Answer
Jun 16, 2025 - 01:47 PM
Yes, Google will report AI Mode in Google Search Console, here are some highlights from their documentation:
Some notes on how this is all working:
Something to look out for:
The SEO ecosystem has been communicating about how clicks and impressions have been decoupling. We've seen that very long tail Q&A content maintains the relationship in growth....but we do expect that more general content that isn't speaking directly to the customer's request for information....that this will continue. So, you won't see as many clicks as you may see impressions.....as the AI answer is good enough and they searcher doesn't need to dig into the reference. In that case, be on the lookout for Google to create a reward for just being referenced....perhaps in growing retargeting audiences when your content is referenced or something else innovative....to keep the incentive in place for businesses to continue to create valuable content moving forward.
Some notes on how this is all working:
- Clicks: As you can see....a click on any external link in AI mode counts as a click. This is pretty straightforward and expected.
- Impressions: If your page appears in a Google AI response, they are going to give you credit through the impression. This is going to make impressions (in our opionion) much more important to know whether the information that you are publishing is actually valued by customers. If you're not growing impressions consistently, you may be publishing things that simply aren't original enough to be referenced.
- Position: They say this is calculated just as they do with standard search results....but this will be interesting because many times we see that Google is combining references from two sites...and many times the same site is referenced multiple times within the AI overview. We expect this to mature over time.
Something to look out for:
The SEO ecosystem has been communicating about how clicks and impressions have been decoupling. We've seen that very long tail Q&A content maintains the relationship in growth....but we do expect that more general content that isn't speaking directly to the customer's request for information....that this will continue. So, you won't see as many clicks as you may see impressions.....as the AI answer is good enough and they searcher doesn't need to dig into the reference. In that case, be on the lookout for Google to create a reward for just being referenced....perhaps in growing retargeting audiences when your content is referenced or something else innovative....to keep the incentive in place for businesses to continue to create valuable content moving forward.
