Search Console AI Data: Questions Your Website Team Should Answer

The short answer: hand over the report, the toggle rule and a few questions

Give your web team or agency a short written brief: point them to the Generative AI performance report in Search Console, state that the opt-out toggle stays off unless you approve a change, and ask which pages earn AI impressions and why. Google confirmed on August 31, 2026, that both the report and the Search generative AI control are live for every website in the world, so whoever manages your site should already have access.

A written brief keeps everyone working from the same facts. It also gives you a way to judge the work, because the report finally puts a number on something that was invisible before.

Why the owner should set the direction

This is the first time Google has offered owners a direct view of their AI visibility. The impressions and pages dimensions are the closest thing to a scoreboard that generative engine optimization has had so far, which means your team now has a measure they can be held to.

The audience behind that number is large. AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly active users and AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users, so a growing share of your customers read an AI answer before they ever see a list of links.

What your team should know the report contains

Make sure everyone reads the report the same way before the brief goes any further. These are the facts to share:

• Coverage. It counts impressions from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover.
• Filters. Your team can break the numbers down by page, country, device and date.
• Limits. It does not include click data, so nobody should promise click figures from it.
• Where to find it. Inside Google Search Console, open Performance in the left sidebar, then the expandable section labeled Generative AI or Search generative AI below the main chart.

Questions to put to your web team or agency

Share these questions ahead of your next review. Ask for a written answer to each one, so you can hold the next update against it:

1. Does our property show data in the report yet, and if not, is that simply because we lack enough impressions?
2. Which pages earn the most AI impressions, and what do those pages have in common?
3. How will you apply those patterns to our other service pages?
4. Which countries and devices bring in most of our AI impressions?
5. How have AI impressions trended since the last round of content changes?
6. Are all of our important pages indexed and eligible for Google Search?
7. How do our pages perform on load time, mobile responsiveness and crawlability?
8. Is any page on our site carrying low-value AI-generated filler?

Question 6 matters more than it looks. Google says the same foundational SEO best practices apply to its generative AI search features, and there are no extra technical requirements for appearing as a supporting link, so eligibility in regular search is the entry ticket.

Set the rule on the opt-out toggle

Make the toggle decision yourself and put it in writing, so nobody flips it during routine work. The control is a property-level switch, which means it pulls your whole site out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI Overviews in Discover, as links and as grounding.

For a business that wants new customers, leaving it off is usually the right call, because people now ask Search entirely new kinds of questions and those impressions are free exposure. Narrow exceptions exist, such as sensitive client information, subscription content that loses value once summarized, or a publisher with a specific editorial reason.

Finer control may arrive later. The UK Competition and Markets Authority has given Google until March 2027 to introduce page-level controls, but today the switch is all or nothing.

Write the content expectations into the brief

• Service pages first. Ask for clear, factual service and product pages, with commercial content prioritized and the best answers easy to extract.
• Proof over filler. AI models favor clear, expert-authored, recent and evidence-backed content that comes from consistent publishing.
• No shortcuts. Google's August spam update warns that using AI to manipulate search results is not a good long-term strategy.
• Regular updates. Put your most important pages on a schedule for review and refresh.

Give them the right context for August

Google's most recent confirmed spam update began on August 18, 2026, and ran for about two days and 16 hours according to the Search Status Dashboard. If your rankings moved around then, ask your team to check that update before blaming the new reports, and request traditional and AI performance in the same review.

Remember too that the rollout started slowly in the first week of June. A smaller site with no report yet is normal, and the right response is patience rather than a rebuild.

A short brief you can send this week

• Check whether the Generative AI report has data for our site.
• Show me which pages earn the most AI impressions and what they share.
• Apply those patterns to our other service pages.
• Leave the Search generative AI control off unless I approve a change.
• Cover traditional and AI performance together in every update you send me.

If the report shows thin or no AI impressions, your content probably needs structural work before Google's AI systems will cite it. AppWT builds and optimizes websites that earn visibility in traditional search and in AI-powered results, so contact us or schedule a call to go through what your data shows and what to do next.