Google added two new views of AI search this month. Here is how to read them.

If you rank well and still lose the AI answer, the hard part is seeing it happen. This month Google added two reports that show part of it. One is for businesses that sell products. The other is for every site in Search Console.

Share of voice in AI Mode and AI Overviews

On September 16, Google said AI performance insights in Merchant Center is now available to businesses in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the U.S.

Google says the feature shows how a brand and its products are found by “comparing their share of voice with other brands across surfaces like AI Mode and AI Overviews.” It is a Google report that puts your brand next to other brands inside Google’s AI answers.

The same post has two company-reported figures. In a test with lululemon, conversational attributes the brand submitted were incorporated 50% of the time in relevant product recommendations in AI Mode. And Google says merchants that adopt its core feed best practices see a 5% increase in conversions the following month, on average.

Google’s post does not say how it measures share of voice. The report covers businesses that list products in Merchant Center.

Image searches in Search Console

On September 24, Google added web multimodal search to Search Console. It appears in the performance report for Search results and in the report for Generative AI features.

It counts searches made with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search, and the Chrome right-click “Search this image” feature. To see it, use the new multimodal search type filter in the performance reports. You can export the data.

Google says it is rolling out globally, and that the numbers will appear in your Performance report if your site gets traffic from these searches.

Read the numbers with care

Search Engine Roundtable reported on September 16 that Google’s John Mueller expects position and impression tracking for AI Mode, AI Overviews and Search to “evolve over time.” Mueller also said, “The goal is not a written-in-stone absolute truth for position counting (that’s impossible), but rather to make something that’s useful for site owners in terms of understanding how their site is shown.”

So use these reports to compare your site with itself, month to month. Be careful about reading much into a single number.

A 20-minute check

1. If you sell products, open Merchant Center and find AI performance insights. Write down your share of voice and which other brands appear.
2. In Search Console, open the Performance report for Search results and set the search type to multimodal. Note which pages get image searches.
3. Do the same in the Generative AI features report.
4. Export both and save them with today’s date.
5. Repeat next month. Wait for two or three months of data before you act on a change.

What to do this week

• Run the five steps above and save the exports.
• List the other brands Merchant Center shows beside yours.
• Mark the pages that get image searches, and check that their images and product details are current.
• Put the same check on your calendar for next month.

New Reward’s Monthly War Report works the same way, with the same pages every month and the ground you gained or lost.