses will look at this report for the first time in the exact fortnight it is under-counting, and some of them will pay someone to fix a problem that does not exist.
Bing has shown more than Google since February
Microsoft got there first and, for once, gave away more.
| Search Console → Generative AI | Bing Webmaster Tools → AI Performance | |
|---|---|---|
| Available since | 3 June 2026; all properties 11 August 2026 | February 2026 |
| Covers | AI Overviews, AI Mode, AI in Discover | Microsoft Copilot, Bing AI answers, partner integrations |
| Headline metric | Impressions | Citations |
| Query-level data | None | Grounding queries — the phrases Copilot generated to find you |
| History | From mid-May 2026, no backfill | Rolling window of about 90 days |
Bing's "grounding queries" are the internal searches Copilot runs when it needs a web page to answer someone. Seeing them is the closest thing available to a keyword report for AI answers, and Google offers no equivalent. Microsoft added Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare as preview features on 16 June 2026.
The reason a Kamloops business should care about a search engine it never thinks about is narrow and specific: ChatGPT's web search runs on Bing's index. Almost no local business has ever opened Bing Webmaster Tools. It is free, verification takes the same few minutes as Google's, and it is currently the only place you can see the questions behind an AI citation.
The switch beside the report, and why it is not for you
Alongside the report Google shipped an opt-out toggle at Settings → Search generative AI, effective 17 June 2026. Set it to exclude and your site stops appearing in AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI Overviews in Discover, while your ordinary Search results and Discover feed carry on untouched. Google has said the setting is not used as a ranking signal.
That is genuinely new. The old options were both bad: Google-Extended blocks AI model training but not AI Overviews, which draw on the regular index through Googlebot, and nosnippet blocks AI features but also strips your normal search snippet, which costs you clicks.
So why not take the clean exit? Because of who asked for it.
The toggle exists because the UK's Competition and Markets Authority imposed a conduct requirement on Google after designating it with strategic market status in general search. The CMA required that publishers be able to keep their content out of AI summaries, and called it a world first. The point was bargaining power for news organisations.
A news publisher sells advertising against page views. When Google summarises the article, the reader gets the answer and the publisher gets nothing, so the ability to withhold content is worth real money.
You are not selling page views. You are selling a booked job. When Google's AI answers "who does emergency furnace repair in Kamloops" and names you with a citation, that is the outcome you have been paying for. Opting out removes your name from the answer and gives it to the competitor who stayed in. There is no version of that trade that helps a local service business.
Check the setting reads include, then close it and do not think about it again. Availability is still rolling out country by country, so if you cannot find the setting at all, nothing is wrong.
How to check your own numbers this week
- Verify your site in Search Console if you have not. A domain property using a DNS TXT record covers every subdomain and both http and https, which is the version you want.
- Open Performance → Generative AI and set the date range as wide as it goes.
- Screenshot it. There is no backfill, so this is your only baseline.
- Open the Pages tab and write down the three pages earning the most AI impressions. That tells you what Google finds quotable about your business, which is usually not your home page.
- Confirm Settings → Search generative AI is set to include.
- Add Bing Webmaster Tools and open AI Performance for the grounding queries. This is the step almost nobody does, and it is where the useful detail is.
Then set a reminder for the same day next month. One reading of this report tells you very little; three readings tell you a direction.
What to do when the report is empty
Many small sites will open it and find nothing. Google's help text says a site needs enough impressions in generative AI features to populate the report, and Google has not published what "enough" means. On the query volumes a single-city trades business works with, an empty report is genuinely ambiguous — it might mean no AI visibility, or it might mean not enough of it to clear an unpublished bar, or your property may still be waiting on rollout.
So do not read an empty report as a verdict, and do not let anyone sell you a recovery plan based on one. Go and check the inputs instead, which is the same work either way: a complete Google Business Profile, steady recent reviews, consistent business details everywhere, and pages that answer real questions in plain sentences. That is what how to get into Google's AI answers walks through, and the free AI visibility checker scores the same signals in about two minutes.
It also helps to know how much is at stake. AI answers are not a fringe format in local search — one 540-query study across six local verticals found AI Overviews on roughly 68% of them, and AI local packs name far fewer businesses than the three-business map pack they replace. Fewer names in the answer is exactly why being one of them matters more than it used to.
Common questions
Where is the Generative AI report in Google Search Console? Performance → Generative AI. It has been available on every verified property since 11 August 2026. There is a separate report for generative AI features in Discover. If you do not see it at all, your property may still be waiting on rollout, or your site may not have earned enough AI impressions to populate it.
Why does my Generative AI report show no data? Google's help text says the site has not received enough impressions in generative AI features, but Google has never published a threshold. At small-city search volumes that makes an empty report ambiguous rather than conclusive. Check that Settings → Search generative AI is set to include, then work on the underlying signals.
Did my AI impressions really crash in mid-August 2026? Probably not. Google confirmed a logging error that has under-reported Generative AI impressions since 13 August 2026. It is a reporting fault, not a visibility change. Check Google's data anomalies page before treating any mid-August dip in this report as real.
Should I opt out of Google's AI features? Almost certainly not. The toggle was created because the UK competition regulator ordered Google to give news publishers a way to withhold content from AI summaries. Publishers sell page views; a local business sells booked jobs. Opting out removes your name from the answer and leaves your competitor in it.
Does this report tell me whether ChatGPT recommends my business? No. It covers Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode only. For Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI answers, use the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, which also matters for ChatGPT because its web search runs on Bing's index. For everything else, testing the prompts yourself is still the method.
The honest summary
Google finally showed its work, and the number it chose to show is the weakest one. Impressions with no clicks, no queries and no position will not tell you what AI search is worth to your business.
What the report is good for is direction and comparison. Which of your pages get quoted. Whether that count is rising or falling over months rather than days. Whether a page you rewrote started earning citations afterwards. Read it that way and it is useful. Read it as revenue and it will mislead you.
Three practical things, in order. Screenshot your baseline now, because the history does not go back. Add Bing Webmaster Tools, because it shows the queries Google will not. And leave the opt-out switch on include, because the regulator who forced it into existence was not thinking about you.
Then go back to the work that actually decides whether an AI names your business, which has not changed much: be the clearest, best-documented answer to the question a customer is asking. If that measurement side is what keeps getting skipped, the five numbers worth watching covers the rest of the dashboard, why your traffic is dropping in 2026 explains the shift these reports are measuring, and local SEO in Kamloops is the version where I do it for you.
Sources: Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports (Google Search Central, 3 June 2026) · Generative AI performance report — Search (Search Console Help) · Data anomalies in Search Console (Google) · CMA secures fairer deal for publishers and improves Google search services in UK (GOV.UK, 3 June 2026) · Bing Webmaster Tools officially adds AI Performance report (Search Engine Land) · Google Search Console Generative AI performance report data bug (Search Engine Land)
Written by Jagatjeet — Jagatjeet (jagatjeet.com) is a web design, local SEO and AI automation studio in Kamloops, British Columbia, serving the Thompson-Okanagan and BC Interior. Published 31 August 2026. Last updated 31 August 2026. Search Console features, reporting bugs and rollout status change without notice — check Google's own documentation before acting on anything time-sensitive here.