Google Search Console Now Reports AI Traffic. Here's What My Numbers Say.

I opened Google Search Console on Tuesday and found a new report I'd never seen before. "Search Generative AI" in the performance section. Two sub-reports: one for Search, one for Discover. After years of guessing how much AI search affects my clients' sites, Google finally gave us data.

Sort of.

The report launched June 3, 2026. I've spent the past few days clicking through it for every site I manage. Here's what I found, what's still missing, and whether any of this is actually useful yet.

Google Just Gave Us AI Traffic Data. Kind Of.

The new Google Search Console AI traffic report shows impressions from two sources: AI Overviews (the AI-generated summaries that appear above organic results) and AI Mode (the full conversational search experience Google launched earlier this year). There's a separate report for Discover that tracks AI features there too.

This is the first time Google has told website owners anything concrete about their visibility in AI-generated search results. Before this, you were guessing. You'd see traffic dip on an informational keyword and wonder if an AI Overview was eating your clicks, but you had no way to confirm it.

The report is rolling out to UK website owners first, driven by a regulatory mandate from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. If you're outside the UK, you might not have it yet.

What the Report Actually Shows (and What It Doesn't)

Here's where it gets frustrating. The report gives you impressions only. No clicks. No CTR. No queries. No average position.

You can break down impressions by page, country, device, and date. The date granularity is solid: hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. So you can see trends over time. But you can't see which queries triggered your pages to appear in AI results. And you can't see if anyone actually clicked through.

Google's response: "We will introduce additional metrics over time." Translation: we gave you the minimum the CMA required, and we'll add more when we're ready. Or forced to.

For context, this is the same Search Console that had an impression overcounting bug running for 11 months without anyone noticing. So take the early data with appropriate skepticism. I've written before about how the panic reaction to AI traffic loss does more damage than the traffic loss itself. The same applies here: don't overreact to data that's incomplete by design.

Here's What My Client Sites Show

I checked the new report across seven client sites in different verticals: a law firm, two e-commerce stores, a SaaS product, a local contractor, a B2B consultancy, and my own blog.

The pattern was consistent. Informational content pages (blog posts, guides, FAQ pages) showed the highest AI impression counts. Service pages and product pages showed almost nothing. This makes sense: AI Overviews are overwhelmingly triggered by informational queries, not transactional ones.

For one client's legal blog, I saw AI impressions that were roughly 15-20% of their regular search impressions for the same pages. That's not nothing. For the e-commerce sites, it was closer to 3-5%. For the local contractor, barely a blip.

The honest take: it's hard to know what these numbers mean without click data. An impression in an AI Overview might mean your content was cited prominently with a link, or it might mean three words from your page appeared in a paragraph nobody read. Google doesn't distinguish between those scenarios yet.

Is it useful? Barely, right now. But it's a baseline. In six months, when Google adds clicks and CTR, you'll want to know where you started.

The Opt-Out Toggle: Should You Block AI From Using Your Content?

Alongside the new report, Google added a toggle that lets you opt out of AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI Overviews in Discover. You can configure it now, but it doesn't take effect until June 17, 2026.

Before you flip it, three things you need to know:

It does NOT affect your regular search rankings. Google explicitly stated this won't be used as a ranking signal. Your organic positions stay the same.

It does NOT affect Gemini. If someone asks Gemini about your topic, your content can still be cited. The toggle only covers Search and Discover, not the standalone Gemini app.

It only applies to Google. Other AI systems (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) aren't affected. If your concern is AI systems using your content in general, this toggle solves maybe 30% of that problem.

My take: don't opt out. Not yet. The GEO conversation is still evolving, and removing yourself from AI results means removing yourself from where a growing percentage of search is heading. Unless you're a publisher whose entire business model depends on click-through traffic (news sites, ad-supported content), opting out trades future visibility for a principle.

The Numbers Everyone Should Know About AI Search Right Now

48% of queries now show an AI Overview, up from 34.5% in December 2025. That's nearly half of all Google searches.

When an AI Overview appears, organic CTR drops by 61%. Position 1, which normally gets 28-34% of clicks, drops to 8-12%. A field study by Search Engine Journal found a 38% reduction in outbound organic clicks on triggered queries. And in AI Mode, 93% of searches end without a single click.

Zero-click searches have risen from 54% to 72%. That's the macro trend.

But here's the part most people skip: cited brands earn approximately 120% more organic clicks per impression than uncited brands. And visitors who do click through from AI Overview pages convert at 23x the rate of standard search visitors.

Read that again. 23x. The traffic is smaller, but the people who click are far more qualified. They've already read a summary, decided your content was worth exploring further, and clicked through intentionally. That's a fundamentally different visitor than someone scanning ten blue links and picking the first one.

The implication: if your SEO strategy is "maximize clicks," you're going to have a bad time. If your strategy is "be the source AI cites," the math might actually work in your favor.

What I'm Telling My Clients

Every client call this month has included some version of "what does AI search mean for us?" Here's my current playbook:

Don't panic. The data is too thin to make drastic changes. Anyone selling you a "GEO audit" right now is selling you certainty that doesn't exist yet. Google published their own guide on how to rank in AI search results, and it's mostly the same advice as regular SEO: be authoritative, be specific, be cited by other sources.

Don't opt out. Unless you're a news publisher running on ad revenue, the visibility is worth more than the principle. Keep your content in AI results. Monitor the new report for trends.

Focus on being the cited source. AI Overviews pull from pages that demonstrate expertise, use specific data, and cite credible sources. This is basically E-E-A-T in practice. If you're already writing genuinely useful content, you're most of the way there. I wrote about what the research shows on how to get cited by ChatGPT, and the principles overlap heavily with Google's AI citations.

Watch your brand queries. If someone searches your brand name and gets an AI summary, you want to control what that summary says. That's a separate problem from organic rankings, and one I've covered in how to control what AI search says about your brand.

Set up a baseline now. Even though the data is impressions-only, start tracking it. When Google adds click and CTR data later this year, you'll want the historical comparison.

This Is Just the Beginning

Google said they'll add more metrics over time. The CMA deadline for full compliance is March 2027, which means we'll likely see click data, query data, and possibly CTR metrics added to the report before then.

Within 6-12 months, this report will be a standard part of every SEO audit and monthly client report. The sites that start tracking early will have the longest baselines and the best understanding of how AI search affects their specific verticals.

Right now, the data is thin. Impressions without clicks are like a speedometer without a fuel gauge. You know something is happening, but you don't know if it's sustainable.

But the direction is clear. Google is building transparency into AI search, whether because they want to or because regulators are making them. Either way, the information is coming. The question is whether you'll be ready to use it.

If you need help making sense of what the new Search Console AI traffic report means for your site specifically, let's talk.