How to Track AI Overviews

What Google's own report shows

Google provides one free report for this, and it measures exposure, not visits. The generative AI performance report in Search Console covers AI Overviews and AI Mode. Its help page defines an impression as a link to your site being shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search.

Handle with care:

• Availability. Google's help page says the report rolled out to all websites worldwide as of August 31, 2026. It may still not appear if your site has had too few generative AI impressions, or if it is excluded from the features.
• Totals. The chart counts at property level, so several links to your site in one response count once. Table totals can differ.
• Freshness. The most recent data is preliminary and can change.
• Limits. The usual 1,000-row limit applies, and exported values shown as "~" or "-" come out as zeros.
• Two features, maybe one line. Check whether your view separates AI Overviews from AI Mode. We could not confirm from the help page alone.

Where the clicks are

Google's documentation says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the Web search type of the Performance report, not in a report of its own. So clicks from AI links sit inside your normal Google clicks, and the same applies to GA4, which shows them as Google organic. You cannot filter to AI-only clicks.

You can still reason about them. Compare the pages that gained AI impressions with their total impressions and clicks. If AI impressions rise and clicks do not, the summary may be answering the question without a visit, which fits Pew's finding that people click a regular result in 8% of visits with an AI summary against 15% without.

A 20-minute monthly routine

1. Export the AI report by page for the last 28 days and the 28 days before. Mind the 1,000-row limit.
2. Export the Performance report for the same two periods, same pages.
3. Put them side by side. For each page note AI impressions, total impressions and clicks.
4. Search ten queries by hand in a private window from the country you sell to. Record whether an AI Overview appears, which sites it links, and whether yours is among them.
5. Write one line per important page about what changed.

An illustrative reading: a service page goes from 4,000 to 6,500 AI impressions (up 62%) while clicks stay at 310. Exposure grew without extra visits. Reasonable responses are to give the visitor a reason to click that a summary cannot supply, such as a price calculator, a downloadable checklist or a booking link, and to check the summary describes you correctly.

Five patterns in the numbers, and what to do

When you put the two reports side by side, most pages fall into one of these patterns. The readings are our interpretation, not Google's.

Keep notes on any change you made. A table of numbers without a record of what you did cannot be interpreted next quarter.

A simple sheet layout

Use one row per page per month. Columns: page address, month, AI impressions, total impressions, clicks, a yes or no for "cited in manual check", and a free-text note. After three months you will have a small history that shows whether your edits and Google's changes line up.

Third-party trackers

Several tools detect AI Overviews on a set of queries and report whether you are cited. Ahrefs Brand Radar, for example, lists AI Overviews among the platforms it tracks. They help when you follow a large number of queries or competitors. Our tools comparison lists published prices, and none is needed to start.

Limits to remember

• A manual check shows one place, one moment and one profile. Results vary by location and over time.
• AI Overviews do not appear on every query. Pew found summaries on 18% of the searches it sampled.
• A drop in impressions can follow a Google change you cannot see, not a fault on your site.

For ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot, use the broader prompt-sampling method. To improve the pages you are tracking, read how to appear in Google AI Overviews, and for help with the whole programme see our AI search optimization service. Open the report today and save a baseline export.