When someone searches a question on Google, an AI-written answer often appears above the results. Inside that answer there are links to a few sites, and sometimes one of them is yours. For two years there was no way to know when that happened or for which pages. Since 31 August 2026 Search Console shows it, in a new tab under the Performance report. The same release added a switch that removes your site from those answers entirely. The tab is useful. The switch, for most sites, is a mistake.
What it shows
Google’s help page defines one metric: impressions, “how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search”. In plain words, how often a link to one of your pages appeared inside an AI answer, either in AI Overviews or in AI Mode. You can split that number by page, by country, by device and by date.
Why this matters: until August, a page that appeared inside an AI answer was counted exactly like a page in the normal results, and there was no way to tell the two apart. Now there is a list of the pages Google puts inside its answers, and you can see whether that list is growing or shrinking month by month.
If the tab is missing, the help page says why: the site “hasn’t received enough impressions in generative AI features”. That is information too. Your pages are not getting into the answers.
What it hides
No clicks. The report counts how many times your link was shown inside an answer. It does not count how many times someone clicked it. Clicks from AI answers are still mixed into the main Web total. So you know you were in the answer. You do not know whether anyone came to the site from it.
No queries. You can see which pages appeared in answers. You cannot see which searches put them there. That is the part that would help most, because the searches are what you write for.
No fix for the position problem. Google counts the whole AI answer as one position in the results, and every link inside it gets that same position. That is why “average position” went up for many sites in the same month their clicks went down. The new report does not change that. It only tells you which pages are inside the answers.
Nothing outside Google. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini outside Search are not in it. Those you still check by hand, and the gap between engines is what decides where the work goes. That is why AI visibility is not one number. This report is one number for one engine.
How to read it against the main report
On its own the new tab does not say much. It becomes useful when you cross it with the main Performance report. This takes about fifteen minutes:
- In the new tab, export the list of pages that appeared in AI answers over the last three months.
- In the main report, filter to those same pages and compare the last three months with the three before. Look at what happened to each page’s clicks.
- A page on the list whose impressions held and whose clicks fell is a page Google now answers for. The question that page answers is being answered above it, and people are not coming through. Stop measuring that page by traffic.
- A page on the list whose clicks went up is the good case. Being inside the answer brought people to the site. That page is the template for the rest.
This cross-check is the only way to tell a drop caused by AI answers from a drop caused by ranking. In the main report the two look identical. What those pages were worth, and what to do with the list, is in the pages AI answers took from you.
The opt-out
The same release added a setting called AI controls. Google’s help page says it removes your content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the AI features in Discover within one to two days, and that “this control isn’t used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search”. In plain words: your normal rankings are not affected. It does nothing about AI training either. That is a separate control, the Google-Extended token, covered in which AI crawlers to allow.
Say someone searches “how long does a work visa take”. Today Google shows them an AI answer above the results, and inside that answer there is a link to your page. Some of those people click it and land on your site.
Now you flip the switch. The same person searches the same question. They still see an AI answer above the results. It did not go away. This time Google built it from your competitors’ pages, and the link inside it goes to them.
That is all the switch does. It does not remove the answer that stops people from clicking. It only removes you from it. And on questions like these, the link inside the answer is usually the only thing still bringing you clicks. On the publication in the full case, 57 of 120 pages appear in AI Overviews. Flipping the switch would erase that in two days and give back nothing.
Who the switch is for: a site whose content is the product. A news publisher or a paid database, for example, that is negotiating content licensing with Google and would rather be absent than summarised. That is a business decision, and a legitimate one. For a company that sells a product or a service and wants Google to recommend it, the switch deletes the recommendation.
What to do with it this week
- Open the tab. If it is not there, your pages are not getting into the answers. Start with that.
- Run the cross-check above and mark the pages Google now answers for. Stop counting their clicks as a target.
- Add one line to the monthly report: AI answer impressions per page. Google now gives you an official number for Google. Everything else you still sample yourself, as in how to measure AI search visibility.
- Leave the switch alone, and write down why, so the next person who finds it does not flip it to see what happens.
Where this sits
The cross-check is now the first hour of any AI search optimization engagement on a site with Google traffic, because it replaces three months of guessing with one export. If your AI tab is open and you are not sure what the numbers mean, tell me what your AI report shows and I will tell you which pages it is talking about.