For the last couple of years, most business owners have had no real way of knowing whether Google’s AI answers were mentioning their website. You could search a few questions yourself and hope for the best, but that was about it.
That has changed. Google Search Console now has a report that shows how often your site appears in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and a setting that lets you remove your site from those features altogether. Both are now available to every website, including yours.
Here’s what the new report tells you, what it doesn’t, and why most Australian small businesses should think carefully before touching that opt out switch.
What’s actually new in Search Console
There are two pieces. The first is the generative AI performance report, which sits in the Performance section of Search Console. The second is the Search generative AI control, which lives under Settings.
Google first tested both with a small group of UK site owners in June, then widened the rollout. According to Google’s Search Console Help page, as of 31 August 2026 the control has been rolled out to all websites worldwide. Google also updated its developer documentation on what you can control in October, so this is very much a live topic.
How to read the generative AI performance report
The report counts impressions: how many times links to your site were shown to someone inside an AI feature on Google Search. Google’s help documentation says it covers AI Overviews and AI Mode, and you can break the numbers down by:
- Pages: which URLs on your site are being shown
- Countries: where the searches came from
- Dates: by day, week or month (in US Pacific Time, so expect the days to look slightly off)
- Devices: desktop, tablet or mobile
There’s also a filter to split normal text searches from multimodal ones, such as Google Lens and Circle to Search. If you sell something people photograph and search for (think tiles, plants or car parts), that split is worth a look.
What the report doesn’t show
This is the part that trips people up. The report shows impressions only. There are no clicks and no search queries, so you can see that a page was shown in an AI answer, but not what the person asked or whether they visited your site.
Two more catches. If your site hasn’t had enough AI impressions, the report may not appear at all. And the newest data is preliminary, so give it a few days before drawing conclusions.
In plain terms: treat it as a visibility report, not a traffic report. Your normal Performance report and Google Analytics are still where you judge leads and sales.
Should you opt out of AI Overviews?
The Search generative AI control has three settings: Include (the default), Exclude, and Inherit from parent for sub properties.
If you choose Exclude, Google says your links and content won’t appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode or the generative AI features in Google Discover, and you’ll get no traffic or impressions from them. It also says the setting is not a ranking signal for the rest of Search, so your normal blue link rankings shouldn’t be affected. Changes usually take a few days, with content typically removed within one to two days of the change going live (source).
Here’s the bit that matters for small businesses: excluding your site doesn’t stop the AI answer from appearing. It just appears without you. Google’s own help page notes that other sites’ content will still show and may look similar to yours.
Picture an Adelaide plumber whose guide to fixing a running toilet gets cited when someone asks about it in AI Mode. Opt out, and that answer still appears for the customer, now linking to a competitor or a national hardware chain instead.
When opting out might make sense
There are a few situations where Exclude is worth discussing:
- You publish original research, paid content or courses, and AI summaries are giving away the value without sending visits
- Your AI impressions are high, but your normal Search clicks to those same pages have dropped noticeably
- You have a legal or licensing reason not to have content summarised
One thing to be clear on: this setting does not control whether Google uses your content to train its AI models. Google points site owners to a separate control called Google-Extended for that. And if you want a page kept out of Google Search entirely, that’s a noindex job, which is a much bigger decision.
Why staying in is looking better
Google’s direction lately has been towards sending more people out to websites from its AI answers. In an October 15 update on the Google blog, Google said it has made substantial increases to inline links in AI Overviews and AI Mode and will show them higher in responses more often. It’s also testing a feature that shows one or two official websites for a task at the top of an AI response, and giving related article links image thumbnails.
For a local business, that “official website” test is the interesting one. If someone asks how to book a table at a Brisbane cafe or get a quote from a particular builder, Google wants to point them to the business’s own site. You can’t be that link if you’ve opted out.
What to do this week
- Log in to Search Console and open Performance. Look for the generative AI report (if it isn’t there, you may not have enough AI impressions yet).
- Note your top five pages by AI impressions. These are the pages Google is already showing in AI answers.
- Check those pages are accurate and current: prices, service areas, opening hours and contact details.
- Compare them with your normal Performance report. Are clicks to those pages holding steady, rising or falling?
- Check Settings and confirm the Search generative AI control is set the way you want. For most businesses, that’s Include.
- Make sure your key service pages answer common customer questions clearly, near the top of the page.
FAQ
Does Search Console show clicks from AI Overviews?
No. The generative AI performance report shows impressions, broken down by page, country, date and device. It doesn’t show clicks or the search queries people used.
Will opting out of AI Overviews hurt my Google rankings?
Google says the Search generative AI control is not a ranking signal for other parts of Search. Your site loses visibility in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features, but normal results shouldn’t change.
Is the AI opt out available in Australia?
Yes. Google says the control was rolled out to all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026. It’s in Search Console under Settings.
Does opting out stop Google training AI on my content?
No. That’s handled separately through Google-Extended. The Search Console setting only controls whether your site appears in Google’s AI search features.
Need a hand making sense of it?
If you’ve opened the new report and aren’t sure what you’re looking at, or you want a second opinion before changing the AI setting, the DiGiHUB360 team is happy to take a look. Get in touch and we’ll walk you through what your numbers mean for your business. You can also read more about our SEO services.