KiCad PCB design tool now runs directly in the browser

Google has quietly added AI visibility metrics to its own SEO tooling, and if you haven't noticed yet, that's exactly the problem.

Search Engine Journal broke the news that Google's built AI visibility data directly into its Search Console tools. This isn't a third-party workaround or a scrappy startup filling a gap. Google built it in on purpose, which tells you everything about where search is heading and how seriously they expect you to take it.

What Google Actually Did

For the past couple of years, SEO has been quietly splitting into two different games. There's traditional search, where you rank for a keyword and someone clicks your blue link. Then there's AI-powered search, where Google's AI Overview (the summary box that now sits above most results) either mentions you or it doesn't. Until now, you had almost no way of knowing which was happening.

Google has now surfaced data inside Search Console that shows how your site is performing specifically within AI-generated responses. That means you can start to see whether your content is being pulled into those AI summaries, and where you're invisible.

This matters because the click behaviour is completely different. When someone reads an AI Overview and gets their answer, they often don't click anything. Your traffic can quietly fall off even if your ranking hasn't moved. You'd never know why without this kind of visibility.

The Shift Nobody Warned Small Businesses About

Most small business owners we speak to are still optimising for the old game. They're checking keyword positions, monitoring bounce rates, tweaking meta descriptions. All of that still matters, but it's now only half the picture.

AI search doesn't reward the same signals that traditional ranking does. It tends to favour content that directly answers specific questions, written in a way that's easy to extract and summarise. If your website copy is vague, brand-heavy, or written for vibes rather than utility, AI Overviews will skip right past you and pull from a competitor who gave a cleaner answer.

The fact that Google built this into their own tool, rather than leaving it to the analytics industry to figure out, suggests they know adoption needs a push. They're not doing this out of generosity. They want you optimising for AI search, because that's what makes their AI search better.

What This Means If You Run a Business

Your content strategy needs a second lane. You don't have to throw out what's working, but you do need to understand whether your pages are showing up in AI-generated answers or getting quietly bypassed. That requires looking at the new data, not just your standard traffic dashboard.

The businesses that will feel this most acutely are those in competitive, information-heavy niches: legal, financial, health, trades, professional services. If your potential customers are asking Google questions before they contact you, and they are, then whether AI Overview mentions you or ignores you has a direct commercial impact.

We're already seeing this with clients. Organic traffic holding steady in traditional rankings while enquiry volume drops. AI Overview invisibility is a credible explanation, and now there's a tool to check.

What To Do About It

1. 1.Log into Google Search Console and look for any new AI visibility or AI Overview reporting sections. Google is rolling this out gradually, so check now and bookmark it for weekly review.

1. 1.Audit your most important pages for question-and-answer clarity. Pick your top five service or product pages and ask: does this page actually answer the question a customer would type into Google? If not, rewrite the opening section so it does.

1. 1.Stop writing for impressions, start writing for extraction. AI systems pull short, clear, factual statements. If your copy is all narrative and no substance, it won't get used.

1. 1.Separate your SEO metrics. Track traditional ranking and AI visibility as two distinct things. They will diverge, and you need to know when that happens.

1. 1.Talk to whoever manages your website about this shift. If they're not across AI search visibility yet, that's a gap worth closing sooner rather than later.