Google has finally given marketers a way to see their content inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. The catch is that it shows impressions and little else. Here is what the new reporting actually tells you, what it leaves out, and why Australian SMBs and ecommerce stores should care.

For two years, the most common question we have heard from Australian business owners has been some version of: “Is my site even showing up when people ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI for a recommendation?” Until very recently, the honest answer was a shrug and an estimate. There was no native data. You could see that AI answers were eating into your clicks, but you could not prove where, how often, or for which pages.

That changed on 3 June 2026, when Google rolled out dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports inside Search Console, giving site owners a standalone view of how often their pages appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and the generative features inside Discover. It is a genuine step forward, but it is also narrower than the headlines suggest. For the small and medium businesses we work with across Australia, knowing exactly what this data can and cannot do is the difference between a smarter strategy and a false sense of security.

What actually changed in Search Console

Google’s new reports sit in a separate section of the performance area and are scoped specifically to its generative AI surfaces. At launch, they break visibility down across five dimensions: impressions, the specific pages that surfaced, the countries searches came from, the device used, and the date, with granularity from hourly through to monthly.

Two things matter most about how this rolled out. First, it is being released to a subset of site owners rather than everyone at once, with UK properties first in line, partly in response to regulatory pressure in that market around transparency in AI features. Australian access is on the roadmap, but has not reached most local properties at the time of writing, so do not panic if the tab is not in your account yet. Second, the data does not appear to backfill, with reporting starting around mid-May 2026, which falls right inside the May core update window and makes early read-throughs a little messy.

Google also shipped an opt-out control alongside the report. It lets you remove your content from AI Overviews and AI Mode without affecting your normal Search rankings, and Google has confirmed the setting begins taking effect from 17 June 2026. For most businesses, this is not a button to reach for, but it is worth knowing it exists.

The gap that makes this report only half a tool

Here is the part that disappointed many practitioners, and the reason this is a story about measurement rather than just a new feature. The report shows impressions only. There is no click data, no clickthrough rate, no average position, and no breakdown of the queries or prompts that triggered your appearance.

So you can now see that Google’s AI considered your page worth citing, and roughly how often, but you cannot see whether anyone clicked through, what they actually asked, or whether your brand was named in the answer. You get visibility without the accountability layer that turns visibility into a business case.

That distinction matters enormously for anyone who has to justify a budget. Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is increasingly something Australian businesses are being asked to invest in. The trouble is that the leaders signing off on that spend want to see returns, and Google’s own reporting does not provide the clicks, queries, or brand mentions that make a return-on-investment conversation straightforward. Proving the value of the work is harder than doing the work.

There is a knock-on effect too. Because no single source provides the full picture, many teams end up stitching together a patchwork of tools to approximate AI citation tracking, competitor monitoring, and traditional search reporting, even though those workflows should sit together. For a lean SMB, that sprawl is expensive in both subscription cost and the hours spent reconciling numbers that never quite agree.

Why does this land at a tense moment

The measurement gap would matter on its own. It matters more because of everything else happening in search right now.

Google’s March and May 2026 core updates have been unkind to a particular kind of content. The March update was, by several measures, the most volatile on record, with roughly 79.5% of the top-three results shifting position and about a quarter of the top-ten pages dropping below rank 100, pointing to genuine de-indexing rather than mere reshuffling. The May update, which ran from 21 May to 2 June, was described by many practitioners as even larger, and it again targeted content produced at scale to chase traffic, thin pages, aggregated material, and lightly edited, mass-produced output. The consistent winners across both were brands, original sources, and sites with genuine first-hand expertise.

At the same time, the surfaces themselves are exploding in usage. Google confirmed at its I/O event that AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users and AI Overviews had crossed 2.5 billion, with follow-up queries inside AI Mode climbing more than 40% month on month as people treat search as a multi-step conversation rather than a single lookup. As Google sends fewer clicks to websites overall, the slice of visibility within an AI answer becomes a larger share of how Australian customers find and choose a local business.

Put those two trends together, and the picture is clear. The content that survives is the content that demonstrates real experience and authority, and a growing portion of its value now plays out in AI answers that the standard organic dashboard never captured. If your reporting still looks only at classic rankings and clicks, you are now missing an entire discovery layer.

We have been here before

If this feels familiar, it should. A useful comparison is the “not provided” era, when Google stopped passing keyword data through to analytics, and marketers lost visibility into the exact terms driving their traffic. The industry did not give up. It was adapted by building better external tools and more directional ways of measuring what was working.

The same pattern is emerging for AI search. Google’s first-party reporting confirms that AI visibility is real and worth measuring, while also confirming that it will not answer every question on its own. The signal this week is that AI-visibility reporting is becoming standard across the industry rather than a Google exclusive, with Microsoft already confirming that more AI performance data is coming to Bing Webmaster Tools. Expect every serious search tool to ship its own version this year.

What Australian SMBs and ecommerce stores should actually do?

This is where it gets practical. Here is the approach we would recommend to a local business owner trying to make sense of all this without burning a quarter of their budget on tools they do not need.

Establish your AI impression baseline as soon as you have access. The moment the report appears in your Search Console, export it. Note which pages are already surfacing in AI features and at what relative volume, and if most of your customers are nearby, watch how that overlaps with your local search visibility. You cannot improve what you have not measured, and the earlier you start, the clearer your trend line becomes. Stop reporting on organic in isolation. Add an AI visibility line to your monthly reporting so the discovery layer sits alongside the rest of your digital marketing performance, visible to whoever reads it. Even an impressions-only number, viewed alongside your normal organic performance, tells a more complete story about where attention is coming from and where results may be shifting.

Use the workaround for the missing click data. Until Google adds clicks and queries, cross-reference your AI impression data against your Google Analytics 4 sessions to see whether organic traffic rises and falls in step with periods of high AI impression volume. It is a proxy rather than a perfect answer, but it is directional and honest, which is what these conversations need.

Build content that is genuinely worth citing. The pages winning in AI answers tend to share traits: a clear structure with direct answers under descriptive headings, original data or first-hand experience rather than recycled summaries, current statistics, and visible author credentials. This is the same depth-over-breadth quality bar the recent core updates rewarded, and it rests on the SEO fundamentals that grow an Australian business over time, so the work compounds. For ecommerce stores, that means product and category pages doing more than restating specifications, which is exactly the approach we take to Shopify SEO. Treat a page that earns heavy AI impressions as a signal that the model finds it worth quoting, and reinforce iMeasure across engines, not just Google. Your customers are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot, not only Google’s AI. Serious GEO measurement is a cross-engine exercise. Track brand mentions and citations across the platforms your audience actually uses, and benchmark against the competitors winning those citations, so you can see where visibility is translating into market presence. Make the opt-out decision deliberately, not by accident. For the overwhelming majority of Australian SMBs and ecommerce stores chasing visibility, opting out of AI features would forfeit a growing source of discovery for no ranking benefit. Know the toggle exists, understand what it does, and choose consciously rather than flipping it on a whim, because the wrong choice can reduce reach without improving rankings.

Reframe the ROI conversation around directional measurement. You will not get a clean, click-attributed return-on-investment figure for AI search yet, and pretending otherwise erodes trust. Set the expectation that this is a directional measurement for now, as the industry did with “not provided,” and report against it consistently.

Where Possum SEO fits

The thread running through all of this is that AI search rewards evidence over guesswork, and that the businesses pulling ahead are the ones treating AI visibility as a core metric alongside traditional organic performance rather than an afterthought.

That is the work we do at Possum SEO. We help Australian small and medium businesses and ecommerce stores connect their classic search performance with their visibility inside AI answers, so the reporting tells the whole story and the strategy is built on what is actually moving the numbers. The goal is not to chase a quick spike that the next core update wipes out. It is durable organic growth, built on content with genuine authority behind it, that earns its place in both Google’s rankings and the AI answers your customers increasingly trust.

If you are looking at your reporting and suspecting it is missing a layer, it probably is. Get in touch, and we will take a look with you.

Frequently asked questions

What is the GEO measurement gap? It is the gap between knowing your content appears in AI search results and proving what that visibility is worth. Google’s new reporting shows how often your pages surface in AI features, but not the clicks, queries, or brand mentions that would let you tie that visibility to business outcomes.

What does Google’s new AI performance report in Search Console show? It shows impressions for your pages inside AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover’s AI features, broken down by page, country, device, and date. It does not include clicks, clickthrough rate, average position, or query data.

Can I see clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search Console? Not yet. At launch, the report is impressions only. Google has signalled that more metrics may come over time, but there is no confirmed timeline. For now, cross-referencing impressions with Google Analytics 4 sessions is the best available workaround.

Is the AI performance report available in Australia? It is rolling out in stages, with UK site owners first and wider global access on the roadmap. If the report is not in your Search Console yet, your property is likely not in the early cohort, which is normal.

Should I opt out of Google’s AI features for my content? For most businesses, no. Opting out removes your content from AI Overviews and AI Mode, forfeiting a growing source of discovery, with no benefit to your normal Search rankings. There are narrow cases where it makes sense, but it should be a deliberate decision rather than a default.

How do I get my content cited by AI search engines? Focus on content that demonstrates genuine experience and expertise; structure it for extraction with clear headings and direct answers; keep your data current; show author credentials; and build genuine topical depth rather than scattered, thin pages. These are the same signals the recent core updates rewarded.