Google has now officially confirmed that Google Search Console is counting AI Mode data. Google said, "AI Mode is now counting towards totals in Search Console." We saw this when AI Mode went fully live in the US late last week, which Google announced would happen at I/O. Google also told us that AI Mode is coming to Search Console but not in a way where we can segment it out.
Google updated two documents with this change, the Search Console impressions/clicks help document. They added this new section that describes that the data is lumped together with the main data.
Here is what Google wrote:
AI Mode expands on AI Overviews to show a more interactive AI-powered response with links to web resources that support the information or direct the user to view relevant webpages. AI Mode groups the user's question into subtopics and searches for each one simultaneously, and users can go deeper.
- Click: Clicking a link to an external page in AI Mode counts as a click.
- Impression: Standard impression rules apply.
- Position: Position in AI Mode follows the same methodology as a Google Search results page. Generally, carousel and image blocks within AI Mode are calculated using the standard position rules for those elements.
Note: Search Console doesn't include data from experiments in Search Labs, as these experiments are still in active development.
So that was added and Google also updated the AI features document. They removed this line, "(Note: AI Mode reporting isn't live in Search Console yet, but we expect this soon as part of the AI Mode rollout.)" and made a small change where it says "how various Search features are counted" and changed it to "how AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted."
As we covered last Friday, some saw data from AI Mode flowing into Search Console since late last week:
Confirming that non-labs AI Mode clicks are recorded in GSC.
— Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) June 12, 2025
I just got the non-labs version yesterday. If I hadn't turned labs off, it still wouldn't be recorded.
Some estimates put this at 1%+ of searches, all of whose clicks haven't been recorded for nearly a month now... pic.twitter.com/u3WT95DTW9
So now it is official.
As Glenn Gabe said on X, "Google is not grouping all links together as a block. Each listing will have its own position. Then links within carousels and image packs within AI mode will be grouped together (like they would in the default SERPs). Also, follow-up questions will be like fresh queries, so position will be start over from 1. This is all great, but good luck trying to figure this out in GSC. We now have the 10-blue links, featured snippets, AIOs, and now AI Mode all grouped together in the performance reporting under Web Search. Yikes."
OK, it's official. AI Mode comes to GSC. Google just updated its documentation about this. And like @patrickstox saw, Google is not grouping all links together as a block. Each listing will have its own position. Then links within carousels and image packs within AI mode will be… https://t.co/ZA9roMNKlu
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 16, 2025
Seriously, good luck trying to glean insights from the web performance reporting....... pic.twitter.com/sXOQPtfAk2
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 16, 2025
Brodie Clark also dug in to confirm AI Mode data is in Search Console.
Here's the final data from my AI Mode in GSC test. It's somewhat surprising how low clicks were, when the directions were to click the result - maybe tracking is still being configured. Can also see the countries where AI Mode is likely showing the most. https://t.co/EhNMB47xe9 pic.twitter.com/7lP6ukZOzH
— SERP Alert ⚡️ (@SERPalerts) June 18, 2025
John Mueller from Google tried to defend this on Bluesky by saying:
Counting positions is hard (there's no objective way to map x/y/time to a 1D position), I imagine it'll evolve over time. With regards to same page/site on the serps: the topmost position is always used, like with "traditional" serps.
Have fun trying to track these...
Update: Here is a video of Glenn Gabe explaining how this works:
Forum discussion at X.
