The Generative AI performance report is an impression ledger, not a query index

On 3 June 2026 Google announced dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console. The product is real. The risk is treating it like the classic Performance report with a new coat of paint. On the published documentation, it is an impression ledger for AI Overviews and AI Mode (plus a Discover twin), not a query-level AI citation index.

Question. What fields does Google document for the Search Generative AI performance report, and what eligibility gates sit in front of those impressions?

Method. Documentation-plane audit on 31 August 2026 of the Search Central launch post, Help Center answer 16984139 (Search report), Help Center answer 16908024 (Search generative AI control), the AI features site-owner guide, the generative AI optimization guide, and the Search Analytics API how-to. No property CSV export in this pass. No third-party API failure treated as a primary fact.

Result: documented fields

Fact. The 3 June 2026 Search Central Blog post lists five information types for the new reports: impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search), and dates (hourly through monthly granularity). It states that generative AI visibility remains inside the overall Performance report while adding a separate dedicated view, and that rollout started on a subset of sites. (Launch post.)

Fact. Help Center answer 16984139 scopes the Search report to impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Configurable dimensions are Dates, Pages (final URL after redirects; usually assigned to the canonical), Countries, and Devices. The chart aggregates impressions at property level unless a URL filter is applied. The same answer says the report's data is included in the Web search type of the ordinary Performance report. It does not list Queries, Clicks, CTR, or Position as dimensions or metrics of this report. (Help Center.)

Fact. Reasons the Help Center gives for not seeing the report include: not enough generative AI impressions; property still outside the rollout; and having excluded the site via Search generative AI control. (Same Help Center page.)

Eligibility is still indexing-first, with a Console control on top

Fact. The AI features documentation states that to be eligible as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, meeting ordinary Search technical requirements. It states there are no additional technical requirements, and that nosnippet / data-nosnippet / max-snippet / noindex remain the preview controls. (AI features.)

Fact. The generative AI optimization guide repeats that eligibility baseline, then adds an explicit Console-layer condition: a site must be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console to be eligible for display in those features. (AI optimization guide.)

Fact. Help Center answer 16908024 defines the Search generative AI control under Settings -> Search generative AI. Choices are Include (default for properties without a parent override), Exclude, or Inherit from parent. Exclude prevents links and grounding in the listed generative AI features and is not described as a ranking signal for the rest of Search. It does not replace Google-Extended for training limits or noindex for full Search removal. (Control.)

Interpretation

In indexing-first terms, generative AI surfaces still pull from the Search index. The new report tells you which URLs were shown how often, where, and on which device, not which queries triggered the fan-out or whether a citation converted. Classic Performance remains the bag that still holds Web traffic including AI-feature clicks under the documented counting rules. Separating those clicks from non-AI Web traffic is a measurement problem the dedicated report does not, on these pages, claim to solve via query or CTR columns.

The Search Analytics API how-to continues to describe searchanalytics.query as exposing Performance report data, with examples built around query, page, country, and device. As retrieved on 31 August 2026, that page does not document a generative-AI search type or a dedicated generative AI report endpoint. Absence in documentation is not a permanence claim; it is a documentation fact for this date.

Limits

• Rollout is partial; missing UI is not proof of zero AI impressions.
• Help Center impression counting and property-vs-page aggregation can make chart and table totals disagree; that is ordinary Performance hygiene, restated here.
• This note does not export any property CSV and does not measure casinokrisa.com or any other site's AI impressions.
• Product fields can expand; Google's launch post already says additional metrics may arrive over time.

Takeaway

Date the reporting surface separately from any ranking story. On the sources above, Search Console's Generative AI performance report is a dated impression ledger with page, geo, device, and time. Eligibility still starts at crawl -> index -> snippet, then passes through an Include control. Treat query-level AI attribution as an open measurement gap until Google documents those fields.

Suggested citation

Mikhail Drozdov. "The Generative AI performance report is an impression ledger, not a query index." Casinokrisa Research, 31 August 2026. https://casinokrisa.com/blog/gsc-gen-ai-performance-report-2026-06

Mikhail Drozdov is an AI Search & Indexing Systems Researcher. Casinokrisa is the research platform. Person URL: https://casinokrisa.com/person/mikhail-drozdov