Canonical refresh · reviewed 1 September 2026
Google’s Search documentation now says two important generative-search features are available worldwide as of 31 August 2026: the Search Console AI performance report and the control for appearing in Google’s generative AI features. They answer different questions. The report helps a site owner inspect impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode. The control lets a site owner choose whether pages are included in certain generative-AI surfaces.
This is a refresh of DMT’s Search Console generative-AI report guide. The rollout wording is current documentation, but the data limits still matter: an AI impression is not a click, a query, a citation or a revenue event.
What changed on 31 August
Google’s Help Center added a note that the AI performance insights have rolled out to all websites worldwide. A separate page says the generative-AI visibility control has also rolled out worldwide. The old “staged subset” wording in an earlier guide is now information debt and should be replaced with the current note while keeping the eligibility and data caveats.
Google’s pages are the source of truth for availability. Search Engine Land supplied the news discovery signal, but a trade summary should not override the current first-party help documentation.
What the AI performance report shows
The report covers generative AI traffic in Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says the data can be viewed by pages, countries, dates and devices. That lets a site owner ask practical questions: Which pages receive AI-feature impressions? Are impressions concentrated in one country or device? Did a content change precede a change in the trend?
The report should be read as a directional visibility measure. It does not provide clicks, queries, the text of an AI answer, the websites cited in an answer or an attribution path. Google also describes the data as preliminary and subject to limitations. DMT’s GEO guide can help with the content implications, but it does not turn the report into a citation tracker.
What the new generative-AI visibility control does
The separate control lets a site owner choose Include, Exclude or Inherit for generative-AI features. Google says it applies to AI Overviews, AI Mode and Generative AI in Discover. Excluding a page from those features affects traffic and impressions from those features, but not other Google Search ranking. The control is about appearance in generative surfaces; it is not an AI-training switch.
Google distinguishes this control from Google-Extended and from a noindex directive. A noindex directive remains a separate indexing instruction. Changes to the generative-AI control may take one to two days or longer because of caching. Use the actual Search Console and documentation state when making a site decision.
Report versus control
| Question | AI performance report | Generative-AI visibility control |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Measure reported impressions from generative features | Choose inclusion or exclusion from selected generative features |
| Scope | Pages, countries, dates and devices in the report | AI Overviews, AI Mode and Generative AI in Discover |
| Shows clicks? | No, according to Google’s limitations | No; it is a visibility setting |
| Controls training? | No | No; Google points to Google-Extended for that concern |
| Timing | Use the report’s data and caveats | Changes can take 1–2 days or longer to propagate |
This distinction prevents a common error: seeing zero AI-feature impressions and concluding that a page is excluded, or excluding a page and assuming it will disappear from all organic Search. Neither conclusion follows from the documentation.
A careful workflow for SEO teams
- Record the rollout state. Note the date you checked the documentation and Search Console.
- Choose a comparison window. Compare like-for-like dates, countries, devices and pages.
- Annotate page changes. Connect content, technical and internal-link edits to the observed trend without claiming causation.
- Separate visibility from value. Pair AI impressions with Search clicks, conversions and assisted outcomes from your own analytics.
- Use the control deliberately. Decide whether inclusion or exclusion matches the page’s business and editorial intent.
- Wait for propagation. Recheck after Google’s stated 1–2-day-or-longer window before interpreting the setting.
DMT’s search-intent guide helps decide what a page should answer; the internal-linking guide helps strengthen the site context around that answer. Neither guarantees inclusion in an AI feature.
What the report cannot tell you
- Which search query caused a reported impression.
- What answer Google generated for the user.
- Which source or citation the user saw.
- Whether the user clicked, converted or remembered the brand.
- Why one page received more impressions than another.
Use first-party analytics and manual quality review to add context. If a page has AI impressions but no measurable business outcome, that is a question for the funnel, offer and user experience—not proof that the report is wrong.
Do not confuse global rollout with uniform data
“Rolled out worldwide” means the feature is available in Google’s documented product scope. It does not mean every property has identical data volume, every query triggers an AI feature or every page will appear. Google’s limitations and preliminary-data language remain active. A site can have no visible AI impressions and still be indexed and ranked normally.
For a broader view of AI-search mechanics, see DMT’s Google AI Mode guide. Keep current product facts attached to the official source and keep strategy hypotheses labelled as hypotheses.
Bottom line
As of Google’s 31 August 2026 documentation update, the AI performance report and generative-AI visibility control are global features. Use the report to inspect a limited impression signal; use the control to make an explicit inclusion decision for specified generative surfaces. Keep noindex, Google-Extended, ordinary ranking, clicks and citations separate. The quality of the decision depends on reading what Google says the tools do not show.
Source credit: This refresh uses Google’s AI performance insights documentation and generative-AI visibility-control documentation, both checked 1 September 2026.
