Google’s AI Search Reporting Is Coming – And the UK CMA May Have Just Accelerated It

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has issued Google with a new Publisher Conduct Requirement that could have significant implications for publishers, brands, marketers and SEO professionals.

While much of the discussion has focused on publisher rights, the bigger story may be the transparency and reporting that could emerge around AI-powered search experiences.

What the CMA Is Asking For

The CMA’s new requirement is designed to give publishers more control over how their content is used within Google’s AI products.

In simple terms, Google must provide publishers with greater visibility and choice regarding:

• Whether their content can be used in AI-generated search experiences.
• Whether their content can be used to train AI models.
• How their content is attributed when it appears in AI-generated answers.
• How AI search features impact engagement with publisher content.

One of the key principles behind the ruling is that publishers should not be forced into an all-or-nothing decision. They should be able to participate in traditional Google Search while having separate controls over AI usage.

This is an important distinction. Until now, many publishers have argued that opting out of AI effectively meant sacrificing search visibility altogether.

What Google Was Already Doing Anyway

The interesting part is that Google was already planning to do some of this.

Google has been testing publisher controls for AI Search and has publicly discussed expanding Search Console reporting to provide greater insight into how content appears within AI-powered search experiences.

The CMA has not explicitly mandated separate AI click and impression reporting. However, it has mandated transparency around how AI features affect publisher engagement.

As a result, many industry observers expect Google to introduce reporting that could include:

• AI Overview impressions
• AI Overview clicks
• AI Mode impressions
• AI Mode clicks
• AI-specific click-through rates
• Citation and appearance reporting

Google already has this data internally. The question has never been whether it exists, but whether it would be made available to publishers and marketers.

The CMA may have significantly increased the pressure for that to happen.

What This Means for Marketers and SEO Professionals

For years, Search Console has been the primary source of truth for measuring organic search performance.

If dedicated AI reporting becomes available, marketers may soon be able to understand:

• How often their content appears in AI-generated answers.
• Whether AI-generated answers drive meaningful traffic.
• Which content performs best within AI search experiences.
• Whether AI results are replacing traditional organic clicks.

This would create an entirely new layer of search reporting.

Instead of simply measuring rankings, impressions and clicks, organisations could begin measuring AI visibility alongside traditional SEO performance.

For agencies and in-house teams, AI search reporting could quickly become a standard KPI alongside organic traffic and rankings.

The Bigger Opportunity: Managing AI and Protecting Intellectual Property

Perhaps the most important long-term impact is not reporting, but control.

Publishers, media owners and brands invest heavily in creating original content, research, data and intellectual property. Many have become increasingly concerned about AI systems using that content to generate answers without providing sufficient visibility, traffic or commercial value in return.

The CMA’s requirement begins to establish a framework where organisations can make informed decisions about how their content is used.

This could allow publishers to:

• Permit traditional search indexing while restricting AI usage.
• Allow content to appear in AI-generated answers but prevent model training.
• Better understand when and where their content is being used.
• Make commercial decisions based on measurable outcomes rather than assumptions.

For brands, this may become an increasingly important governance issue. Organisations with valuable proprietary research, thought leadership, product data or premium content will need to decide how much of that intellectual property they want AI systems to access and under what conditions.