Google says Search Console cannot usefully tell you where you sit inside an AI answer, which turns the "Google gives me this for free" objection into Google's own words.

Answering a Reddit question about how generative AI impressions are counted, John Mueller wrote: "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." He added that "the old 'position 1 - 10' is hard to map, or to make useful for site owners," and asked for suggestions. No plan or date was given. This sits on top of the Generative AI performance report that rolled out to all sites on 31 August, which combines AI Overviews and AI Mode into one impression figure.

Method: a difference-in-differences model on Wikimedia monthly clickstream data, December 2023 to December 2024, comparing English articles with the same articles in German (499,927 pairs) and French (530,873 pairs), using the fact that AI Overviews went on by default in the US in May 2024 and not in those countries. Result, verbatim from the abstract: default availability "reduced English search traffic by 5.45% and 4.82%, respectively", which the paper puts at roughly 100.27 million fewer search referrals a month. Earlier versions used daily pageviews and reported "about 15%".

Limits: not peer reviewed; Wikimedia data lumps all search engines together; most English Wikipedia readers are outside the US; 2024 data, before AI Mode; the authors say it does not establish effects on news, retail or other sites.