"Are we showing up in AI answers?" is the question I get most from clients right now. Good news: since August 31, 2026 you can answer it with official data, not guesses.
Google: the Generative AI performance report
Google announced the report on June 3, 2026, tested it with a group of sites, and opened it to every site worldwide on August 31. It counts impressions: how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
- Dimensions: pages, countries, dates and devices.
- Search type filters: web text searches, and multimodal searches like Lens or Circle to Search.
- There is also a version for generative AI features in Discover.
- Today the metric is impressions. Clicks from AI features are still mixed into the Web search type of the Performance report.
The inclusion control
In Search Console, Settings, Search generative AI, you decide whether your site can appear in and help ground AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI in Discover. It is included by default. Excluding it does not change your ranking in classic results, and it does not control AI training: that is what the Google-Extended rule in robots.txt is for.
Bing: AI Performance
Bing Webmaster Tools has had an AI Performance report in public preview since February 10, 2026. It shows how your content appears in Copilot and Bing AI summaries, with total citations, cited pages and grounding queries. It is the only official place today where you can see citations, not just impressions.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude in GA4
Visits from AI assistants do not get their own channel by default. In Google Analytics 4, I create a custom channel called AI assistants for traffic whose source contains chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com or claude.ai, placed above Referral. Then I add key events to see which of those visits turn into leads.
What you can't measure: clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode arrive as normal Google organic traffic, and no report shows the prompts people typed. Be careful with tools that claim to see Google's internal data: Google says none of them can.
Set up your baseline in 30 minutes
- Verify your site in Search Console if you have not done it yet.
- In Settings, check that Search generative AI is set to include your site.
- Open the Generative AI performance report, select the last four weeks and export impressions by page and by country.
- Open the Performance report with the Web search type to see total clicks and impressions.
- Create the AI assistants channel in Google Analytics 4.
- Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, where you can import it from Search Console, and open AI Performance.
Reading the report without fooling yourself
A few details change how you read the numbers. Impressions are counted at property level: if two links from your site appear in the same AI answer, that's one impression. The newest data appears as a dotted line and can still change within hours. Tables stop at 1,000 rows, and the totals in the chart and the table can differ because of how data is aggregated. Search Labs experiments are not included.
Discover has its own report
There's a separate report for generative AI features in Discover. Here a link only counts when it is scrolled into view, and one impression is counted per result per session. Not every property has it yet, because it needs enough volume to show data.
Attribute leads, not just visits
Visits are nice; leads pay the bills. On contact forms I add hidden fields that capture the utm_source, the referrer and the landing page, and send them to the CRM with the lead. ChatGPT often adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to its links, which makes this easier, although visits from its mobile app can arrive as direct traffic. And never put personal data into analytics.
When traffic drops
If clicks fall while impressions hold, compare periods, check which pages are affected and cross them with the Generative AI report. Google says clicks from results pages that include AI Overviews tend to be higher quality, with people spending more time on the site. That is something to verify in your own analytics: look at engagement and conversions, not just sessions.
Think twice before excluding your site
Some owners exclude their site from AI features out of fear. Excluding it removes your impressions and clicks from AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI in Discover, usually within a day or two. It doesn't protect you from training either, because that is a separate decision made with Google-Extended. Make the call with data, not with a headline.
What I report to clients every month
- AI impressions by page and country, and how they changed.
- Which new pages entered AI features, and which did not.
- Indexing of new content ten to fifteen days after publishing.
- Citations in Copilot and Bing summaries.
- Visits and leads from AI assistants, and the next actions.
Document your AI crawler decisions
Measurement only makes sense if the setup behind it doesn't change silently. Which AI crawlers can read your site affects whether assistants can cite you. If you want to be cited, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot need access, and training is a separate decision. Keep in mind that agents acting on a user's request, like ChatGPT-User or Perplexity-User, may not follow robots.txt. Whatever you decide, write it down with the date and review it every quarter, because crawler names change and new ones appear.
My routine for clients: a four-week baseline, a monthly review of which pages enter AI features, and a check after every batch of new content. If you want that dashboard for your company, let’s set it up together.
Sources
- Generative AI performance report (Search) · Search Console Help
- Search generative AI control · Search Console Help
- New opportunities, control and insights for website owners · Google blog, June 3, 2026, updated August 31, 2026
- Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools · Bing Webmaster blog, February 10, 2026
- Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search · Google Search Central, updated July 10, 2026
- AI features and your website · Google Search Central, updated December 10, 2025
How I made this article: I researched and drafted it with the help of Claude, then checked every fact myself against the official documentation listed in the sources.