According to Gary Illyes of Google, the team is “super interested in giving more data,” but the search company has nothing to announce yet about more Search Console data. In response to a LinkedIn post referencing anonymous comments by Google staff regarding the potential arrival of click and query data for AI Mode and AI Overviews, Illyes stated that he didn’t think Google had phrased it like that.
The Search Console Generative AI Performance Report counts impressions for both AI Mode and AI Overviews collectively. The clicks from each of these features are included within the standard Performance report as part of all web results.
In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) lists clicks and click-through rate among the AI search metrics Google must provide, in a summary of its publisher rules. The CMA gives Google until Dec. 3 to comply.
What Illyes Said
In his LinkedIn post, SEO professional Rajeev Lekhwar attributes a quote about Search Console click and query data to unnamed Google staff. He tags several Googlers, including Illyes and John Mueller, but doesn’t identify the speaker. The quote reads:
“The clicks and queries data is the most requested data set by website owners and SEOs. We are also anticipating this data to be available in Google Search Console but, even we don’t know by when this data will be added”.
Illyes replied in the comments early Monday:
“I don’t think we’ve phrased it like this. The team is super interested in giving more data, data that makes sense, but we don’t have anything to announce yet.”
Lekhwar’s post includes the hashtags #searchcentrallive2026 and #sclblr2026, which point to Google’s Search Central Live event in Bengaluru on Oct. 30. According to Google’s announcement, the event was in person only, with no live stream or recording available.
In a separate Bluesky thread about Illyes’ comment, Mueller wrote that there’s “lots of helpful data which isn’t currently in Search Console” and that what counts as helpful data changes over time.
What Search Console Reports Now
The Generative AI Report provided in Search Console counts impressions (each time AI Overviews or AI Mode shows links to your site) and provides a breakdown of those impressions by page, country, device, and date according to its help page. However, the page doesn’t list clicks, CTR, or queries. As I previously reported, Google announced the roll-out of this report to all sites globally on Aug. 31.
AI clicks are included in the standard Performance report. According to Google’s help page regarding how clicks are counted, when you click on a link within an AI Overview or AI Mode it will be considered one click; additionally if you ask another question using AI Mode it is considered a new query. The standard performance report lists Search Appearance Types, and none of them covers AI Overviews or AI Mode.
What The CMA Expects By December
Google will have to provide publishers with “clear and detailed metrics on user engagement” (the CMA’s summary lists “impressions, clicks, and click-through rate, aggregated across features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode”) with their content when using the company’s AI search functions; this is according to the CMA’s rules.
According to the CMA’s interpretive notes, these metrics should also include a breakdown of all data by each individual publisher, as well as being able to distinguish whether or not a publisher’s content was shown in an AI feature versus in an organic search result. This information should be provided via “a commonly accessible platform, such as Google Search Console.” Google can meet the rules another way if it shows the CMA it complies, and they cover AI features shown to UK users.
Why This Matters
You can see how frequently your pages show up in AI Overviews and AI Mode combined, however the click-throughs from these will be muddled within your web search totals and there is no way through the performance report to segregate this out using the dimensions as defined by Google. Illyes does not provide an estimated time frame for when this data would start being reported, so for now AI search reporting will need to be built around impressions.
Looking Ahead
Under the CMA’s rules, page-level controls for AI search features are due three months after the Dec. 3 compliance date. Google’s first compliance report to the CMA covers June 3 through Dec. 3 and is due Jan. 3, 2027. The CMA says it expects to issue a separate notice requiring Google to publish a summary or non-confidential version of each report.
Featured Image: Mijansk786/Shutterstock
