Did your Search Console generative AI impressions fall off a cliff on August 13? Google says it's a logging bug — and our own web totals show no dent

Update 2026-09-20: the entry is closed and the data restored

Read again on 2026-09-20, the data anomalies page has re-dated the Search entry and closed it. Verbatim: "August 13 - August 17 (Generative AI in Search). A logging error caused a decrease in impressions on the Generative AI performance report in Search for data from August 13 - August 17, 2026. This issue affects data logging only. Update (August 21): Missing data for this period has been restored. The Performance report now shows complete metrics." The Discover entry for August 13 is unchanged. Three things follow. The under-count was five days, August 13 to 17, not open-ended. Google restored the missing rows rather than leaving a gap, which answers the question this post left open on August 18. And a client report that shows the generative AI line for the week of August 13 today shows the corrected numbers; a dashboard screenshot taken between August 13 and August 21 does not. We have not checked whether the in-product annotation Mueller mentioned was added; the anomalies entry is the written record.

We re-read the same day-by-day web line from the Search Analytics API on 2026-09-20 (`type: web`, `dataState: all`, artifact `gsc-drop-repull-2026-09-20.json`) to see whether the restoration reached the blended web totals, which the AI report's impressions sit inside. The four days before the break returned exactly the values printed on August 18. Three of the four bug-window days each returned one impression more: August 13 went from 116 to 117, August 14 from 111 to 112, August 16 from 124 to 125; August 15 stayed at 103, and clicks did not move. The four-day average after the break is now 114.25 against the 113.5 printed on August 18, and the four days before it stay at 105. On a property of roughly 100 impressions a day that is three impressions over four days, consistent with a handful of AI-surface impressions being restored into the web totals and with the web line never having carried the drop; it does not measure the AI report itself, which the API still cannot return.

What Google had confirmed on August 17, as written then

Two entries under "Performance reports (Search results / Discover / Google News)" on the data anomalies page, read this run. August 13 (Generative AI in Search): "A logging error caused a decrease in impressions on the Generative AI performance report in Search for data starting on August 13, 2026. This issue affects data logging only and is ongoing." August 13 (Discover and Generative AI in Discover): "A logging error caused a decrease in clicks and impressions on the Discover performance report for data on August 13, 2026. For properties with access to Generative AI features in Discover, this error also caused a decrease in reported impressions." Note the scope as written on August 17: the Search-side error is impressions on the generative AI report, open-ended from August 13 (Google later closed it at August 17, see the update above); the Discover error is clicks and impressions, one day only. Google's own note says nothing about the regular web performance report.

The reports that prompted the entry were widespread and precise. Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz collected them on August 17: a Google Search Central community thread titled "Seeing a large (50%) decrease in impressions from Generative AI features" starting 8/13; agency owners reporting "almost every client project" showing the same cliff; and Glenn Gabe on X hearing of a clicks drop from around 8/12 while "visibility reporting is stable and analytics shows no drop." That last one matters: Google has confirmed the AI-report impressions error and the one-day Discover error, but has not confirmed any error in web clicks. If your blue-link clicks dipped on the 12th or 13th, check analytics before you file it under this bug. Search Engine Land carried Google's confirmation the same evening.

Our own property across the break: no step down in web totals

Google's help doc for the AI report says its impressions are already included in the Web search type — the AI-surface impressions are inside the `web` totals your API pulls, and there is no way to split them out. So a logging error on the AI report could in principle show up as a dent in web totals too. We pulled `sc-domain:askedabout.com` day by day from the Search Analytics API (`type: web`, data through 2026-08-16, the latest complete day):

Four days after the break average 113.5 impressions a day against 105 for the four before it; August 13 was in fact our first three-click day. Read this for what it is: one small property (~100 impressions a day, so a 20% swing is noise), and a reading of the web line, not the AI report itself, which we cannot pull. It is consistent with Google's scoping — the error is in how the generative AI report is logged, not in the underlying web totals — and it is the one check any agency can run on any client through the API today.

What to tell clients this week

• Do not report the August 13 cliff as a citation loss. The drop was in Google's logging, confirmed in writing. If a client saw the halved line in a dashboard or a screenshot taken between August 13 and August 21, the correct note today is that Google restored the rows on August 21 and the report now shows the complete figures.
• Only August 13 to 17 was affected, and those days have been restated. As written on August 18 the entry was marked ongoing, and this post advised treating post-08-13 rows as a floor. That advice expired on August 21: Google's update says the missing data for the period has been restored. Google's anomalies page describes previous incidents as logging-only too, a June 24 Discover/AI-in-Discover error and a May 21 Discover error are on the same page; this is the first of them where the entry states that the data was restored.
• The report you can't automate is the report that broke. The generative AI report is UI-and-export only, so there is no script that would have flagged this on the 13th; the reports came from people looking at charts. The API-side control — the web line above — is the one thing you can pull per client to show the blue-link totals held.
• Impressions were never recommendations. Even a correctly logged AI-report impression counts a link appearing in an AI Overview or AI Mode; it does not say whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude names the business when a buyer asks. That is the number our free 60-second check reads directly, and it is unaffected by Search Console's logging.