In brief
- AI Overviews and AI Mode have been live in Google Search in France since 22 July 2026.
- Search Console now has a report for them, open to every site since 31 August 2026. It counts how often your pages were shown in those answers, by page, country, device and date.
- It counts neither clicks nor queries. A click from an AI Overview is recorded, but in the usual performance report, mixed in with every other click.
- A setting lets you exclude your site from these answers. It defaults to “Include”, and we recommend leaving it there.
- None of this tells you anything about ChatGPT, which changed the way it searches in August and no longer plays by Google’s rules.
Since 22 July 2026, Google has shown AI Overviews in France, answers written by its AI above its results. Since 31 August, Search Console tells you how often your pages appear in those AI Overviews, but in impressions only, without the clicks or the queries that lead to those answers. What Google gives you is a measure of presence, and what that presence earns you is still yours to work out.
22 July in Google Search in France
Google announced the French launch on 22 July 2026, more than two years after the worldwide rollout began in May 2024. AI Overviews are the most visible part: a summary written by the AI appears at the top of the page, with links to the sites that support it. Google says it only appears when its systems judge that it adds something to the query, and on plenty of searches there isn’t one.
AI Mode is search as a conversation. People ask a long question, follow up with another, and get an answer with links. To build it, Google breaks the question into subtopics and runs several searches at once. According to Google, an AI Mode search is on average three times longer than a traditional one, and the example it picks is a comparison table requested in a single sentence: AI Mode is where people go to compare.
The Search Console report on AI Overviews
The generative AI performance report was announced on 3 June 2026 for a subset of sites, then extended to every site worldwide on 31 August. It comes in two versions: one for Search, covering AI Overviews and AI Mode, and one for Discover.
The Search version counts one thing, impressions: the number of times a link to your site was shown in an AI answer. You can break them down by page, by the country the search came from, by device and by date. Since 24 September, Google has also been rolling out a filter that separates typed searches from searches made with an image, through Lens or Circle to Search.
Before you read a single number, know how it counts. In the chart, two pages from the same site shown in the same answer count as one impression, whereas the table by page counts them separately, so the totals don’t always match, and that is expected. As with the usual report, the table stops at 1,000 rows.
What the report leaves out
The report doesn’t show clicks. Google does record them: a click on a link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode counts as a click. But it sits in the usual performance report, under the “Web” search type, alongside clicks from the classic results. Google says so itself: the AI report’s data is included in the overall report. So you know how often you were seen in an AI answer, and how often people clicked through to you in total, but not how many of those clicks came from the answer.
It doesn’t show queries either. You know which page was shown, not which question it answered. Yet the question is what tells you whether the presence is worth anything: being cited on a general definition doesn’t carry the same weight as being cited on a comparison between two offers.
Position won’t help you much. An AI Overview takes up a single position on the page, and every link inside it gets that same position. Whether your site is the first link in the answer or the fifth, Search Console records the same figure. In AI Mode, every follow-up question is treated as a new query.
Finally, it only covers Google. On 8 August 2026, ChatGPT changed how it queries the web: it runs far more searches restricted to a named site, mostly official sites and documentation, and the share of forums in its citations collapsed within a week, while Google’s answers show only a gradual decline. We covered that shift in our piece on AI citability. On an online shop we follow, one paid order in three came from Google Search in September 2026, and already one in six from ChatGPT, which had brought none before August. The UTM is what makes that visible: ChatGPT itself adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to its links, whereas orders from Google carry only “google, organic”, whether they came from an AI answer or a classic result.
Should you exclude your site from AI Overviews?
The setting, opened in France on 22 July, lives under Settings, then “Search generative AI”. You can include your site, exclude it, or inherit the setting of the parent property. Include is the default.
If you exclude your site, its links and content disappear from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the AI features in Discover, within a few days according to Google, sometimes longer because of caching. You stop receiving any impressions or traffic from those answers. Content from other sites, which may look a lot like yours, keeps appearing.
Google adds some clarifications that head off bad decisions. Excluding is not used as a ranking signal for the rest of Search: your classic positions don’t move. It doesn’t stop model training, which is handled by a different setting, Google-Extended. And if you want to disappear from Google entirely, that is the noindex tag, not this setting.
We recommend staying included: excluding takes you out of an answer where your competitors will stay. It is only worth discussing for a publisher whose model depends on people reading its pages. Just check that nobody has changed the setting for you: on a child property, a setting made at parent level applies without anyone having chosen it.
What should you do this week to be seen properly in AI Overviews?
All you need is Search Console, a spreadsheet and your analytics. The first two steps act, the rest measure.
- Check the “Search generative AI” setting on every property you track, domain and URL prefix alike, and note whether it was set by hand or inherited.
- Check that your main pages can be cited. For the ten most important ones, the URL Inspection tool should report them as indexed. Then look in their code for a nosnippet tag, a max-snippet directive or data-nosnippet blocks: Google presents these as the ways to limit what it shows from a page. A page that isn’t indexed, or can’t show with a snippet, isn’t eligible for AI answers.
- Export the AI report over the longest period available, filtered on your main country, by page. The export button gives you both the chart and the table.
- Export the usual report over the same period, by page, and for each page set its AI impressions against its total impressions. That gives you the share of its visibility that goes through AI answers.
- Look at the pages where that share is high, then at their clicks in the usual report before and after 22 July. Impressions holding steady while clicks fall on those pages suggest the AI answer is satisfying the question without a visit. It is only a clue: seasonality or a Google update can draw the same line.
- In your analytics or your shop, filter on the chatgpt.com source: ChatGPT tags its links, Google’s AI Overviews don’t.
- Add an annotation on 22 July in Search Console, and one for every significant change to a page you track. Six months from now, that is what will let you tell your own effect apart from Google’s.
Check a page in a few secondsPaste its address into What Google and AI crawlers see of your page, our free tool. It tells you whether the page is eligible for AI Overviews (response, robots.txt, noindex, snippet), what your robots.txt allows each AI crawler, and where your llms.txt stands. The address is not kept.
To be eligible for AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google only asks that a page be indexed and able to show with a snippet. It states that no special markup or AI text file is needed, which takes nothing away from an llms.txt file for other crawlers, measured on our own site in what llms.txt v2 changes.
Each tool and its blind spot
No single source tells you everything. Here is what each one measures, and what it leaves out.
| Instrument | What it measures | What it doesn’t tell you |
|---|---|---|
| Usual performance report | Clicks, impressions, queries and position across all of Google Search, AI answers included | What share of those clicks came from an AI answer |
| Generative AI report | Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date | Clicks, queries, your rank within the answer |
| Platform properties | What Google sends to your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube posts | What happens outside Google |
| Checking answers by hand | What the answer says about you, and who it cites instead of you, on Google as on ChatGPT | Volume: a check only covers a sample of questions |
| Your web analytics | What visitors do once they arrive, through to conversion | Exactly where on Google’s page the click came from |
The AI report tells you where you are seen and your analytics what that earns; between the two sits the click that Google doesn’t break out. What an answer says about you also depends on what others write about you, as we found for customer reviews and AI.
Choosing an AI visibility tracking tool
If you are considering a tool to track your presence in AI answers, check that it can:
- keep the engines apart, since a single score that adds up Google and ChatGPT hides what happened in August;
- pull in Search Console data through its export or its API, rather than estimating on Google’s behalf what Google already gives you;
- show the text of the answer as well as whether a link is present, since being cited in a sentence that recommends a competitor is hardly good news.
A spreadsheet filled in each month from the two exports is enough to start. If you want those numbers tied to your sales, send us your site’s address: that is the work of our analytics and performance expertise, and we always start with those two exports.
Sources
- Google France, “Lancement des Aperçus IA et du Mode IA dans la Recherche Google en France” (in French), Sébastien Missoffe, 22 July 2026. View
- Google Search Central, “Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console”, 3 June 2026, update note of 31 August 2026. View
- Search Console Help, “Generative AI performance report (Search)”. View
- Search Console Help, “Search generative AI control”. View
- Search Console Help, “What are impressions, position, and clicks?”, AI Overviews and AI Mode sections. View
- Google Search Central, “AI features and your website”, updated 10 December 2025. View
- Google Search Central, “Announcing web multimodal Search performance reporting in Search Console”, 24 September 2026. View
- Google Search Central, “See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search”, 7 July 2026, and “Platform properties roll out globally”, 29 July 2026. View
- OpenAI, “Publishers and Developers FAQ”, Help Center, utm_source=chatgpt.com parameter. View
- Promptwatch, “Why Did ChatGPT Stop Citing Reddit?”, 20 August 2026, updated 8 September 2026, ChatGPT Search and Google citation data from 7 July to 17 August 2026. View
FAQ
Why can’t I see the generative AI report for my site?
Google gives two reasons. Either your site hasn’t yet had enough impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, which is common for a young or low-ranking site. Or it is excluded from those features by the “Search generative AI” setting, sometimes inherited from a parent property. Check the setting first: it is the only one of the two causes you can fix in a click.
Does excluding my site from AI Overviews lower my classic rankings?
No, according to Google: the setting isn’t used as a ranking signal for the rest of Search. Nor does it protect you from model training, which is controlled through Google-Extended. It simply takes you out of AI answers, along with the impressions and traffic they bring.
Does this report also measure my presence in ChatGPT?
No. It only covers Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, with the AI features in Discover in a separate report. ChatGPT has searched differently since August 2026, with far more searches aimed at named sites. For the visits it sends you, filter on the chatgpt.com source in your analytics: ChatGPT adds that UTM parameter to its links. To find out what it says about you, you have to check its answers yourself, on a set of questions and at regular intervals.