Tracking Google AI Mode today means combining three sources: the Search Console generative AI report, which since 31 August 2026 shows every site its page impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, the Organic Search channel in Google Analytics 4, where the clicks land, and a prompt tracking tool that asks AI Mode your questions and records mentions and sources. None of the three tells you, on its own, which questions make AI Mode name your brand: Search Console does not split AI Mode from AI Overviews and does not show queries in the AI report.
So the short answer is this. AI Mode is measured in pieces, and you have to rebuild the missing piece yourself.
Classic search was simpler. Take Sunscape, which develops solar plants across Italy: in six months from March 2026 its organic impressions went from 329 to 5,809 a month (the full story is in how long SEO takes to work). One curve, one source, no doubt about where it comes from.
AI Mode is different. Google launched it in Italy and in Italian on 8 October 2025, and a year on the data still sits in three different places.
The mistakes we see most often when a company tries to "see AI Mode":
- looking for it in the GA4 AI Assistant channel, where Google's documentation says it is not;
- reading the Search Console AI report as if it were AI Mode only, when it also adds up AI Overviews;
- buying an AI visibility tool without checking the plan, then finding out AI Mode was an add-on or missing altogether.
Most pages ranking for this topic either explain what AI Mode is or sell a single tracker. We lined up what can actually be measured, and with what, using visilay.com's own data, including the limit of our own tool. The big picture, engine by engine, is in our AI visibility guide; what AI Mode is and what it changes for SEO is in Google AI Mode for SEOs.
In this article:
- a map of what you can track today, source by source, in one table;
- what Search Console shows and how it counts positions and follow-up questions in AI Mode;
- the 53 queries containing "ai mode" that reached visilay.com in 90 days, and what they taught us;
- which tools read both AI Mode and AI Overviews, with the plan limits;
- a six-step method to set up tracking in an hour.
What you can track in AI Mode today (and what stays in the dark)
Today you can track three things in AI Mode: your page impressions (Search Console), the clicks that reach your site (GA4, inside Organic Search) and the answers to a fixed list of questions (prompt tracking tools or manual checks). What stays in the dark is the queries behind the impressions in the AI report, and any split between AI Mode and AI Overviews in Google's own data.
| Source | What you see of AI Mode | Splits AI Mode from AI Overviews? | Shows queries or prompts? | Shows competitors? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search Console, generative AI report | Impressions of your pages, by page, country, device and date | No, it adds them up | No | No |
| Search Console, Performance report (Web) | Clicks, impressions and position, mixed with classic search | No | Yes, but you cannot tell which came from AI Mode | No |
| Google Analytics 4 | Sessions and conversions, inside Organic Search | No | No | No |
| Prompt tracking tool that covers AI Mode | Brand mentions and cited sources in the answers | Yes | Yes, the ones you set | Yes |
| Manual check | The single answer you see, at that moment | Yes | Yes | Yes, but with no history |
So do you need a paid tool?
Not to start. But without a fixed list of questions you never know which requests make AI Mode show you: Google tells you how often, not when.
How do I track visibility in Google AI Mode? (in Search Console, first)
The first place to look is the generative AI report in Search Console, under Performance. Google announced it on 3 June 2026 and, as its official help page says, it has been live for all sites since 31 August 2026: it shows how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
There are four dimensions: pages, countries, dates and devices. The filter at the top is for search type (text or images), not for the feature. The metrics stop at impressions, as the Google Search Central blog announcement confirms.
In plain terms: you know which pages are shown, not in which of the two surfaces and not for which question.
The Performance report counts AI Mode like a normal search
AI Mode clicks sit in the Performance report, Web search type, with everything else. That is in Google's documentation on AI features in Search. The counting rules are in the help page on clicks, impressions and position, and they differ between the two surfaces:
- in AI Mode, position follows the rules of a normal results page, so where your link sits inside the answer matters;
- a follow-up question in AI Mode is a new search, with its own impressions, position and clicks;
- a click on an external link inside AI Mode counts as a click.
The API does not split them either. We pulled the "Search appearance" dimension for the visilay.com property from 29 July to 26 October 2026: a single value, "translated result", with 34 impressions. No row for AI Overviews or AI Mode.
What our data says: 53 "ai mode" queries in 90 days (and zero clicks)
In the 90 days from 29 July to 26 October 2026, visilay.com appeared on Google for 53 queries containing "ai mode", with 529 impressions and no clicks. We split them into two groups: long questions of 8 words or more, and short searches.
| Query type | Queries | Impressions | Weighted average position | Queries in the top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short (under 8 words), e.g. "best ai mode tracking tools" | 20 | 440 | 77.0 | 2 |
| Long questions (8 words or more), e.g. "which ai visibility platforms monitor both google ai mode and ai overviews?" | 33 | 89 | 6.7 | 28 |
| Total | 53 | 529 | - | 30 |
Two things stand out.
First: on long questions we are on page one 28 times out of 33, on short ones 2 out of 20. Short searches such as "ai mode tracking tools" bring more impressions, but there we sit at position 77.
Second: the long questions read like something you would say to an assistant. In its AI Mode launch post for Italy, Google itself says early users ask questions two to three times longer than a traditional search.
So did those 33 queries come from AI Mode?
We do not know, and that is the point. Search Console does not say. The long questions in your Search Console are the best list of prompts to track that you already have, but their origin remains a guess. How to turn them into a stable sample is in prompt tracking.
AI Mode in Google Analytics 4 (why it is not in the AI Assistant channel)
In GA4, AI Mode visits sit in Organic Search. Google's default channel group guide says so twice: the AI Assistant channel, live since 13 May 2026, covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok and excludes AI Overviews and AI Mode; Organic Search includes them.
So in GA4 a visit from AI Mode and one from a classic blue link are the same row. There is no standard dimension that tells them apart.
What you can do: look at organic landing pages and compare them with the pages the Search Console AI report shows most. If a page grows in AI impressions and organic sessions in the same period, you have a clue, not proof. For traffic from external assistants, which can be separated, see our guide to ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics 4.
And if organic drops next month?
Without tracking the answers you will not know whether you lost rankings in classic results or citations in AI Mode. They are two different problems with two different fixes, and GA4 shows them as one.
A misread organic drop costs a quarter spent on the wrong problem.
You have just seen that AI Mode, AI Overviews and classic results end up in the same GA4 row and the same Search Console report. We separate what can be separated, build the list of questions to track from your own Search Console and tell you which part of the number is measured and which is estimated.
Book a strategy callWhich AI visibility platforms track both Google AI Mode and AI Overviews? (and on what terms)
On the official pages we checked on 27 October 2026, Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, Ahrefs Brand Radar, SE Ranking's SE Visible and Peec AI read both AI Mode and AI Overviews; Otterly sells AI Mode as an add-on. ScryRank, the monitoring tool built by Visilay, reads AI Overviews but not AI Mode.
| Tool | AI Mode | AI Overviews | What the official page says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit | Yes | Yes | Day-by-day prompt tracking on platforms such as AI Mode and ChatGPT |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Yes | Yes | Index of more than 109 million prompts for AI Mode and more than 286 million for AI Overviews; for these two surfaces it also tracks short searches that trigger an AI answer |
| SE Visible (SE Ranking) | Yes | Yes | Monitors AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini and ChatGPT |
| Peec AI | Yes, among the plan's engines | Yes, among the plan's engines | Starter: 50 prompts and 3 engines, tracked daily |
| Otterly.AI | Paid add-on | Yes | Lite at $29 a month with 15 prompts; AI Mode, Gemini and Claude as add-ons |
| ScryRank (Visilay) | No | Yes, on keywords | Monthly tracking of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews; from €39 a month with 50 prompts |
On our own tool we say it plainly: ScryRank is the monitoring tool built by Visilay and today it does not read AI Mode. It checks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity once a month, plus AI Overviews on your sector's keywords, with plans at €39, €69 and €139 a month (price list checked on 27 October 2026). If AI Mode is the surface you care about most, you need one of the other tools in the table for it.
Prompts or keywords: two ways of looking at AI Mode
Ahrefs explains the difference well on its Brand Radar page. Prompts are long natural-language questions, like the ones in our table above. Keywords are short searches that trigger an AI answer inside Google, and they only make sense for AI Overviews and AI Mode, the two AI surfaces that live in Google's own results.
A business needs both. Keywords tell you whether your "classic" market is moving through AI answers. Prompts tell you whether your name is there when a customer asks the full question.
Before choosing, two checks: that AI Mode is in the plan you buy and not an add-on, and that your country is one of the tracking locations. The full comparison on these criteria is in how to choose an AI visibility tool, the prices in AI visibility tool pricing. For AI Overviews alone there is our test of AI Overview tools.
How to set up AI Mode tracking in an hour (six steps)
Our method starts from the data you already have and adds a tool only where it is needed.
- Export the generative AI report every month. Pages tab, last 28 days, filtered by your country. Save the file: it becomes your month-by-month history, even if you change tools.
- Compare the top 20 pages with GA4 organic landing pages for the same period. Flag the ones that grow together.
- Pull Search Console queries of 8 words or more ranking in the top 10. They are the base of your prompt list: on visilay.com there were 28.
- Rewrite them as customer questions, mostly without your brand name. Keep 20 to 50 prompts, grouped by service.
- Have them checked on AI Mode by a tool that includes it in the plan, or by hand from an account with no history, always from the same country. Record mention yes/no and the cited sources.
- Repeat and compare averages, not single answers. AI answers change on their own: we measured it on 20 answers in our test of AI visibility data accuracy.
What to put in the monthly report is covered in our guide to the AI visibility report.
What makes a site citable in AI Mode (no promises)
Google asks for nothing special for AI Mode. Its documentation on AI features says there are no additional requirements: the page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet.
What changes is the route. AI Mode breaks the question into subtopics and runs several searches in parallel, the query fan-out. A page gets cited if it answers one of those subtopics well, not only the whole question. That is why, in our table, long questions rank better than short ones: they answer one precise question.
One first-hand observation. In October 2025, two weeks after AI Mode reached Italy, on an industrial client project we saw third-party pages where we had earned mentions and links appear as sources in AI Mode. External sources count as much as your own pages. That is the work we do in our GEO service; ongoing measurement sits in our AI monitoring service.
None of this guarantees a citation. It raises the odds, and tracking is how you see whether it happened.
FAQs
No. The generative AI report adds up AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions and breaks them down by page, country, device and date. The Performance report also includes them in the Web search type, alongside classic results, with no dedicated filter.
No. According to Google Analytics' default channel group guide, the AI Assistant channel excludes AI Overviews and AI Mode, which stay in Organic Search. To isolate them you need to compare with the pages in the Search Console AI report.
It depends: the Search Console AI report does not show them, so you need a fixed list of questions checked on AI Mode, with a tool that includes it in the plan or by hand. The long questions already in your Search Console are the most reliable starting point.
Yes. According to the Search Console help page on clicks, impressions and position, a follow-up question in AI Mode is essentially a new query: impressions, position and clicks in the new answer are counted separately.
No. ScryRank, the monitoring tool built by Visilay, checks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews on sector keywords every month. For AI Mode you need tools that include it in the plan, such as Semrush, Ahrefs Brand Radar, SE Visible or Peec AI.
No, not to start. Search Console and GA4 give you impressions and traffic, and 20 questions checked by hand each month give you a first snapshot. A tool becomes useful when you want history per question and a comparison with competitors.
In short
Search Console shows AI impressions, not the question and not the surface.
GA4 puts AI Mode in Organic Search, not AI Assistant.
A follow-up question is a new search.
The long questions in Search Console are your first prompt list.
Choose a tool only after checking AI Mode is in the plan.
One last thing our data made us notice. Of 53 "ai mode" queries, 30 showed us on page one and none brought a click. If you measure AI Mode in clicks, you will see zero even when you are present. The metric to take to the meeting is presence in the answer on your customers' questions; clicks come later, and often from somewhere else.
If you want to set it up together on your Search Console, get in touch.
