The Search Console Generative AI Report: What UK Sites Can Finally See

Google has started showing sites their AI search impressions

For two years the honest answer to "how much traffic is AI search sending us?" was a shrug. On 3 June 2026, Google removed the shrug. The Search Console generative AI report is now live for a first group of sites — and UK site owners are among the first to see it.

So the numbers exist. The question is what you do with them.

What the Search Console generative AI report actually shows

The Search Console generative AI report shows how often your pages appeared inside Google's generative AI features — AI Overviews and AI Mode — broken down by page, country, device and date. It's a new tab sitting next to Search results in the Performance section.

What it doesn't show, at least for now:

• Clicks and click-through rate

• The queries that triggered your appearance

• Which specific AI answer you were cited in

Impressions only. That's it. Which has led to a lot of people declaring the report useless.

They're wrong.

Impressions without clicks isn't a broken report. It's a shelf position.

Think about the supermarket. You don't get told how many people picked up your jar. You get told which shelf it's on, in which shops, and how many people walked past it.

That's what an AI impression is. It's proof that Google's model considered your page worth surfacing when someone asked a question in your field. Google's own numbers put AI Mode past a billion monthly users, with roughly 97% of AI Mode answers carrying at least one citation and around seven unique domains referenced per query.

Seven slots. Nationally. Per question. If your page is in there, that's not vanity — that's positioning.

And it finally lets you answer the question I get asked every week: is any of this AI stuff actually touching my business? Last month I had a Hampshire client convinced AI search was a marketing fantasy. Two weeks of data later, three of his service pages were showing impressions in AI features — and none of them were the pages he'd spent money promoting.

The toggle Google quietly shipped in the same announcement

Alongside the report, Google gave site owners a switch to keep their content out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features entirely.

Google gave you a window and a curtain in the same week. Most people are reaching for the curtain.

Don't. Not yet, anyway. Opting out doesn't send those users back to your blue link — it sends them to a competitor's citation. You'd be removing yourself from the shelf because you can't yet count the people walking past it.

There's a narrow case for pulling out: publishers whose entire business model is the click, and whose content is being summarised wholesale. If you're an SME whose site exists to win enquiries, that isn't you. Your content isn't the product. The job is.

How to read the report in ten minutes a month

Open the Generative AI tab in Search Console Performance, then do three things.

Compare the page list with your standard Search results list

The pages earning AI impressions are rarely your homepage or your headline service page. They're usually the ones that answer a question plainly. If a page ranks in classic Search but never appears in AI features, it's likely written to rank rather than to answer — the exact gap covered in why your Google ranking no longer buys you AI search visibility.

Track the trend, not the number

A single week of impressions tells you nothing. The slope over eight weeks tells you whether your content is being taken more seriously or less. Set a reminder, screenshot it monthly, and stop refreshing daily.

Cross-check against enquiries

Impressions rising and enquiries flat means people are seeing your name and not clicking through. That's usually a page problem, not an AI problem — a weak title, a thin answer, or a page that gives everything away and asks for nothing back.

What this doesn't change

It's tempting to treat AI search as a separate discipline with its own rulebook. Google spent May arguing the opposite: its own AI optimisation guide states plainly that AEO and GEO are still SEO. Same fundamentals — crawlable pages, clear structure, genuine expertise, honest answers.

The same guide also killed a myth doing the rounds: an llms.txt file gets no special treatment from Google's crawlers. If someone sold you one as an AI-search strategy, you were sold a sticker.

What does move the needle is boring and structural: clean structured data (which Wix now generates automatically on many pages), a real answer within the first hundred words of each page, and content that treats an entire page as the unit of value rather than a keyword — the full-page strategy most businesses miss.

You can't win AI answers by writing for robots. You win them by being the clearest source on the page.

What I'd do this week

Three things, in order:

1. Check whether the Generative AI tab has appeared in your Search Console. If you're a UK site, there's a decent chance it has.

2. Leave the AI opt-out toggle alone unless you have a very specific reason not to — and write that reason down before you flip it.

3. Take your three most-asked client questions and make sure each one has a page that answers it in two sentences before it does anything else.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes on what your generative AI report is telling you — or you're not seeing any impressions at all and want to know why — drop us a line. We'll tell you straight.

— Matt

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Frequently asked questions

What is the Search Console generative AI report?

It's a report inside Google Search Console's Performance section, launched on 3 June 2026, that shows how often your pages appeared in Google's generative AI features — AI Overviews and AI Mode — with breakdowns by page, country, device and date. It currently shows impressions only, not clicks or queries.

Why can't I see the generative AI report in my Search Console?

Google is rolling it out to a subset of sites first, starting with a limited group of UK site operators, and expanding from there. If you can't see the Generative AI tab yet, there's nothing to fix — you're simply not in the current rollout group.

Should I opt my site out of AI Overviews and AI Mode?

For most small and medium businesses, no. Opting out doesn't push those users back to your standard listing — it hands the citation to a competitor. The opt-out mainly makes sense for publishers whose revenue depends entirely on the click and whose content is being summarised in full.

Is GEO or AEO different from SEO?

Not meaningfully. Google's own AI optimisation guide, published in May 2026, describes AEO and GEO as foundational SEO applied to AI surfaces. Crawlable pages, clear structure, real expertise and direct answers still do the work.

Does an llms.txt file help my site appear in AI answers?

No. Google has confirmed that llms.txt files receive no special treatment from its crawlers. Time is better spent on structured data, page clarity and answering real questions properly.