A user asked a question on Reddit about how impressions are counted in the Generative AI report within Google Search Console.
User wrote on Reddit : “Does anyone track how impressions are counted for the Generative AI report in Google Search Console? For AI Overview, how are impressions counted? Is it only when the user actually sees the AI Overview feature, or does it count if it appears implicitly on page one of the search results? For links that are added to the AI Overview but are only visible under Show More, how are those impressions calculated?”
“Google’s line is that standard impression rules apply to AI Overviews, which sounds like a non answer until you unpack what the standard rule actually is. It counts an impression when the item appears on the page of results that got served, whether or not it was scrolled into view. So no, the user doesn’t have to see it. If the AI Overview rendered and your link was in it, that’s an impression even if they never scrolled that far down.
Show More is the exception and it goes the other way. The standard rule carves out anything the user has to click to reveal, so links sitting behind that expansion don’t count until someone expands it. Those numbers are understating your exposure rather than inflating it.
Two other things about that report that catch people. Every link inside an AI Overview gets assigned the position of the AI Overview itself, so the average position you’re looking at is the slot the AIO occupied on the page, not where your link sat among the others in it. And the report is a filtered view of data already in your Web search type, not something sitting on top of it, so don’t add the two together.”
John Mueller replied on Reddit : “This is pretty much it – we tried to document it as clearly as possible in the help center page (which you can find if you search for ‘impressions clicks search console’), it’s a giant doc in the meantime. Position for these is hard to do in a way that makes it useful, so we’re currently tracking it like we do for many search features (as a block), & it’s not separated out in the Gen-AI performance report. Search results pages have a lot of ways for users to interact nowadays, so the old ‘position 1 – 10’ is hard to map, or to make useful for site owners. If any of you have thoughts on what would be useful in terms of tracking position, I’d love to hear & am happy to discuss with the team.”
This clarifies that Google tracks AI Overview impressions as a block, similar to how it handles other search features, rather than breaking things down by individual position including links only visible under “Show More.” Mueller also acknowledged that traditional position tracking (like “position 1–10”) doesn’t map cleanly to how modern search results pages work, and he’s open to feedback from site owners on what would actually be useful going forward.
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