Google has rolled out a new "Generative AI" section in Search Console, now widely available at Performance > Search Results > Generative AI (Practical Ecommerce). The section reports on a page's visibility in AI Overviews and AI Mode, as well as genAI features in Discover, and includes URLs with impressions in Google's AI answers, the number of impressions for each URL within a set period, and searchers' countries and devices by URL (Practical Ecommerce). However, the section provides no filters to identify which search feature produced which impressions.
An impression in this context means a URL appears anywhere in an AI answer and does not require an action or human viewing (Practical Ecommerce). This means URLs count as impressions even if hidden behind "Show more" or "Show all" buttons that searchers never click. For commerce practitioners, the new data enables actionable optimization: downloading top-traffic URLs from standard Performance reports and comparing them with top-impression URLs from the Generative AI section reveals which high-traffic pages lack AI visibility and which pages gain AI impressions despite limited traditional search traffic (Practical Ecommerce). Concurrent with the rollout, Search Console now allows sites to block content and URLs in AI answers, though the feature defaults to allowing them (Practical Ecommerce).