GSC’s new AI Overview reporting – How can we use this information?

Tracking your performance in Google’s AI Overviews & AI Mode

Google is giving us brand new information within our Google Search Consoles to tell us how our content is being used in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and the AI features in Discover. If you have been wondering whether your SEO efforts are actually landing you in these generative features, we finally have a way to see that data directly from the source.

You can walk through the features with me in this video, or keep reading for more info on where to find this info and ideas for using it.

What the new Generative AI report looks like

If you are among the subset of users Google is giving access to (currently rolling out primarily in the UK, but eventually will be available to all), you will see a new section under Performance labeled "Generative AI." This report gives us a dedicated view of our impressions within these features. While some have complained that it only shows impressions and not clicks, rankings, or CTR, there is still a massive amount of information we can glean from this.

The report allows you to filter by:

• Pages
• Countries
• Devices
• Dates

Even without click data, knowing which pages Google’s AI models find most relevant for grounding is incredibly valuable information.

Why Google is finally sharing this data

It is important to understand that these updates aren't just out of the goodness of Google’s heart. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK has been pushing for better attribution and transparency. Publishers now have a toggle within GSC to prevent their content from being used to power AI features, and Google is now required to ensure proper attribution using clear links in AI generated results. This is likely why we have seen the rise of "preferred sources" and more inline links lately.

The new opt out toggle in Search Console

Google mentioned a new toggle where website owners can decide if they want their site to help ground responses in generative AI features.

Image credit, @amsterdammole on X.

This is similar to the google-extended tag in your robots.txt file, but much more accessible. You might be wondering: why would I ever opt out?I could see some people doing it on principle if they are not fans of AI, or perhaps it could be considered if the AI is consistently getting information about your brand wrong. In those cases though, usually you can fix this by improving how your business is represented on your website and around the web.

For most of us, opting out of AI Overviews is essentially opting out of Search. I’d recommend staying in, but using the data to see where you can improve.

What to do with this data

Once I get access to this data, I'm going to use Google's Antigravity to help me analyze the pages that are often shown in the AI features of Search. You don't need to build a tool for this. You can look at the data manually. We don't know whether this data will be shown to us via the GSC API. Even if it is not though, you can use Antigravity's browser to click through GSC data and brainstorm with you over why it is being shown so often.

Since we don’t have click data in the Generative AI report, we can use an agent to cross-reference these pages with our standard performance data. If a page has high impressions in AI Overviews and also has a high volume of clicks in regular search, we can start to correlate that value.

Here's a prompt you can use once you have this list of pages:

"What does this page have that the AI Overview doesn't? Why are people clicking through? Give me some ideas on what it is about this page that is likely to make it helpful to searchers beyond the AI answer."

Usually, it's because the page demonstrates first-hand experience, includes original images or research, or provides a deeper dive than a simple summary can offer. Studying your pages that get lots of impressions in AI Search features, and especially looking at which of those pages get a lot of clicks from Search can help us get more ideas for creating content people are likely to find helpful.

I hope we all get access to this report soon. In the meantime, focus on creating non-commodity content that provides real value beyond what a simple AI summary can generate.

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