Search Console’s documentation states that every link inside an AI Overview shares one position: the block’s, not any individual link’s. What is new is Google saying so out loud, and why. Responding on Reddit, John Mueller of Google said position for these features is “hard to do in a way that makes it useful,” that Search Console therefore tracks it “as a block,” and that it isn’t separated out in the Generative AI performance report.
What position does Search Console report for a link inside an AI Overview?
The same single position as the AI Overview block itself. Google’s Search Console help page, “What are impressions, position, and clicks?”, states that “an AI Overview occupies a single position in search results, and all links in the AI Overview are assigned that same position.” The Generative AI performance report carries no position field at all. John Mueller of Google added, on Reddit, that position for these features is “hard to do in a way that makes it useful.”
What did John Mueller say on Reddit?
The exchange started with a plain question in r/SEO: how are impressions counted for Generative AI in Search Console. Reported by Search Engine Roundtable on September 10, Mueller pointed first to the help documentation, calling it “a giant doc in the meantime,” then added a line that is not in the doc itself.
“Position for these is hard to do in a way that makes it useful, so we’re currently tracking it like we do for many search features (as a block), & it’s not separated out in the Gen-AI performance report.”
— John Mueller, Google, on Reddit
He added that “the old ‘position 1 – 10’ is hard to map, or to make useful for site owners,” citing how many ways a results page now lets a user interact, then asked what tracking would actually be useful, a request for ideas rather than an announced fix.
Search Engine Journal, covering the exchange on September 13, quotes the Reddit user whose reading Mueller answered with “This is pretty much it.” That reading flags two things people get wrong: “every link inside an AI Overview gets assigned the position of the AI Overview itself, so the average position you’re looking at is the slot the AIO occupied on the page, not where your link sat among the others in it,” and the Generative AI performance report is “a filtered view of data already in your Web search type, not something sitting on top of it, so don’t add the two together.”
How does position differ across search surfaces?
Google’s help page states the single-position rule for compound elements generally, then names AI Overviews and AI Mode specifically. A standard blue link keeps its own rank. The links inside an AI Overview, like those in a knowledge panel or a carousel, do not.
| Surface | What Search Console reports for position |
|---|---|
| Standard web result | “A relative ranking of the position of your link on Google, where 1 is the topmost position, 2 is the next position, and so on.” |
| Links inside an AI Overview | “An AI Overview occupies a single position in search results, and all links in the AI Overview are assigned that same position.” |
| Generative AI performance report | No position field. Impressions only, broken out across four dimensions: Pages, Countries, Dates, Devices. |
AI Mode gets its own line in the same document: position there “follows the same methodology as a Google Search results page,” with carousel and image blocks inside it calculated under the standard rules for those elements. The document never describes a per-link number for AI Overviews.
Does the Generative AI performance report show position?
No, it shows impressions only. Google’s help page for the report defines the metric directly: “Impressions are how many times links to your site were shown to a user in a generative AI feature on Google Search.” It covers AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken out across four dimensions: Pages, Countries, Dates, Devices. Nothing else. No clicks, no queries, no position, in a report Google says it rolled out to all websites worldwide as of August 31.
Position for AI features therefore sits in the standard Performance report, as the block-level value Mueller described. A page’s average position there, computed across impressions that included an AI Overview, averages a number that never moved per link to begin with. That follows from the two documented rules; Google does not state it.
One label, one number
The shape is familiar on this site. With begin-to-render impressions, the count changes and the thing it measures does not. Here it runs in reverse: the number never moves, no matter how many links sit in the block, while what a site owner assumes it measures does. And where YouTube Analytics reports one TV audience three ways, Search Console does the opposite for AI Overviews: three links or ten, one number covers all of them.
Nothing here says Google will change how it tracks AI Overview position. Mueller framed the current approach as the way Google already tracks many search features, because position for these is, in his words, “hard to do in a way that makes it useful,” and he asked on the record for ideas. A page’s rank inside an AI Overview is not something Search Console can tell you today, only that the block it sat in occupied one slot on the page.