Google: The Old Position 1-10 Is Hard To Map For Site Owners

Google Search Advocate John Mueller said the traditional "position 1 - 10" ranking is "hard to map" for site owners as search results pages add AI Overviews, featured snippets and other features, and confirmed that Generative AI impressions in Search Console are tracked as a block rather than separated out in the Gen-AI performance report. Mueller made the comments on Reddit and pointed site owners to Google's help center documentation on how impressions and clicks are counted, adding that he would welcome feedback on what position tracking would be useful.

Google's John Mueller responded to questions about how impressions are counted for Generative AI in Google Search Console. Google has a help document https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/16984139?hl=en 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 https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1wamz5g/how are impressions counted for generative ai in/ . 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 https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1wamz5g/how are impressions counted for generative ai in/ .