Analytics
AI Search Metrics
AI Search Metrics are versioned measures of website visibility and user outcomes in declared AI-mediated search surfaces, with explicit formulas, denominators, sources and sampling limits.
What it means
Official metrics must be named as provided. Google's generative AI Search Console reports include Impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates for eligible properties during rollout. Capture-derived measures such as mention rate or visible citation rate require a fixed eligible test set and cannot be presented as provider metrics. Provenance records the data source, extraction activity and metric version.
Why it matters
A disclosed denominator prevents changing query sets, unavailable surfaces and duplicate captures from creating artificial improvement.
Example
Mention rate equals captures with at least one resolved entity mention divided by eligible completed captures; non-triggering AI Overview queries remain an explicit state, while Google Impressions are reported separately from this sampled rate.
Common mistakes
Do not mix official and sampled data, hide denominators, count failed captures as absence, blend providers, call citation frequency rank, ignore rollout coverage, change formulas silently or infer causation.
How AYSA handles this
Signals reviewed
data source, provider, surface, query set, capture status, mention labels, citation labels, numerator, denominator, metric version
Problem AYSA can identify
AYSA can identify hidden denominators, mixed data sources, duplicate captures, unavailable states counted as zero and undocumented formula changes.
Recommendation prepared
The workflow prepares a metric dictionary with formulas, eligibility, exclusions, provenance and reporting cadence.
Approval preview
The reviewer sees each source field, transformation, AI-assisted label, manual judgment, formula and known coverage gap.
Execution
AYSA can calculate approved metrics from supported data and captures; it cannot obtain private provider metrics.
Verification
Recomputation uses immutable source snapshots and publishes any formula, sampling or coverage change as a new version.
Limits
Metrics describe bounded observations rather than causal impact, and provenance or human review does not automatically certify AI Act or legal compliance.
Sources and further reading
- Google Search Central — Generative AI performance reports in Search Console — Official search documentation
- Google Search Central — AI features and your website — Official search documentation
- Google Search Central — Optimizing for generative AI features — Official search documentation
- W3C — PROV Overview — W3C provenance standard
- European Commission — AI Act Article 50 transparency guidelines — Official European Commission guidance
Written by Marius Dosinescu. Reviewed by AYSA SEO Editorial Team · 2026-07-28 00:00:00.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions
Is citation rate an official Google metric?
No. Unless Google documents such a field, it is a sampled analytical measure with its own test definition.
Should failed or unavailable captures count as absence?
No. They require a separate unavailable or failed state under the metric's eligibility rule.
SEO execution campaign
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