Search Console's generative AI report is reaching everyone — and no, you can't pull it from the API. We tested.

The rollout, stated precisely

Three claims, three different confidence levels. Documented by Google: the report exists, covers AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions on Search (Discover has a separate report), breaks down by page, country, device, and date, and shows no clicks and no queries — all per the help doc. Observed, not announced: availability now looks near-universal — Search Engine Roundtable checked ~25 properties on August 11 and found it on all of them, and Google says the only remaining gate is having enough generative-AI impressions. Still in Google's own words: the help doc's rollout note is unchanged — "a subset of website owners." We held this story two days ago for exactly that gap between observation and announcement; we're running it now because the part we can verify first-hand got more interesting.

The test: six candidate API values, six rejections

On August 11, 2026 we queried the Search Analytics API (`searchAnalytics/query`) on our own property (`sc-domain:askedabout.com`, window 2026-07-12 to 2026-08-09) with every plausible `type` value for the new report. Every one returned `400 INVALID_ARGUMENT`; an identical control query with `type: "web"` returned `200` with rows.

This matches Google's own API reference, read today, which enumerates exactly six supported types — `web`, `image`, `video`, `news`, `discover`, `googleNews` — and no generative-AI value. We also grouped our full window by the `searchAppearance` dimension: zero appearance rows for our property, so the AI surfaces don't show up there either. The only ways out of the report are the UI and its manual export button.

The blending detail most write-ups skip

Google's help doc contains one load-bearing sentence: "The generative AI performance report includes data from the Web search type in the Performance report." Read that carefully — your AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions are already inside the `web` totals your API pulls and rank trackers report. You cannot subtract them out programmatically, because the API offers no dimension or type that isolates them. So an impressions spike in your API data may be AI-surface exposure, not blue-link exposure — and, as with AI Mode queries, you can't see which queries did it.

What this means for agencies and consultants

• Client dashboards can't automate this yet. Looker Studio connectors, reporting tools, and anything else built on the Search Analytics API cannot show the generative AI report. Screenshot the UI or use the export button — that's the current ceiling.
• Check your clients' properties this week. If Barry Schwartz's read holds, the report is now present on most properties with any AI-feature exposure. A property missing it most likely hasn't cleared the impressions threshold — which is itself a visibility datum.
• Impressions still aren't recommendations. The report counts link appearances in Google's AI surfaces. It says nothing about whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude actually name a business when a buyer asks — the gap we documented when the report launched. Our own property held Google impressions for weeks while all four engines recommended us in exactly zero of 144 weekly test answers. If you want the recommendation number and not the impression number, you have to ask the engines directly — that's the free 60-second check we run.