Free AI Visibility Reports From Google and Bing, Compared

PSentry cannot see a single one of the surfaces this article is about. It puts questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity through their APIs, and it never reads an AI Overview, an AI Mode answer, a Copilot response or the AI summaries in Bing. So when we say that the free AI visibility reports from Google and Bing show things we cannot, that is meant literally. It is also why they deserve a careful reading rather than a sales pitch.

Three of these free AI reports changed between mid September and mid October 2026. Each one now gets quoted as if it settled the question of AI visibility. Each one settles a narrower question, and the narrowness is the useful part.

The three free AI visibility reports, with their dates

A free AI visibility report, in this article, is any first-party report from a search engine that tells you how its own AI features displayed or cited your site. There are three worth knowing.

• Search Console, generative AI features report. Google announced it on 3 June 2026 and opened it to all sites at the end of August. On 24 September 2026 the Search Central blog added a multimodal search type filter, available both in the main Performance report and in the report for generative AI features.
• Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance. Microsoft describes it as showing how publisher content appears across Copilot, AI generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. On 13 October 2026 Bing added Topics Portfolio, a beta tab inside that report.
• Merchant Center, AI performance insights. Google's shopping post of 16 September 2026 announced it as available to businesses in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the US.

The claim doing the rounds is simple: between these three, a company now has its AI visibility covered, for free. Taken apart, it turns into four smaller claims. Some survive.

"Google and Bing now show us where we appear in AI answers"

They show where a link to you appears, or where you are cited, which is not the same thing as appearing.

Search Console counts link impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, grouped by page, country and device. We took that report apart in detail in what Search Console's AI report actually counts, and the short version still holds: one impression per property per answer, no query dimension in the AI view, and nothing about the sentence around the link.

The September filter adds a real dimension. Google says the multimodal search type covers searches made with Lens, Circle to Search on Android, image uploads to Google Search and the "Search this image" option in Chrome. For a manufacturer whose buyer photographs a worn part and asks what it is, that is the first free signal of how image searches reach the site, AI features included. It remains a count of links shown.

Bing's AI Performance report counts citations and lists the grounding queries, meaning the queries its systems used to fetch and reference your pages. Topics Portfolio groups those grounding queries into themes and shows, for each theme, an approximate total of citations across all sites, an approximate number of sites cited, and the number of distinct queries. Bing's own announcement asks readers to treat the figures as "directional signals for planning, not as a precise ledger." That is an honest label, and worth repeating to anyone who wants to put the numbers in a board deck.

Merchant Center is the odd one out. It does not count links to a website. It compares a retailer's share of voice with other brands on surfaces Google names as AI Mode and AI Overviews, which is about products in a feed rather than pages on a site.

"At last we can see the competitors"

Only one of the three names them, and only for products.

Search Console reports on your own property and nothing else. The other sites cited in the same AI Overview are invisible to it by design.

Topics Portfolio comes closer. Its opportunity queries are the queries where, in Bing's words, "other sites appear and yours does not," with citation volumes shown as ranges. That tells you where the gap is. The announcement does not say the report names the sites that fill it, and it warns that branded queries, including a competitor's brand, can turn up as opportunities.

Merchant Center's share of voice is the only one of the three built as a comparison with other brands. For a B2B supplier the catch is plain: it measures products from a shopping feed, in shopping contexts, in five countries.

"The free AI reports cover all our markets"

This is the claim that breaks most clearly for an exporter.

Google lists five countries for Merchant Center's AI performance insights: Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the US. No European country is on that list. A supplier whose main markets are Germany, France or Italy gets no data from it, however complete the feed.

Search Console has a country dimension, which tells you where a search came from. It has no language dimension, so a search from Switzerland could have been in German, French or Italian, and the report will not say which.

The Topics Portfolio announcement mentions no country or language filter at all. It does say that topics with too little activity are not shown, and that smaller sites "may see a shorter list or may not even see this feature." A niche industrial supplier is exactly the kind of site that may open the tab and find it empty. That is a statement about data volume, not a judgement on the site.

What no free AI report covers

Put the three side by side and the blank space has a clear shape.

• ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity. None of them belongs to Google or Microsoft, and none of the three reports claims to see them. A buyer who asks a standalone assistant for a supplier shortlist leaves no trace in any of these dashboards.
• The Gemini app. Search Console's documentation lists AI Overviews and AI Mode for the Search view. The Gemini app is a separate product, as we explained in Gemini is not Google AI Mode, and none of the three reports lists it.
• The text of the answer. Links, citations and share of voice are all counts. None of the three displays the sentence in which your company was described, whether it was accurate, or whether it called you the specialist or the also-ran.
• Language. Not one of them separates the German answer from the French one for the same question.

None of this is a defect. Each report was built to show site owners what one company's own AI features do with their pages or products, and each does that at no cost. The mistake lies in adding them up and calling the total "AI visibility".

How the pieces fit together

The useful reading is to treat each report as one instrument with one range, and to write down what falls outside it.

• Search Console: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, as link impressions on your pages, by page, country and device. The multimodal filter, where you have data, separates image searches from typed ones.
• Bing AI Performance and Topics Portfolio: citations across Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, the grounding queries behind them, and the themes where other sites are cited and you are not. Read it as a direction, as Bing itself suggests.
• Merchant Center: share of voice against other brands for feed products, only if you sell in one of the five listed countries.

The opportunity queries in Topics Portfolio have one use beyond Bing. They are a list of real questions on which other sites are being cited instead of yours, and they make a reasonable starting point for the questions you test elsewhere.

What marketing teams ask about these reports

Does Search Console show whether ChatGPT mentions our company?

No. Search Console covers Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, counted as link impressions on your pages. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity belong to neither Google nor Microsoft, and none of the three free reports claims to see them.

Can Bing tell us which competitors are cited instead of us?

Only in part. Topics Portfolio lists opportunity queries where other sites are cited and yours is not, with citation volumes shown as ranges, but Bing's announcement does not say the report names those sites. It also warns that branded queries, including a competitor's brand, can show up as opportunities.

Why is the Topics Portfolio tab empty for our site?

Bing does not show topics with too little activity, and says smaller sites may see a shorter list or no feature at all. An empty tab is a statement about data volume, not a judgement on the site.

Is Merchant Center's AI performance data available for European markets?

No. Google lists five countries for AI performance insights: Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the US. A supplier selling mainly in Germany, France or Italy gets no data from it, however complete the feed.

That elsewhere is where an assistant level measurement comes in. PSentry asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your buyers ask, in each language and market you sell in, twice a month, and records whether you are named, how you are described and who is named instead. As we said at the start, it sees nothing inside Google Search or Bing. Two readings that do not overlap are not a contradiction. A site with healthy impressions in Search Console and no mention in the German ChatGPT answer has two true facts about two different systems, and should keep them in separate columns.