Google now shows you AI search traffic — and offers a switch to disappear from it
For two years the honest answer to “how much traffic do we get from AI search” was that nobody knew. Google has now supplied the instrument — and, in the same release, a switch that turns the whole thing off.
Search Engine Land covered the change on 3 June 2026:
These insights include impressions metrics and information about which pages appear in AI responses and in what countries.
Barry Schwartz, Google Search Console AI performance reports and controls to block your content in AI responses, Search Engine Land
Alongside the reports came a control, described in Google’s own words as letting site owners “decide if they want their site to appear in and help ground responses in our generative AI Search features”.
Two features, opposite in spirit, shipped together. One tells you what is happening. The other lets you stop participating. It is worth being precise about what each is actually good for.
The measurement is the important half
Until now, the argument about AI search inside most companies has been conducted entirely on vibes. Somebody says traffic is down because of AI Overviews. Somebody else says traffic is down because of a redesign, or seasonality, or a competitor outspending them. Nobody can settle it, so the loudest person wins and the budget follows.
Impressions in AI responses, broken out by page and country, ends that argument. Not because the number is large or small, but because it is a number. You can now say which of your pages the machine reads, which is a different question from which of your pages rank — and for the first time you can watch the two diverge.
Set a baseline this month, whatever it says. A metric that starts existing in June is worthless in September unless somebody wrote down what it read in June.
The opt-out is a trap dressed as control
The temptation is obvious. If AI answers take your content and return no visit, why let them have it?
Because opting out does not return the visit. It removes you from the answer. The user still asks the question, still gets an answer, and the answer is now assembled from your competitors. You have not recovered a click; you have donated a mention.
There is a narrow case where blocking makes sense: content that is itself the product. If you sell a report, the report should not be summarised for free. That is a licensing decision, not an SEO one, and it applies to a handful of pages rather than a domain.
For a B2B company whose content exists to make the company known, the calculation runs the other way. Being absent from the answer is not neutrality. It is disappearance.
What to do with the reports, concretely
- Record the baseline now. Impressions in AI responses, by page, this month. In a spreadsheet, not in your head.
- Find the pages the machine reads that you did not expect. They are telling you which of your material is unambiguous enough to be quoted. That is a writing lesson, and it applies to everything else you publish.
- Compare against the pages that rank. Where the two lists disagree, you have found the gap between “optimised for search” and “clear enough to summarise”. Close it in that direction, not the other.
- Leave the opt-out alone unless you are protecting something you sell.
The part nobody can tell you yet
An impression in an AI answer is not a visit and not a lead, and there is no published conversion figure for it worth repeating. What the report gives you is presence, not outcome. Anyone selling you a model that converts one into the other is guessing with more confidence than the data supports.
Which is an argument for measuring now and deciding later — the opposite of the instinct that reaches for the off switch first.
Source: Barry Schwartz, “Google Search Console AI performance reports and controls to block your content in AI responses”, Search Engine Land, 3 June 2026.
