Google's John Mueller responded to questions about how impressions are counted for Generative AI in Google Search Console. Google has a help document that explains that, and John just reiterated that. But what he added was that "the old "position 1 - 10" is hard to map."
He wrote on Reddit.
Search results pages have a lot of ways for users to interact nowadays, so the old "position 1 - 10" is hard to map, or to make useful for site owners.
Super true - there is no longer a simple position one in the Google search results. You got AI Overviews at the top with numerous citations, you have featured snippets, people also ask, and tons of other treatements throughout the search results page.
Here is what John posted in full:
This is pretty much it - we tried to document it as clearly as possible in the help center page (which you can find if you search for "impressions clicks search console"), it's a giant doc in the meantime. 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. Search results pages have a lot of ways for users to interact nowadays, so the old "position 1 - 10" is hard to map, or to make useful for site owners. If any of you have thoughts on what would be useful in terms of tracking position, I'd love to hear & am happy to discuss with the team.
Forum discussion at Reddit.