They look like broken data. "yes." "yes go on." "yes, pricing." SEO practitioner Anastasia Kourou found those fragments sitting among the query strings in her Search Console Performance report and put the question to John Mueller on LinkedIn. Ross Tavendale (@rtavs) had posted the same sighting on X two days earlier, on August 4, 2026, with no answer attached to it. Mueller's reply, reported by Search Engine Roundtable on August 6, 2026 at 7:41am ET, confirmed that the standard Performance report, not the separate Generative AI performance report, carries query-level data for AI Overviews and AI Mode sessions, follow-up questions included. He pointed at Google's own Search Console help documentation, which states the accounting plainly: "If a user asks a follow-up question within AI Mode, they are essentially performing a new query. All impression, position, and click data in the new response are counted as coming from this new user query." So the query-level AI Mode signal most operators had filed as unreachable, buried in the query-less Generative AI report, has been sitting in the report they already pull every week.
Credibility: HIGH. The load-bearing artifact is Google's own help page, at a URL anyone can open and read for themselves, and the confirmation comes from Google's own spokesperson. Two practitioners had independently posted the same sighting, Kourou on LinkedIn and Tavendale on X, before Mueller said anything. One outlet carried the story, Search Engine Roundtable, and that is the honest limit to state. It is also the smallest part of the picture, because the claim rests on Google's document rather than on the outlet's reading of it.
Facts:
- Google Search Console help documentation states: "If a user asks a follow-up question within AI Mode, they are essentially performing a new query. All impression, position, and click data in the new response are counted as coming from this new user query." (support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7042828)
- The Generative AI performance report in Search Console does not include query-level data; the standard Performance report does, per Mueller.
- Ross Tavendale (@rtavs) posted the sighting on X on August 4, 2026.
- Search Engine Roundtable published Mueller's confirmation on August 6, 2026, 7:41am ET, citing Anastasia Kourou's original LinkedIn post.
Stay ahead of AI search
The changes that move your rankings and AI citations — and the exact move to make — before they cost you. Free, three times a week.
If your job is reporting AI visibility to a client, a gap you have been narrating around just closed. AI Mode traffic used to be something you inferred, from query length, from phrasing, from a shape in the export you could describe but never point at. The fragments are the pointer. Filter the standard Performance report for short conversational strings and you have AI Mode sessions with impressions, positions and clicks attached, inside a report the client already recognises.
Then read what it proves narrowly. A query-level row proves Google put you in front of someone inside that conversation. It says nothing about how the answer talked about you: whether it named the brand, recommended it, or listed it fourth behind three competitors. That is the question an AI-citation tracker answers, and this does not replace one. Run them together. The tracker explains what the answer said about you, and Search Console confirms the impression was real and hands you a click number to set beside it. Watch for the case where they disagree. Rising fragment volume against flat tracked citations means Google is putting the conversation in front of people while the answer leaves your brand out, which is the version of this finding worth walking into a content meeting with.
Recommended actions:
1. Ask your web team to export this week's Search Console Performance report, the standard one and not the Generative AI report, filtered to short, conversational or fragment-style query strings.
2. Line that segment up against the client's tracked AI Mode and AI Overviews citations, and check whether the extra fragment volume moves with citations you already know about.
3. Write down which query patterns turn out to flag AI Mode traffic in this account, so next month's report reuses the filter instead of deriving it again.
Search Engine Roundtable: "Google Search Console Shows AI Mode Queries, Not In Generative AI Reports," Barry Schwartz, August 6, 2026. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-ai-mode-queries-41821.html
Google Search Console Help: AI Mode / AI Overviews reporting documentation (linked by John Mueller). https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7042828?hl=en#zippy=%2Cai-mode
Anastasia Kourou, LinkedIn post (original sighting). https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anastasia-kourou-4b393034_hi-john-mueller-i-am-noticing-some-unusual-share-7489988919229353984-FJ0m/
Ross Tavendale (@rtavs), X post, August 4, 2026. https://x.com/rtavs/status/2084710985298780579