Search Console now shows AI-search reports. Should you opt out?
Open Search Console before you rewrite the homepage. On 31 August 2026 Google said the AI performance report and the generative-search control are available to every site. Coverage: Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, and Aleyda’s weekly notes.
The report records whether your pages showed in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative features in Discover. You can break that down by impression, page, country, device, and date. It does not record clicks. People may read the summary and leave, so whether anyone opened the site belongs in the classic search report and in GA4. Do not wait on this table for a click column that is not there.
What an owner usually says in the meeting
Last month someone held a phone up for us. The result had a long paragraph, the company name flashed once, and the blue links sat far down the page. Fewer people clicked through. They asked whether to turn AI off.
Off means your pages stop grounding those summaries. Google is clear: you also stop getting impressions from those features. For a large publisher that can be a bargaining chip. For most small firms, turning it off means giving up the chance to be named at all. If you expect classic blue links to rise because you left the summaries, you have misread the control. The two switches are separate. Ordinary search does not suddenly improve because you opted out of generative features.
Do this in the console
The person who can open Search Console does these steps. Do not relay them through a colleague who has no access. Once a month is enough.
- Confirm the property is
sc-domain:your domain, or the URL prefix you actually use. Do not read www and the bare host as two separate stories. - Then open the AI or generative report. Labels may still move. Trust the screen that day, not a memorised English name.
- Write down the URLs mentioned this month: home, a service page, or an old article. Leave unmentioned pages alone this pass.
- Open the first paragraph on those URLs and check that it says what you do and where you work. If the summary is wrong, edit that short block. Do not rewrite the whole page.
- Leave the generative toggle on unless counsel explicitly says to leave.
- Clicks and forms still come from the classic search report and GA4. This AI report is not a sales sheet.
If you cannot find the menu, do not panic. Labels still move: some accounts show it under performance, some under AI in search. Search the console for “AI” or “generative”. That is faster than memorising the English label. Match the property: we use the domain-level sc-domain so www and the bare host are not two stories.
After you turn the toggle off, classic blue links usually stay, and your sentences drop out of the summaries. Large publishers use that in negotiation. The more common result for a small firm: a guest asks a chat tool what the company does, and the answer gets thinner, or it copies someone else’s description. To show up again you turn the switch back on and wait to be picked up. It does not restore the same day.
Do not put this report on the same sheet as sales. At month end we check three things: how many form emails arrived, whether anyone searched the brand term, and whether the summary we sampled names the wrong city. When impressions are high and forms are zero, open that landing page and see whether it shows a form or an email before you talk about opting out of AI.
On our own site the numbers are still small. Few brand impressions and zero clicks do not mean the new report is broken. They mean few people are searching the name yet. The fix is to write the service pages clearly and submit new URLs in the sitemap, not to hit opt-out first. See metrics beyond pageviews and structure.
FAQs
Does opting out hide us from classic Google Search too?
No. Google controls generative features separately from classic search. You turn off surfaces such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. The site does not vanish from ordinary results. You do lose impressions that came from those summaries. Classic blue links do not improve because you opted out.
The report has no clicks. Is it broken?
No. This AI performance report does not record clicks. People may read the summary and leave, or never scroll down to your URL. For the business, watch whether forms arrive, whether anyone calls, and whether brand queries show up in the classic search report.
Do we need to check it daily?
No. Once a month, the person who can open Search Console notes which pages were mentioned and whether the summary names the wrong city or service. Those first paragraphs are what you edit next month.
Review Search Console with us Site structure
Sources: SEL 31 Aug 2026; SEJ.