Search Console now shows AI search data: a UK SME guide
On 31 August 2026 Google finished rolling out its generative AI performance report to every website in the world. It lives inside Google Search Console, it costs nothing, and it shows how often your pages were shown inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. It counts impressions only. There are no clicks.
That last sentence is the one the coverage buries, and it decides how much the report is worth to you.
What did Google actually turn on?
Two things, same day, every site.
The first is the generative AI performance report. Google's Search Console documentation opens with the line: "As of August 31, 2026, we've rolled out these insights to all websites worldwide." The help page is free to read. It covers AI Overviews, the summary above the normal results, and AI Mode, the chat-style search tab. Discover has a separate report.
The second is the Search generative AI control, which decides whether your site can appear in those features at all. Same rollout date, same wording.
Until 31 August, most UK businesses had no free way to answer a question they had been asking since AI Overviews arrived. We covered that gap in our explainer on what AEO and GEO mean for a brand. The measurement half now exists.
Where do I find the AI report in Search Console?
Open Search Console, select your property, and look under Performance for the generative AI report. The control sits elsewhere: Settings, then Search generative AI.
If you have never set Search Console up, that is the job before this one. It is free and takes about ten minutes.
Does it show clicks or just impressions?
Impressions. Google defines an impression here as "how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search". The documentation lists four ways to slice that number: pages, countries, dates and devices. There is no clicks column, no click-through rate and no average position.
The standard performance report documents clicks, impressions, click-through rate and position. The AI report gives you one of the four.
So it answers "am I being shown?" and cannot answer "did anyone come?". Anybody selling you a number from this report and calling it AI search traffic is reading it wrong.
Why it matters for a UK small business
The firms this changes things for run from five to fifty people and sell something a customer researches before buying. Accountancy practices, recruiters, specialist manufacturers, IT support. Whoever owns the website feels it first, which at that size is a marketing manager with four other jobs, or the owner.
Say a twelve-person accountancy practice in Guildford opens the report and finds several thousand AI Overviews impressions across 28 days, against far fewer ordinary search clicks. Read as traffic, that looks like a win. It is not, because the report cannot tell them whether one person clicked through.
Read properly it is still worth having. Switch the dimension to Pages and Google names the pages it pulls from: the ones it trusts enough to quote in your field. Put more effort there. The pages that never appear are doing nothing for you.
The honest caveat: Google says the report may not show at all if your site has not had enough impressions. A quiet report is often just a small site.
What if the report is not there?
Google gives two reasons. Your site may not have had enough impressions yet. Or, despite the worldwide note, the help page still says not every property has access. Check again in a fortnight before concluding anything.
Rule out a third. If somebody previously excluded the site from Search generative AI features, the report is empty by design.
Should I switch my site off from AI Overviews?
For almost every small business, no.
The control has three settings: include, exclude, or inherit from a parent property. Include is the default for all properties, so unless someone changed it, you are already in. Google is blunt about excluding: "You won't receive any traffic or impressions from these features." Changes take one to two days to apply.
Two details cut against the panic. Google states the control "isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search", so opting out does not punish your normal rankings and staying in buys you none. Google also states it does not affect AI training, which Google-Extended handles separately. Anyone treating this toggle as a way to keep content out of AI models has misread it.
The case for excluding is narrow. A publisher whose whole business is people landing on the page might weigh it. A twenty-person firm that wants to be found gains nothing from being invisible in the box that answers first.
What to ignore
Ignore the impressions total as a performance figure. It is a visibility count with nothing behind it, and the trade coverage leans on it harder than the data supports. Watch which pages appear and whether the list grows. Do not put the total in a board report next to revenue.
What to do this week
Check the control before the report. Settings, Search generative AI. Confirm it says include. Two minutes.
Open the report and switch to Pages. Write down the pages Google is quoting. If the list surprises you, that is the finding.
Export the 28-day view and file it. The report is new, so you have no history. Start it now and you have something to compare against by Christmas.
Those same pages shape what an AI answer says about you. If some of it is old and unflattering, our piece on old coverage resurfacing in AI answers covers what to do.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Search Console AI report cost anything?
No. Google Search Console is free, and the generative AI performance report is included at no cost for every verified property. Google confirmed on 31 August 2026 that it had rolled the report out to all websites worldwide. Setting up a property is also free and takes about ten minutes.
Does excluding my site from AI Overviews hurt my normal Google rankings?
No. Google's documentation states the Search generative AI control "isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search". Excluding your site removes it from AI Overviews and AI Mode only. You lose all impressions from those features. Ordinary Search results are unaffected.
Do AI Overviews impressions also appear in the normal Search Console performance report?
Yes. Google states the generative AI performance report draws on data from the Web search type in the standard performance report. It separates out the AI Overviews and AI Mode portion so you can see it on its own, rather than adding impressions that were not already counted.
Where Lahat fits
The report tells you which pages Google trusts. Turning that into more of them is content and search work, part of our marketing offer. We are a multi award-winning agency covering marketing, PR, content, social and events, named PR Agency of the Year 2025/26 at the Corporate LiveWire Global Awards, working with SMEs across Hampshire, Surrey and the UK.
