How Google’s New AI Performance Report Impacts Your AI Visibility Tracking
Google has officially launched its new Search Generative AI performance reports. With this new module available in Google Search Console, we can get better insights into your brand’s AI Visibility on Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews.
Although this module has only been partially rolled out, this is an exciting development since such reports were only previously available on Bing for Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI-generated summaries.
So how does Google’s new report impact your AI Visibility tracking?
Benefits of Google’s AI Performance Reports
- Absolute Impression Data: We get an absolute number of impressions for your website on Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, based on first-party data. While we typically measure AI Visibility using specific prompts, relative percentages, and AI visibility scores, this data enables us to cross-reference and determine if our tracked prompts are driving the majority of your impressions. Both absolute and relative metrics are valuable, and combining them provides greater insight.
- Granular Page-Level Tracking: We can now view your brand’s impressions on AI Overviews per page across specific timeframes (hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly). This helps us track the effectiveness of content optimizations and identify your “Hero Pages”—the specific pages generating massive, previously invisible AI impressions.
Limitations of Google’s AI Performance Reports
- Missing Granular Insights: Google’s AI Performance Report does not break down impressions per prompt, analyze them per keyword cluster, or track link clicks from AI Overviews. Hence, the data provided by Google is still quite limited on its own and is still best supplemented with other tools that we currently use.
- Lack of Advanced Metrics: Our current approach offers data that Google’s report cannot provide, including AI Share of Voice, Brand Sentiment on LLM responses, benchmarking against competitors, cross-platform AI visibility (e.g., on platforms like ChatGPT), and AI visibility per tracked prompt. This set of metrics provides a fuller picture of how your brand is being cited by LLMs, the context and conversation surrounding your brand, and how you’re performing relative to competitors. In many ways, these data are more actionable than absolute impression data alone.
- Exclusion of Non-Linked Mentions: Unlike our current approach, which counts both URL citations and brand name-drops by LLMs, Google’s report does not count a brand mention as an impression unless it includes a page link. Brand name-drops are also extremely important alongside URL citations, since studies have shown that brands that have been recommended by LLMs typically experience a branded search lift within the next seven days.
In summary, Google’s new Search Console AI performance reports provide accurate, first-party data on your brand’s organic impressions within Google’s AI features, allowing you to quantify your total scale of exposure.
In contrast, Nexus’s AI Visibility reports utilize third-party simulations to track brand mentions and citations across key prompts that matter to your brand, helping you reverse-engineer the “why” and “where” behind your visibility and analyze competitor performance as well. These simulations also allow us to track your brand’s visibility across multiple LLMs, not just Google’s AI Overviews.
By combining Google’s absolute impression data with Nexus’s prompt-based tracking, you gain a more comprehensive view of your AI-driven search presence. Our prompt-based approach offers the granularity needed to build an actionable roadmap for improving your AI visibility, which we can then validate with Google’s absolute impression data.
| FEATURE | Google Generative AI Report (Search Console) | Current Nexus Approach |
|---|---|---|
| DATA TYPE | First-party server logs (Accurate user data) | Simulated user behavior (Sample-based scraping) |
| METRICS | Organic Impressions only.
Counts only clickable URL citations as an impression. | Citation Share (% of prompts your URL won), Share of Voice, Brand Sentiment.
Counts both URL citations and brand name-drops or mentions. |
| QUERY AND PROMPT DATA | Not available | Granular AI visibility tracking per prompt |
| COMPETITOR PAGES | No insights | Can track competitor AI Visibility for specific prompts |
| SCOPE | Google ecosystem only (AI Overviews, AI Mode) | Multi-LLM (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) |
Important Note
Due to Google’s partial rollout, Google’s AI performance reports are not yet available for all accounts. For Nexus clients with GEO services included in their scope, our team is closely monitoring your Search Console for this rollout. Once this dedicated generative AI view goes live for your site, we will pivot our reporting to include these visibility metrics to provide you with additional insights on your AI Visibility.
We’re here to help you scale
If you feel like there is room for improvement for your brand in these areas, Nexus is more than happy to explore how we can help.
Contact us via this form, or reach out to your Account Manager – we’d love to chat!
