Google now shows how often your site appears in AI search

Google's AI answers now sit above a lot of search results, and until now there's been no way to tell whether your website was part of them. That's changed.

In short: Search Console now shows how often your site appears in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It's useful, but it measures exposure, not customers.

What's changed

On 3 June 2026, Google announced the Generative AI performance report for Search Console. After testing it with a small group of UK sites, Google rolled it out to all websites worldwide on 31 August. You'll find it under Performance.

The report counts impressions: each time a link to your site appeared in an AI Overview or an AI Mode answer. You can break that down by page, country, device and date. There are no clicks, click-through rate or search terms, and AI Overviews and AI Mode are combined into one view. The chart counts your site once per AI answer, while the Pages table counts each page, so the totals won't always match. Google also added a setting to opt out of AI features, which it says isn't a ranking signal in regular Search.

What this means for Tasmanian businesses

For a Hobart tradie or a Launceston café, this is the first real look at whether Google's AI is linking to you, and which pages it's using.

But an AI impression isn't a visit, and it isn't an enquiry. Clicks from AI features are mixed in with your other search clicks, so you can't work out an AI-only click-through rate from these reports.

So use the report to spot trends, not to explain every rise or dip in traffic.

Our take

We'd suggest most local businesses leave the AI setting switched on and check the report once a month. Export the Pages tab and compare the trend in AI impressions with the trend in clicks for your main service pages.

If a page shows no AI impressions, don't assume the content is the problem. Check it's indexed and that the report has enough data first. Then make sure it answers the questions your customers ask, with genuine, useful, locally relevant content: what you do, the suburbs you cover, your hours and how to book.

Clear, useful pages are what Google's AI picks up, and they're what customers need too. It's the same thinking behind the web design in Hobart and SEO work we do for the businesses we look after.