When AI impressions rise in Search Console while organic clicks fall, Google is showing links to your pages more often in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and those answers may cover what searchers came for. An AI impression counts a link being shown and doesn't record whether the answer named your brand. Check which pages lost clicks, then read the answers to their queries.
On 29 September 2026, Shruwd, the tool we are building, put this question to Google's AI Overviews and to ChatGPT through OpenAI's API. I read three of the pages those answers cited, and Google's own help pages. None explains how to check whether the AI answer named you, or which competitor it named instead.
What an AI impression counts
Search Console's Generative AI performance report, open to every site since 31 August 2026, counts "how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search." Three details change how you read it.
- A shown link is enough. Google applies its standard impression rules, so the link counts once it's on the results page, whether or not anyone scrolls to it. A link hidden behind a control the searcher has to open counts only when they open it, according to Google's John Mueller.
- Every link in an AI Overview shares one position. In Google's words, "all links in the AI Overview are assigned that same position." A page listed sixth among an Overview's sources gets the Overview's position, which can hold up your average position in the Performance report while your clicks fall.
- These impressions are already in your totals. The report "includes data from the Web search type in the Performance report". It's a slice of the Web numbers you already see, so don't add the two together.
Impressions are its only metric. It has no clicks, click-through rate or position, and no query dimension. You can split it by page, country, date and device, and export it from the Search Console interface. It isn't among the Search Console API's search types, and I couldn't find another way to reach it through the API.
Why impressions go up while clicks go down
Two things move at once. More of your queries show an AI feature, and each shown link adds an impression. And searches that show a summary tend to end in fewer clicks. Without an AI summary, 15% of visits ended in a click on an ordinary result. With one, 8% did. The figures come from Pew Research's March 2025 panel of 900 US adults whose Google searches it recorded.
The clicks you still get from an AI Overview are counted. Google counts a click on an external link in the Overview as a click, and it goes into the Performance report's Web totals with every other click. The AI report has no click column, so there is no AI click-through rate to calculate from Google's data.
How to check whether AI answers are the cause
Google's help page on traffic drops lists the wrong property, crawling problems, manual actions, site moves, seasonality, and a drop in click-through rate without a matching drop in impressions. It doesn't mention AI features. So rule those out, then check the AI answers directly.
1. Rule out the usual causes
Confirm you're looking at the right property, check the Page indexing and Manual actions reports, and compare the same weeks last year. If one of those explains the drop, start there.
2. Find the pages that appear in both reports
Export the Pages table from the generative AI report, and the Pages table from the Performance report for the same dates, sorted by the change in clicks. A page with AI impressions and falling clicks is where the AI answers are the likely cause. A page losing clicks with no AI impressions points somewhere else. The AI report has the Performance report's 1,000-row limit, which matters only if more than 1,000 of your pages have AI impressions.
3. Compare position with click-through rate
For those pages, look at position and click-through rate over the same period. A steady position with a falling click-through rate fits the AI-answer pattern. A falling position points to rankings instead.
4. Read the answers
Take each page's main queries from the Performance report and search them. Is there an AI Overview? Is your page among its links? Does the text name your brand, and which brands does it name? Search each query a few times, on different days, before drawing a conclusion.
An impression doesn't mean the answer named you
The report counts links. The answer is text. Your page can be one of the sources under an Overview whose text recommends a competitor, and that still counts as an impression for you. It works the other way too: an answer can name your brand without linking your site, and that answer gives you no impression.
So rising AI impressions can mean you're becoming a source while the answers send the reader to someone else. On a question like "best X for Y", the name in the text is what the reader leaves with.
Finding out takes a different method from Search Console's. Pick the questions your buyers ask rather than your keywords (here's which prompts to track), put each one to the engines more than once, and count how often the answers name you and each competitor across the whole list. One answer is an anecdote. The AI visibility post covers the counting.
What to do on the pages that lost clicks
- Say what you sell where the page answers the question. If an Overview links your page and its text names a competitor, read the part of your page that answers the query. If that passage doesn't name your product and say what it does, it gives the answer no name of yours to repeat. I haven't seen a test of whether adding it changes the answer.
- Put something on the page a summary is unlikely to carry in full: a calculator, a template, a full comparison table, figures of your own. That may give a reader who saw the answer a reason to click.
- Judge the page on sign-ups as well as clicks. In GA4, look for the page's sign-ups under Organic Search, which is where visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode should land, since the AI Assistant channel excludes them.
What Shruwd shows for this
Shruwd doesn't show AI impressions. On Pro it reads Search Console through the API, and the report isn't one of the API's search types. It measures the other half. On the paid plans, when answers keep citing one of your pages without naming you, Shruwd raises a finding that points at the passage nearest the question and lists the companies the answers named instead. Behind it, each of your buyers' questions is asked three times in every weekly run, on Google AI Overviews and on ChatGPT through OpenAI's API rather than the app, and your mention rate and each tracked competitor's come as ranges.
On Pro, with Search Console and your server logs connected, Shruwd also flags a page with real search demand that no verified AI crawler has fetched in 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
Does Search Console show clicks from AI Overviews?
It counts them but doesn't separate them. A click on a link in an AI Overview counts as a click and lands in the Performance report's Web totals with your other clicks. The generative AI report shows impressions only, so there is no AI click figure to set against them.
Can I see which queries led to my AI impressions?
Not from the generative AI report, which has no query dimension. The nearest I've found is to take the pages with the most AI impressions and read the queries each one gets in the Performance report.
Why did my average position hold while clicks went down?
One possible reason is that every link in an AI Overview takes the Overview's position. A page listed among the sources of an Overview near the top of the results gets that position, whatever its place in the list, and a reader who gets the answer from the Overview may not click.
Is there an API for the generative AI report?
Not one I've found, as of September 2026. The report has an export button in Search Console, but the Search Analytics API's search types are discover, googleNews, news, image, video and web, and the AI report isn't among them. That's why Shruwd, which reads Search Console through the API, doesn't show AI impressions.
