On 16 September 2026, Search Engine Roundtable relayed a reply posted the day before on LinkedIn by John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, to a question about how Search Console counts positions in AI Mode, Google's conversational mode. His answer comes down to one idea: the tracking has edge cases and will evolve over time, at the pace of Google Search itself. For anyone who reads those figures every month, the message deserves to be taken at its word: a position that moves can come from a rule change at Google, without a single line of the site having changed.
The facts
- The question came from SEO consultant Kenichi Suzuki: in AI Mode, do cited links receive positions 1, 2, 3, or does the whole block count as a single position, as an AI Overview does? Mueller points to the help page: an impression is counted when a link to the site is shown, and position is read "roughly top to bottom, left to right". He adds that there are edge cases, that these metrics will evolve as Google Search, AI Mode and AI Overviews evolve, and that the goal is something useful for site owners to understand how their site is shown, an exact count being in his words impossible ("that's impossible"). The documentation will be updated if there are significant changes.
- On 10 September, on Reddit, Mueller had already confirmed that Google tracks generative AI placements as a block: the same help page states that an AI Overview occupies a single position in the results and that every link inside it receives that position, with no distinction between the first and the fifth citation. Search Engine Journal concluded on 13 September that reporting for AI search is inadequate. We analysed that exchange on 11 September.
- The help page specifies that an impression is counted as soon as an item appears on the results page served, whether or not the user scrolls down to it, and that inside an expandable section the item must be expanded by a click to count. Applied to AI Overviews, that rule means a page counted as an impression has not necessarily been seen, and that links hidden behind "Show more" are only counted once the answer is expanded, a reading Search Engine Journal shares. The Search Console generative AI report, opened to every site on 31 August, only shows impressions, by page, country, device and date, with no clicks and no position; its help page states that it includes data from the Web search type of the performance report.
Why position 1 to 10 no longer means much
The Search Console model dates from a page made of ten blue links in a row. A current page stacks, before the first standard result, an AI Overview, ads, a local pack, related questions and carousels. The question "what position am I in?" no longer has a single answer. Mueller says so himself: an exact count is impossible. Google is aiming for a tool that helps understand how a site is shown, and will adjust its documentation if the method changes significantly.
An average position that moves by three points in the performance report, without a single line of the site having changed, can therefore come from an adjustment in how Google counts the links cited by its AI. In 27 years of digital acquisition, we have rarely seen a data provider state so openly that its measurement rule was not fixed.
Two reports, one set of data
Two reports that many people confuse also need to be told apart. The standard performance report already mixes the clicks and impressions earned in AI Mode and in AI Overviews with those of standard results, in a single total. The generative AI report is a filtered view of that same data, limited to impressions. Adding them together counts the same visibility twice, which produces pretty charts and poor decisions.
AIxH's view
Our SEO agency in Luxembourg has stopped presenting the Search Console position of links cited by AI as a stable indicator. It appears in our reports with a written methodological caveat, and our GEO and AI visibility service cross-checks it with a manual review of AI answers on the client's priority queries. If an AI visibility report lands on your desk without that precaution, it is the first thing to review.
