How to track AI Overviews and AI Mode visibility
Google and Bing report different parts of AI visibility, so the numbers need different interpretations.
Steen Stones · Reviewed
To see whether Google showed your links in AI answers, use Search Console's generative AI performance report. It covers impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, while Bing Webmaster Tools reports citations across its supported AI experiences. Those numbers show visibility, but they do not prove that anyone went on to visit your website.
Where does Google report AI Overviews and AI Mode?
Google's generative AI performance report shows impressions for AI Overviews and AI Mode, meaning occasions when your links appeared. That tells you a link was shown to someone in a supported feature, rather than whether they clicked.
Google lets you group the results by page, country or device to examine where your links appeared. The data is already included in the overall Performance report, so it is not extra visibility to add to that total.
A missing AI report usually means your site has not received enough impressions in those features, according to Google. That needs checking before the missing report becomes a conclusion about how well your business performs.
How are AI impressions different from website visits?
An AI impression means your link appeared, while a Search click means someone clicked through from Google's results. Confusing them would count an opportunity to visit your website as a visit that may never have happened.
Google suggests using tools such as Google Analytics to track conversions and time spent on your website alongside Search Console. That adds what people did on the site to the picture of whether your links appeared.
What does Bing Webmaster Tools show?
Bing AI Performance covers citations across Microsoft Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and selected partner integrations. Its page reports show how often individual website addresses were cited during the date range you select.
Bing's citation count does not tell you where a source appeared or how the answer presented it. The count therefore cannot establish a ranking or prove that your business received a prominent recommendation.
Bing's grounding queries are the phrases used to retrieve content that was cited in AI answers. They show a sample of citation activity, which makes them useful context rather than a complete record.
This highlights how often your content is referenced by AI systems, without indicating placement or presentation within a specific answer.
How should a business read these reports together?
A business comparing the reports needs to keep Google's impressions separate from Bing's citations, because they measure different activity. Combining them into a visibility total would lose what the numbers mean and which experiences they cover.
Checking Google yourself may produce a different result from the activity recorded in your site's report. Google says results depend on the time, place, device and recent history of the person searching.
A link appearing, someone clicking it and their activity on your website describe different parts of the journey. Google records impressions and clicks separately, and suggests tracking conversions and time spent on the website alongside them.