Search Console's AI Overviews Report: Impressions Without Clicks, and the Opt-Out Question

If you run organic search, you have been told AI Overviews take your clicks, with no first-party way to see how often your pages appear in them. On August 31, 2026, Google said its generative AI performance reports in Search Console had rolled out to all websites worldwide. They count impressions, not clicks. Days earlier, some AI Overviews were reported loading fully expanded by default. You finally have AI visibility data, and it cannot tell you what that visibility is worth.

What Google shipped, and what the CMA requires next

The Search report counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode: times a link to your site was shown in a generative AI feature. The Discover report does the same for Discover's generative AI features. Both break data down by page, country and date; the Search report adds device. Neither includes clicks or queries. Google's help pages still say not every property has access, and a site with too few AI impressions may not see one.

Beside the reports sits the Search generative AI control, set per property: include (the default), exclude, or inherit from a parent. Google says sites that opt out "will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features", and that the control is not a ranking signal outside them. Exclusion takes one to two days, sometimes longer.

On August 27, Chris Long posted on X that Google was showing the AI Mode prompt box by default for some queries. The next day, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable reported AI Overviews loading fully expanded, with no "Show more" button and the "Ask anything" box open, pushing traditional results down. A Google spokesperson said: "For some queries, AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it's most useful for people." Google has not said how many queries are affected.

On June 3, 2026, the UK Competition and Markets Authority imposed a publisher conduct requirement on Google. The CMA's summary says Google must provide metrics for search AI features "including impressions, clicks, and click-through rate", aggregated across features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, and grounding controls at directory and page level. Google has until December 3, 2026 to comply, plus three months for a page-level control, which Search Engine Journal dates to March 2027. The requirement covers the UK; Google's worldwide announcement makes no commitment on clicks.

How to read AI impressions against organic clicks

An AI impression measures presence, not prominence. In the Search report's totals, two results from one site in the same AI feature count once, and no position metric separates first source cited from fifth. Google says the report "includes data from the Web search type in the Performance report", and its help page on counting says AI Overview and AI Mode links earn impressions and clicks there. Read together, the same impressions sit in both reports, so never add them. Your AI clicks are already in the Performance report; the new report just does not show them.

Its value comes from joining it to what you have: per page, per week, AI impressions beside Performance report impressions and clicks, and analytics sessions and conversions. Four patterns emerge.

The third row is the citation problem our GEO playbook addresses.

Set a baseline now, because there is no clean before

For many sites, the reports arrived days after the expanded AI Overviews were first reported. If your AI impression data does not reach back before August 27, it starts with the new layout in place; take your before period from the Performance report.

1. Export both generative AI reports weekly, so the history is yours.
2. Pull the same pages' organic clicks and impressions for a matching period before August 27.
3. Tag pages by intent: an expanded answer hurts most where the answer is all the searcher wanted.
4. Resolve redirects first: the Search report lists pages by final URL.
5. Annotate August 27 and 28, August 31, any opt-out change, and December 3, 2026.

Forecasting informational traffic without click data

Without clicks, forecast by comparison. Pages with and without AI impressions are two groups exposed to different amounts of the new layout. If the first loses organic clicks faster than similar pages in the second over the same weeks, that gap is your working estimate of the AI layer's cost. No gap means citation is sending traffic, or the effect is too small to see yet.

Model the gap as a range: it holds, widens as more queries get the expanded treatment, or narrows. Google says its research shows users of the dynamic experience "engage deeper in follow-up exploration", and that exploration happens on Google. So plan informational content for reach and assisted demand, which makes measuring marketing beyond the click part of the job. Rebuild the model when click data arrives.

The opt-out: what it controls and what it does not

Excluding a property removes it from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features without, Google says, affecting ranking elsewhere. What it does not do matters as much.

• Training: Google's help page assigns that to Google-Extended, which Google says does not affect inclusion or ranking in Search.
• Search in general: your content may still help Google understand the language of queries.
• Ads: it does not override Merchant Center or Google Ads participation.
• Granularity: it is set per property, not per page, though a child property, such as a URL-prefix property for a blog folder, can have its own.

For most businesses the case against a site-wide opt-out is mechanical. Google's help page says that once you opt out, content from other sites "will still be available in those features, and it may appear similar to yours." Opting out removes your citation, not the answer. It makes sense only where the answer fully substitutes for a page whose value is the visit, and you have evidence that citations send little. Google's reports do not give that evidence yet. Build the baseline first. To test, exclude one folder through a child property, log the date, and watch its organic clicks against your control pages.