Traffic Down Because of AI Search? How to Investigate in Search Console

If you think AI search has reduced your traffic, first separate whether clicks, impressions or click-through rate changed. Then compare Search Console’s generative AI report with the standard report to see which pages to investigate.

Your pages appear in search more often than before, yet visits are not growing. If you blame AI answers alone, you may miss ranking drops or changes in search terms.

This article explains how to investigate using Google Search Console’s new generative AI report and how to read Bing’s citation share. Information was checked on September 23, 2026.

Separate the symptoms when AI search traffic drops

First, separate whether clicks, click-through rate or impressions fell. Sometimes only the rate falls while visits increase.

Click-through rate, or CTR, is the share of search impressions that produce a click.[4]

The following figures are an illustrative calculation, not measured results.

Period	Impressions	Clicks	CTR
Before	1,000	20	2%
After	2,000	30	1.5%

CTR fell, but clicks increased by ten. When a page starts appearing for new search terms, the rate alone can fall.

Where to look next depends on the symptom.

Symptom	Where to look next
Both impressions and clicks fell	Rankings, indexing status, content
Impressions steady, CTR fell	How results appear, visibility in AI Overviews
Impressions rose, only CTR fell	Newly appearing search terms

This table does not determine the cause. It helps you choose what to check first.

What Search Console’s generative AI report shows

The generative AI report shows how many times links to your pages appeared in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, device and date.[2]

Google announced the report on June 3, 2026 and added a note that it was rolled out to all websites worldwide as of August 31.[3]

There are separate reports for Search and Discover.[3] This article covers the Search report. Discover is a separate surface that recommends content, for example in the Google app.

You can view impressions by the following dimensions.[2]

• Page: which page’s link appeared
• Country: where the search came from
• Device: desktop, tablet or mobile
• Date: daily, weekly or monthly trends

Keep some points in mind.

First, the metric described in the help page is impressions. A breakdown of clicks is not part of that description.[2] You cannot count lost clicks from AI Overviews with this report alone.

Second, sites without enough impressions in AI features may not see the report.[2] Dates are reported in Pacific Time.[2]

This data is also included in the Web search type of the standard performance report.[2][1] Think of the generative AI report as a separate view of AI feature impressions taken from that data.

For the basics of AI Overviews, see our article on SGE becoming AI Overviews.

Narrow down pages and queries and read them with position

In the performance report, filter by period, page and query, and read position and impressions together. Use that to choose what to check next.

Follow these steps.

1. Open Google Search Console and select your site.
2. Open the search results report under Performance.
3. Set the date to compare two periods of the same length, such as the last 28 days and the 28 days before.
4. Show total clicks, total impressions, average CTR and average position.[4]
5. In the Pages tab, select a page that declined, then look at Queries.[4]

The newest data can be preliminary and may change within hours.[4] Avoid judging from the last few days alone.

Open the same page in the generative AI report and look at impressions for the same period.

Standard report	Generative AI report	What to investigate
Position fell	Little change	Page content and competitor changes
Position similar, CTR fell	AI feature impressions rose	How results appear and whether the page answers the question
Impressions rose	Little change	Relationship to new search terms

Even if two numbers move together, you cannot conclude that one caused the other. Use them as clues for what to check first.

Check Bing citation share and other AI services

Bing’s Citation Share is your site’s share of all citations for a specific search term. It is not a ranking or a share of visitors.[5]

On June 16, 2026, Microsoft added citation share and other features to AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools as a preview.[5] It is a metric for citations in Copilot and Bing AI answers.

Citation share is an observational metric. It is not a ranking system or competitor scorecard, and it does not show competitor domains.[5]

The search term here is a grounding query, the phrase AI used to find supporting information. This differs from a citation rate that uses the number of AI answers as its denominator.

For example, if a search term had 100 citations in total and 20 were yours, your share would be 20%. This is a hypothetical calculation. It does not mean you gained 20% of visitors.

Bing citations can fall even when Google impressions do not. Check each service in its own interface, and do not add their numbers together.

Do not jump to a cause; choose a page to fix

Do not settle on a single cause. Choose one page where content does not match what searchers want, and fix it. Record the change date, and track visits and enquiries separately.

Google says the fundamentals of SEO apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode as well.[1] Reviewing whether your page answers searchers’ questions comes before any AI-specific measures.

For example, a page may appear for pricing searches while offering only a general service overview. Even if you cannot publish prices, you can explain what changes the price and what information a quote requires.

When you make a change, record:

• The target URL
• The date and content of the change
• Impressions and clicks for a matching period before the change
• Numbers of enquiries or applications

AI answers may run several searches from one question. Why a high-ranking page may not be cited is explained in how query fan-out works.

As a first step, choose one page that lost clicks and compare the generative AI report and the standard report over the same period.