Google is beginning to test two new Search Console features. One is a toggle that lets you control whether your site appears in generative AI Search features. The other is dedicated performance reports showing when URLs from a site appear in generative AI features across Search and Discover.
Both features are rolling out to a subset of websites in the UK first. Google says it will expand availability globally after testing.
The AI Visibility Toggle
Sites that use the toggle to exclude themselves will not receive traffic or impressions from AI Overviews, AI Mode, or AI Overviews in Discover. Google says the control will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these AI features.
Google describes this as building on prior tools like snippet controls and Google-Extended. Snippet controls manage how content is displayed in traditional search results. Google-Extended lets you block content from being used to train Google’s AI models.
This new toggle is specifically about whether a site appears in live generative AI Search experiences.
What The New Reports Show
Per Google’s blog post, impressions show how often URLs from a site appeared in generative AI features in Search and Discover. The reports also break the data down by page, country, device, and date, with granularity down to the hourly level.
Generative AI feature data was already included in the overall performance report. The new reports provide a dedicated view for AI visibility.
The reports omit click data and query-level metrics, which are vital for site owners’ performance. Google is “continuing to work with website owners to understand what insights will be most helpful” and plans to add more metrics over time.
Background
We’ve have been asking Google for AI-specific data in Search Console since AI Overviews launched in the U.S. in 2024.
When Google confirmed that AI Mode data counted toward Search Console totals, there was no way to isolate AI-driven traffic from organic search in the reports. John Mueller clarified that all links within an AI Overview share a single position in Search Console, making it difficult to assess which placements perform well.
Our coverage has consistently tracked the measurement gap. Two weeks ago, we reported that Google had expanded link surfaces in AI features without providing click data specific to those surfaces.
Meanwhile, Microsoft moved faster on AI search reporting. Bing Webmaster Tools launched an AI Performance dashboard in February. It added grounding query-to-page mapping in March and previewed Citation Share at SEO Week in May.
Why This Matters
The new reports offer the first dedicated view of a website’s visibility in Google’s AI Search features, giving you a clearer picture than previous bundled reports, where AI-driven visibility was hard to isolate in Search Console.
What’s missing is click data specific to AI features. Impressions tell you how often your pages appeared, but not how often people clicked through from those appearances. That gap has been the central question in SEJ’s coverage of AI Search measurement for over a year, and this announcement doesn’t close it yet.
Looking Ahead
Google says it will test both features with a subset of UK websites before expanding them globally. The company says it will add more metrics to the reports over time, but hasn’t named specific additions or timelines.
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