Every founder I've talked to assumed Google's new AI visibility report tracks whether ChatGPT or Claude cite their site. It doesn't. It counts exactly one thing, how many times a link to your page showed up inside Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode, and nothing else.
As of August 31, 2026, this report and a matching opt-out control are live on every property in Search Console worldwide. Here's what the numbers actually say, and what they can't.
The report ships with one metric, and it isn't clicks
Google defines impressions as "how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search." That's it. No click count. No query dimension, so you can't see which question triggered the appearance. The breakdowns you do get are pages, countries, dates and devices.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Rollout | All websites worldwide as of August 31, 2026 |
| Features covered | AI Overviews and AI Mode, Search Labs experiments excluded |
| Only metric | Impressions |
| Breakdowns | Pages, countries, dates, devices |
| Left out | Clicks, queries, ChatGPT, Claude |
| Opt-out | Settings > Search generative AI, default include, exclusion applies within 1 to 2 days |
Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Roundtable both flagged the missing query and click dimensions as the two gaps that matter most. Without a query, you know a page was shown, not why.
A 1,000-row limit means your long-tail pages don't exist in this table
The standard 1,000-row limit applies here too, so long-tail pages fall off. Chart totals can differ from table totals, which is confusing the first time you see it. The newest data is preliminary and may change within hours, so daily swings are noise, not signal.
If you open Search Console and the tab isn't there, you likely don't have enough impressions in these features yet. That's Google's own explanation, and Search Engine Roundtable reports the same. There's also an earlier bug that dropped performance data for some properties, so treat early history with some suspicion before you draw conclusions from it.
Excluding your site doesn't touch rankings, and it doesn't buy you anything either
The control has three states: include, exclude, inherit from parent. Include is the default for every property. Google's help page says exclusion "isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search," and it "doesn't affect AI training," since Google-Extended is the separate crawler control that handles training.
What exclusion does do is stop your content appearing as links in AI features, stop it being used for grounding, and, in Google's words, mean "you won't receive any traffic or impressions from these features." The change applies within 1 to 2 days, sometimes longer, due to caching and propagation.
So flipping it off doesn't protect your rankings, because rankings were never on the table. It just removes a source of traffic you already had a shot at. The only founder who should exclude is one who's decided, on principle, not to appear in AI answers at all.
The report can't see ChatGPT or Claude, and Google has no reason to add them
The report covers generative AI features on Google Search. The control governs those same features. ChatGPT and Claude sit outside both. Google didn't build a hole here by accident, it built a report scoped to its own product.
If you want to know whether a chatbot names you, Search Console can't answer that question, not partially, not with a workaround. You'd need to check whether the crawlers those models read with can even reach your site, then ask your buying questions directly and note who gets named.
Read it as yes or no per page, not as a score
The useful read is binary. A page with impressions is one Google's AI is willing to show. A page with zero, after a few weeks, is one it isn't. Sort the pages table by impressions and note which pages appear at all, usually how-to and comparison posts before the homepage. Check the countries breakdown against where your buyers actually are. Ignore daily wiggles, since the newest data is preliminary. Watch pages that go from zero to something after you publish or fix them, that's the closest thing to attribution this report offers.
An impression is a link that was shown. A visit is a person who arrived. Only the second one can sign up. A thin page can earn an impression without earning a visit, and this report can't tell the difference. Pair it with your own analytics, by referrer and landing page, or you're tracking a number that can climb while signups stay flat.
What this data can't say
This report cannot tell you which query triggered an impression, whether anyone clicked, or whether ChatGPT and Claude have ever shown your link. It cannot confirm your long-tail pages are invisible, only that they didn't make a 1,000-row table. And the earliest data on your property may be wrong, since Search Engine Roundtable documented a bug that dropped performance data for some sites before this rollout. Read the trend over weeks, not the number today.
Has your AI impressions number in Search Console moved since August 31, and did it match any change in actual signups?
Full writeup and the help-page sources are here: Search Console is now a free AI visibility tracker
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