§ What just happened?
Two weeks ago we published a piece asking "Where is the Google Search Console for LLMs?", arguing that AI visibility has SEO's volatility with none of SEO's first-party truth. Days later, the referee started arriving.
Google: on June 3, Google announced gen-AI performance reporting in Search Console, impressions data for AI Overviews and AI Mode, rolling out to sites through June and July. Worth knowing: the reporting arrived under regulatory pressure (the UK's competition authority has Google's AI search surfaces explicitly in scope), not spontaneous generosity. Take the data either way.
Bing: on June 16, Microsoft upgraded Bing Webmaster Tools' AI reporting with Intents, Topics, Compare, and the headline feature, Citation Share: your share of citations for a grounding query versus competitors. That's the first free, platform-native competitive AI metric anywhere.
And the paid lane opened too: ChatGPT's ads now run in five English-speaking markets, with product feeds for shopping, meaning AI answers now have both an organic scoreboard and a paid one.
§ What Google's report actually shows, and hides
The day it appeared, Aleyda Solis, one of the most-followed voices in search, captured the industry's reaction in one line:
"It doesn't seem to include prompts / topics information or clicks data but... it's a start!"
That's the honest verdict. What you get: impressions, how often your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode answers, finally separated from classic search results. Technical SEO analyst Glenn Gabe spent months documenting how AI Mode data was previously lumped invisibly into Search Console totals, making analysis impossible; that complaint is now answered.
What you don't get:
- No clicks or CTR, you can't see whether AI visibility sends you anyone
- No prompts or queries, you can't see what people asked when you appeared
- No citation detail, appearing in an answer and being cited in it are different things; the report doesn't distinguish
The sharp version of the critique circulating among practitioners: if AI answers reduce clicks, a report showing only AI impressions makes the problem look like success. An impression count without a click count is a number that can only go up and never disappoint, which is exactly why you should read it carefully rather than celebrate it blindly.
§ The Bing report is better, with one trap
Bing's AI Performance report now shows grounding queries, page-level citations, and Citation Share, materially more useful than Google's impressions-only view, and free.
§ The switch you must not touch reactively
Google's rollout also includes controls to block your content from AI features. Some businesses, angry about traffic loss, will flip it on principle.
Think twice, with data, not anger. Buyers increasingly shortlist businesses inside AI answers before ever visiting a website. Blocking AI features means the answer about your category simply gets built without you, your competitor's name where yours could be. There are legitimate reasons for some publishers to block; a customer-facing business trying to get chosen is almost never one of them. Decide with your numbers in hand, not on launch-week emotion.
§ The 20-minute setup (do this week)
- Open Search Console, look for the gen-AI/AI features performance section (rollout is staggered; check weekly if it's not there yet).
- Record day-zero numbers, screenshot everything, date it. All future claims of progress (yours or your agency's) get measured against this.
- Set up Bing Webmaster Tools if you never have (most businesses haven't, it takes ten minutes and it's the gateway to the better report). Open the AI Performance section, note your Citation Share on your key queries.
- Read deltas monthly, never single snapshots. One month's impressions mean nothing; the direction over a quarter means everything.
- Pair the platform data with your own signals, the "how did you hear about us?" tally and your visibility trendlines, so no single report (or vendor) can tell you a story the other numbers don't support.
§ So, breakthrough or PR shield?
Both, and it's important to hold both. It's a genuine breakthrough: for the first time, Google is separating AI-surface visibility into its own first-party report, the thing we and many others have been demanding. And it's a shield: impressions-without-clicks is the one metric that reframes traffic loss as reach. The mature move is to take the data and refuse the framing, use the report, keep your own receipts, and watch whether clicks data ever arrives (advertisers inside AI answers will demand attribution; organic reporting has historically followed).
The referee is arriving. Partially, reluctantly, and under regulatory escort, but arriving.
Why FirePencil.AI?
FirePencil's agent was built for the both-fronts reality this report confirms: it tracks your visibility trendlines across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews, honestly, as trends, not single-number theater, and then executes the fixes that move them, weekly, owner-approved. Start with the free AEO Audit, your day-zero baseline across every engine, in one minute.