Google Admits Search Console Reporting For AI Search Is Inadequate via @sejournal, @martinibuster

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SEJ STAFF Roger Montti 6 hours ago ⋅ 5 min read SEJ STAFF Roger Montti Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com Bio Follow Google’s John Mueller answered a question about search console reporting’s inadequacies, defending the shortcomings as based on the inherent complexity of AI search itself. The new Search Console report was announced in June 2026, initially rolling out to a “subset” of websites then fully accessible globally on August 31, 2026. The report primarily focuses on impressions, showing how many times a URL appears in AI search surfaces, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. The data is filtered, meaning that the values shown are already included in the regular search performance report. Someone posted on Reddit that Search Console’s AI Overviews metrics follow the ten blue link legacy concepts of impressions and positions, providing what the Redditor described as an inaccurate snapshot of a website’s performance. The Redditor’s overall takeaway is that the AI Overviews metrics can be misleading if SEOs or site owners review it “Google’s line is that standard impression rules apply to AI Overviews, which sounds like a non answer until you unpack what the standard rule actually is. It counts an impression when the item appears on the page of results that got served, whether or not it was scrolled into view. So no, the user doesn’t have to see it. If the AI Overview rendered and your link was in it, that’s an impression even if they never scrolled that far down. Show More is the exception and it goes the other way. The standard rule carves out anything the user has to click to reveal, so links sitting behind that expansion don’t count until someone expands it. Those numbers are understating your exposure rather than inflating it. Two other things about that report that catch people. Every link inside an AI Overview gets assigned the position of the AI Overview itself, so the average position you’re looking at is the slot the AIO occupied on the page, not where your link sat among the others in it. And the report is a filtered view of data already in your Web search type, not something sitting on top of it, so don’t add the two together.” Google’s John Mueller answered that he agreed with the Redditor’s assessment of Search Console’s search performance report that’s filtered for AI search and confirmed that it’s hard to do it in a way that’s useful. “This is pretty much it – we tried to document it as clearly as possible in the help center page (which you can find if you search for “impressions clicks search console”), it’s a giant doc in the meantime. Position for these is hard to do in a way that makes it useful, so we’re currently tracking it like we do for many search features (as a block), & it’s not separated out in the Gen-AI performance report.” Mueller continued his answer to say that search is a lot more than the ten blue links and that it’s hard to map that paradigm to the way the reality of how search is today. “Search results pages have a lot of ways for users to interact nowadays, so the old “position 1 – 10″ is hard to map, or to make useful for site owners. If any of you have thoughts on what would be useful in terms of tracking position, I’d love to hear & am happy to discuss with the team.” The takeaway there is that yes, the ten blue links is no longer the reality and that’s been the case for many years. But for some reason, Google continues to approach search console in a way that kind of tries to map it to impression type data that isn’t entirely successful with AI search and apparently they don’t currently know a better way to do it. Add SEJ as a preferred source on Google Read Full Bio SEJ STAFF Roger Montti Owner - Martinibuster.com at Martinibuster.com I have 25 years hands-on experience in SEO, evolving along with the search engines by keeping up with the latest ... Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. The Data Behind Google's AI Overviews: What Sundar Pichai Won't Tell You 3 Ways AI Is Changing PPC Reporting (With Examples To Streamline Your Reporting) From Search To Discovery: Why SEO Must Evolve Beyond The SERP Join 75,000+ Digital Leaders. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses -- and careers.

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Source: Search Engine Journal

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