Google Search Console AI Performance Report & AI Blocking Controls

Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick and a technologist, a New York Web service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. Barry is also the founder of the Search Engine Roundtable and the News Editor of Search Engine Land . He is well known & respected for his expertise in the search marketing industry. He only provides consulting services to expert SEOs and also performs search marketing expert witness services. Barry graduated from the City University of New York and lives with his family in the NYC region. You can follow Barry on Twitter at @rustybrick or on LinkedIn and read his full bio over here

Google has announced the new Search Console Search Generative AI performance reports and a toggle to block your site from showing in AI responses. This is available currently only for a small subset of UK site owners, but it will expand globally at some point. Oh, and no, the reporting does not show click data - not that any of you expected that.

Why the UK first? The UK's CMA is requiring Google to do so legally, they wrote:

Google will now also have to allow publishers to opt-out of allowing their content to be used for the ‘fine-tuning’ of AI models. This provides publishers with confidence that they will have control over the full range of AI use-cases of their content.

Search Generative AI Performance Reports

Google is rolling out within Search Console the new Search Generative AI performance reports. We thought they'd be named the AI contribution report based on some early leaks but Google is calling it the AI performance reports - which is what Bing Webmaster Tools calls its report.

The report includes the following data (just not clicks):

Impressions: How often URLs from your site appeared in generative AI features in Search and Discover.

How often URLs from your site appeared in generative AI features in Search and Discover. Pages: Check which URLs appeared within AI features.

Check which URLs appeared within AI features. Countries: Understand your visibility on a country basis.

Understand your visibility on a country basis. Devices: Identify the devices people are using when seeing your website (available for Search results).

Identify the devices people are using when seeing your website (available for Search results). Dates: Monitor your performance over time with hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly granularity.

No click data and yea, Google gave me the line when I asked. "We're continuing to work with website owners to understand what insights will be most helpful to inform their strategies, and we’ll introduce additional metrics over time," a Google spokesperson told me when I asked.

Also, the data seems to only start on May 18, 2026 going forward.

Here is what it looks like:

Here is a screenshot from Adam A on X of the AI performance report:

Again, this is currently rolling out for a small subset of site owners in the UK.

There is a larger help document on this over here for the AI performance report and over here for the AI Discover performance report.

Blocking Controls For AI Search

Google is also rolling out a toggle to allow (that small subset of UK site owners) to block their content from showing in/around the AI features such as AI Overviews, AI Mode or AI Overviews in Discover. This toggle will let site owners opt out of its content being used in the AI features as links or for grounding purposes.

Google said also that "sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features."

Also, Google made sure to clarify that blocking your content by using this control "will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these generative AI Search features." So blocking it this way, will not have an impact on your content not showing up in other search features or within the core search results.

Google wrote in its help document:

Note: We're rolling out this control to a subset of website owners, allowing for thorough testing before rolling it out further. For these site owners, the Search Generative AI control is available to review and configure before it takes effect in Google Search. During this time, these site owners can make changes to their configuration without any impact on Google Search; Google will take this control into account on June 17, 2026.

Google told us they are working on this for a while now, back in January but called it a huge engineering project afterwards, but then in as evidence suggested. I asked SEOs if they would use this feature and 33% said they would block Google from showing or using its content for AI features, although, I doubt that many will end up doing that.

Here is a screenshot from Adam A on X of the blocking controls:

Again, these are for a small subset of UK site owners now and there is no ETA for when it will more fully roll out. Plus, no click data on these AI performance reports. Plus, according to the new UK regulation, Google has nine months to fully roll it out to all in the UK, right now it is a small subset of UK users.

If you do gain access, it seems it will only show on .co.uk ccTLDs for now, until it rolls out more broadly.

But this is a good and welcome step forward, and I am glad this is on its way to more site owners.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.