Quick answer
- Search Console now has a generative AI report (announced 3 June 2026, on all sites by 31 August 2026). It shows impressions only, by page, country, device and date, with AI Overviews and AI Mode combined.
- It has no queries, clicks or CTR, so which queries show an AI Overview, and whether you are cited, still needs a tracker or manual checks.
- AI Overviews change fast: Ahrefs found a 70% chance one changed between observations, so check daily if you can.
- Lost clicks = impressions x (expected CTR without an AI Overview - actual CTR). The worked example below uses a published 3.8% benchmark.
- Citations matter: Seer found brands cited in the AI Overview averaged 2.07% CTR, against 0.94% for brands not cited.
Rather not build the tracking sheet yourself? Get a free visibility check: it covers Google, AI Overviews, AI Mode and five other AI engines, and shows where you're left out.
What can you measure about AI Overviews in 2026?
Four things: whether an AI Overview appears for a query (presence), whether it names you (a mention), whether it links to your page (a citation), and how many clicks you lose when it appears. Google's own tools cover part of this, and the gaps decide what you track yourself.
| Source | What it shows | What it does not show |
|---|---|---|
| Search Console Performance report | AI Overview and AI Mode traffic counted inside the Web search type, with queries, clicks, CTR and position | No filter for AI features alone |
| Search Console generative AI report | Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date | Clicks, CTR, position, queries, or a split between AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| GA4 | AI Overview and AI Mode clicks inside Organic Search | Any way to separate them from other organic clicks |
Google's AI features guide says pages shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode count toward Search traffic in the Performance report under Web. Its Performance report help page adds that an AI Overview takes one position, every link inside it gets that same position, and a click on an external link counts as a click.
The generative AI report is the new piece. Google's help page for it says it measures impressions only, with no query dimension, reports AI Overviews and AI Mode together, counts two results from the same site as one impression in the chart total, and keeps the usual 1,000-row table limit.
GA4 does not fill the gap. Its channel definitions put AI Overviews and AI Mode in Organic Search and exclude them from the new AI Assistant channel. So Google tells you how many AI impressions a page earned, but not for which query or whether you were the link.
How do you track Google AI Overviews? 6 steps
1. Pick the queries to track
Most queries will not show an AI Overview. Pew Research Center found that 18% of Google searches in March 2025 produced an AI summary, across 900 US adults and 68,879 searches (Pew, 22 July 2025). So start wide and let presence checks narrow the list.
Use the generative AI report to find the pages that earn AI impressions. Then open the Performance report, filter to each of those pages, and export its queries. Add the questions your buyers ask that you do not yet rank for.
Split branded from non-branded queries from the start. Amsive's study of 700,000 keywords found that when an AI Overview appeared, CTR on non-branded keywords fell 19.98% while branded keywords rose 18.68%, and keywords with both an AI Overview and a featured snippet fell 37.04% (Amsive, 16 April 2025). Mixed together, the two can cancel out.
2. Check which queries show an AI Overview
For each query, search from the country you sell in and record the date and whether an AI Overview appeared. A Dubai clinic should check from the UAE, not from a US connection.
One check is a sample, not a measurement. Ahrefs tracked more than 43,000 keywords for a month and found a 70% chance that an AI Overview changed from one observation to the next; an AI Overview lasted 2.15 days on average (Ahrefs, 11 November 2025). Check daily if you can, and report presence as a rate: days with an AI Overview divided by days checked.
Keep AI Mode in a separate column. Ahrefs compared the two on the same queries and found only 13.7% of cited URLs overlapped, even though the answers were 86% semantically similar (Ahrefs, 15 December 2025). Our AI Mode tracking tools comparison covers that side.
3. Record mentions and citations separately
A mention is your brand named in the AI Overview's text. A citation is your URL among its links. They are different wins: a citation can send a click, a mention cannot.
The difference shows in the data. Seer Interactive's 2026 update found brands cited in the AI Overview averaged 2.07% organic CTR, against 0.94% for brands not cited (Seer Interactive, 24 April 2026).
Log one row per query per check, with these columns: date, query, country, AI Overview shown, brand mentioned, URL cited, which of your URLs, and competitors cited. Ahrefs found about 45.5% of cited URLs changed between consecutive observations, so the competitor column is how you see who replaced you.
From that log, citation rate is the checks where you were cited divided by the checks where an AI Overview appeared, times 100. Mention rate works the same way.
4. Pull the Search Console numbers
For the tracked queries, export impressions, clicks, CTR and average position from the Performance report, search type Web. For more than a handful of queries, use the Search Analytics API. It returns clicks, impressions, CTR and position by query, page, country, device, date, search appearance and hour, up to 25,000 rows a request, and it only guarantees the top rows.
Read position with care. Because every link in an AI Overview shares one position, a page cited in the AI Overview can show a high position and still a low CTR. Add the page-level AI impressions from the generative AI report as a separate line.
5. Estimate the clicks you lose
The formula:
lost clicks = impressions x (expected CTR without an AI Overview - actual CTR)Impressions and actual CTR come from Search Console for the queries where your log shows an AI Overview. Expected CTR is the harder number. The best source is your own: the same queries' CTR, at a similar position, in a period before the AI Overview appeared. If you have no clean before period, use a published benchmark.
Two benchmarks are worth knowing. Seer Interactive, covering 53 brands, 5.47 million queries and 2.43 billion impressions, found organic CTR of 3.8% when no AI Overview appeared and 2.4% when one did, in February 2026. Ahrefs, re-running its study on 300,000 keywords with December 2025 data, found position-one CTR of 0.016 with an AI Overview against a forecast 0.037 without one, 58% lower (Ahrefs, 4 February 2026).
Worked example. The page here is hypothetical, made up to show the arithmetic; the benchmark is Seer's published figure. Say a service page had 12,000 impressions in September on queries where your log shows an AI Overview, and 216 clicks, an actual CTR of 1.8%.
| Input | Using Seer's 3.8% | Using Ahrefs' 3.7% (position one) |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions (hypothetical) | 12,000 | 12,000 |
| Actual CTR (hypothetical) | 1.8% (216 clicks) | 1.8% (216 clicks) |
| Expected CTR without an AI Overview | 3.8% | 3.7% |
| Lost clicks | 12,000 x 0.020 = 240 | 12,000 x 0.019 = 228 |
So this page lost roughly 230 to 240 clicks that month, more than it received. Use the Ahrefs figure only if the page ranks first on those queries; Seer's figure is an average across positions.
Treat the result as an estimate. Ahrefs describes its finding as a correlation, not proof that the AI Overview caused the drop, and seasonality, ranking changes and branded searches can all move CTR. Amsive's branded figure is a reminder that for some queries the gap can run the other way.
6. Report monthly and act on the gaps
A useful monthly report has five lines: AI Overview presence rate across tracked queries, citation rate, mention rate, AI impressions from the generative AI report, and estimated lost clicks.
Keep expectations honest about what a citation recovers. Pew found that when an AI summary appeared, users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits against 15% without one, clicked a link inside the summary on 1% of visits, and ended their session after 26% of pages with a summary against 16% without. Being cited is better than not, but it will not bring every click back.
Then act on the rows where an AI Overview shows and you are not cited. Rewrite the page behind that query so the answer and the facts come first, in the server HTML; the page-level steps in how to get cited by ChatGPT apply to Google too.
Which tools track AI Overviews?
A spreadsheet works for 20 queries checked by hand. Past that, these tools state that they track AI Overviews. Rival figures come from each vendor's own pages as recorded on our site on 25 September 2026; check the linked page before you buy. For how the Search Console side of each works, see choosing an AI visibility tool with Search Console integration.
Cituna. Cituna checks your buyer questions every day on seven engines: Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode as separate engines, plus ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Grok. When it finds a gap, it writes the fix and can publish the article. Google Search Console and MCP are included. Plans are $39, $119 or $399 a month, with a 3-day trial that needs a card. Its limits: no Microsoft Copilot, a short trial, and fixed tiers. Cituna's pricing page
SE Ranking. It keeps AI Overviews and AI Mode as separate trackers, noting that AI Mode answers every query while AI Overviews appear only for some. Core is $129 a month with 10 projects, 100 prompts a day across 5 AI engines, and Search Console and GA4 integrations; the trial is 14 days with no card (checked 25 September 2026). SE Ranking pricing
Ahrefs Brand Radar. Custom prompts start at $50 a month for 2,500 checks and cover AI Overviews, with one check per platform, per location, per update. The AI Visibility Index, from $199 a month, adds real Google searches that trigger an AI answer (checked 25 September 2026). When we checked on 24 September 2026, its page did not say whether Search Console is joined. Ahrefs Brand Radar
ZipTie. Its free seven-day trial includes AI Overviews, with 25 daily prompts and no card, and Search Console connects by OAuth. Paid plans are priced by a calculator rather than fixed tiers (checked 25 September 2026). ZipTie pricing
Questions people ask
Does Google Search Console show AI Overview data?
Partly. Since June 2026, its generative AI report shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. It has no clicks, CTR, position or queries, and it does not separate AI Overviews from AI Mode.
Can GA4 show clicks from AI Overviews?
No. GA4 counts AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks in Organic Search, and its AI Assistant channel excludes them, so they cannot be separated from other organic clicks.
How often should I check AI Overviews?
Daily if you can, and at least several times a week. Ahrefs found a 70% chance that an AI Overview changed from one observation to the next, and about 45.5% of cited URLs changed between observations.
How do I calculate the clicks I lose to AI Overviews?
Multiply the impressions by the gap between the CTR you would expect without an AI Overview and your actual CTR. With 12,000 impressions, a 3.8% expected CTR and a 1.8% actual CTR, that is 240 lost clicks.
Does being cited in an AI Overview bring clicks back?
Partly. Seer Interactive found brands cited in the AI Overview averaged 2.07% CTR, against 0.94% for brands not cited. Pew found users clicked a link inside the summary on only 1% of visits.
Should I track AI Overviews and AI Mode together?
Track them separately. Ahrefs found only 13.7% of cited URLs overlapped between AI Overviews and AI Mode on the same queries, even though the answers were 86% semantically similar.
Sources
- Google Search Central, generative AI performance reports (3 June 2026) and the report's help page.
- Google, AI features and your website, Performance report methodology and Search Analytics API.
- Pew Research Center, AI summaries and clicks (22 July 2025); Seer Interactive, AI Overview CTR 2026 update (24 April 2026); Amsive, AI Overviews click drop-off (16 April 2025).
- Ahrefs: AI Overviews reduce clicks, update (4 February 2026); how often AI Overviews change (11 November 2025); AI Overviews vs AI Mode (15 December 2025).
All read 29 September 2026.
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