Google has nothing new to announce on adding more AI search data to Search Console, Gary Illyes wrote on LinkedIn, Search Engine Journal reported on November 2, 2026. The statement lands weeks before a deadline set by the UK Competition and Markets Authority, which requires Google to give publishers AI search metrics including clicks by December 3, 2026. Publishers waiting for visibility into AI-driven traffic will, for now, keep waiting.
Illyes wrote that Google has nothing to announce yet on the subject, a deliberately narrow statement that neither promises new data nor rules it out. That phrasing matters, because it leaves room for an announcement before the deadline while giving publishers nothing concrete to plan around in the meantime. It is a holding line, not a roadmap, and it arrived in a LinkedIn post rather than through an official Search Console announcement.
For publishers, the practical effect is continued uncertainty. Teams cannot yet build reporting, set targets, or evaluate AI search performance with the same rigour they apply to classic search, because the data they need does not exist in a separated form. Planning for the end of the year must therefore assume the current reporting stays as it is until Google says otherwise.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority requires Google to give publishers AI search metrics including clicks by December 3, 2026. That requirement turns a long-standing publisher complaint into a dated obligation: AI summaries may be answering questions on the results page, but publishers have had no reliable way to measure how many clicks those summaries generate or cost them.
The first CMA compliance report covers June 3 to December 3, 2026, and falls due January 3, 2027. That window means the regulator will soon be able to compare what Google promised against what publishers actually received, and the January report will be the first formal test of whether the December deadline was met in substance or only in form.
The current Search Console generative AI report, open to all users since August 31, 2026, shows impressions only. Publishers can see how often their content surfaced in AI features, but they cannot see how often searchers clicked through from those features. AI clicks sit inside standard Performance totals and cannot be separated out, so a publisher cannot tell whether a click came from a classic result, an AI feature, or both.
That gap is the heart of the dispute. Impressions without clicks can show exposure while hiding lost traffic: a site might appear more often in AI answers while receiving fewer visits, and the current reporting would not make that trade-off visible. Until clicks are broken out, publishers are effectively asked to trust that AI visibility compensates for any visits it replaces, without the numbers to check.
Publishers should keep their own measurement discipline tight while the official data is missing. Track total search clicks, brand versus non-brand queries, and landing-page performance over time, and watch for changes that coincide with AI feature rollouts on their key topics. Those trends will not prove causation, but they give a baseline against which any future AI click data can be judged.
SEOs should also prepare reporting templates now for the day separated AI click data arrives, so the first release can be analysed immediately rather than debated. When the data does appear, the first question will be simple: for each topic, did AI visibility add clicks, replace clicks, or both? Teams that already track the right baselines will answer that question in days, while others will still be building dashboards.
Sources: Search Engine Journal, November 2, 2026, reporting Gary Illyes on LinkedIn and the UK Competition and Markets Authority requirements.
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