Search Console AI and Visual Search Reports Explained

On 3 June 2026 the Google Search Central blog announced the "Search Generative AI performance reports". They are two separate reports, one for Search and one for Discover, and they show your site's visibility in generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. An AI Overview is the AI-written summary that appears above a search result; Discover is the feed of content Google suggests to a user independently of any search.

According to Google's post, this data was already in the overall performance report; what is new is that it has been gathered in its own view. The reports were opened first to a subset of sites, and Google said further metrics would be added over time. If you cannot see the report in your account yet, the gradual rollout mentioned in the announcement may be the reason.

The announcement lists the items below. The report is impression-based: the announcement names no click or ranking metric, so do not read it as a traffic report.

Each item answers a concrete question for a business: which of my pages show up in AI summaries, and are they my main service pages? If the answer is an unexpected blog post, that is useful to know in itself.

• Impressions: how often your URLs appear in these features
• Pages: which of your pages appear
• Countries: in which countries they appear
• Devices: on which devices they appear (in the Search report only)
• Dates: hourly, daily, weekly and monthly views over time

On 24 September 2026 the Google Search Central blog announced multimodal search reporting for the web. Multimodal search means asking with an image rather than with typed words. The report covers the routes below.

The performance reports now carry a new "multimodal" search type filter. It appears both in the search results report and in the generative AI report. Google wrote that it was rolling out globally starting that day, and the data can be exported with Export. One important condition: the view appears only for sites that receive traffic from these queries. If you cannot see the filter, either no visits reach your site by these routes or the feature has not yet reached your account.

• Searches made with Lens
• Circle to Search on Android
• Uploading an image to Google Search
• Right-clicking in Chrome and choosing "Search this image"

The reports are a starting point for decisions, not a verdict. In the generative AI report, look first at the list of pages. If the pages shown are your service and product pages, that may be a good sign; if only old blog posts appear, it makes sense to review how clearly your main pages describe what you do.

A business whose product or premises photographs stand out in the multimodal filter should ask how usable its images are: a sharp photograph, an understandable file name, alt text and explanatory text beside the image. These are not things Google said about these reports; they are general good practice, and the reports only tell you which pages are seen. For the overall health of your site, the rabbitclip SEO audit tool is a good first look, and you can check how you appear in AI answers with our AI visibility tool.

The most common mistake is to take an impression for a customer. An impression says your URL appeared somewhere; it does not say that anyone clicked, called or bought. The second is to read the report expecting a benchmark: with no earlier period to compare against, you cannot speak of a rise or a fall.

The third is to build a strategy on the first week of data. Google said further metrics would be added over time, so today's view may not be the final one.

• Taking an impression for a click or a customer
• Interpreting a rise or fall with no comparison period
• Deciding on the data of a single day
• Confusing appearing in the report with ranking high

If your site is a small brochure page and your search traffic is already very low, the reports may come out empty or limited, and the multimodal filter shows only for sites that receive traffic from those queries. In that case it is more productive to tidy your basic pages than to spend time hunting through the report.

There is also a wrong choice: steering content production by these reports. A report shows only what happened; what to write should be decided by the questions your customers actually ask. Opening the report once a month and making a short note is enough for most businesses.