Google AI Search Visibility for BC Contractors: How to Finally Check If You Show Up

You can now check your Google AI search visibility directly in Google Search Console, and as of August 31, 2026 that report is live for every website in BC. Google's Generative AI performance report shows which of your pages earned impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken out by page, country, device and date. For a Chilliwack roofer or an Abbotsford HVAC shop, that turns two years of guessing about AI search into a list you can actually work from.

TL;DR

• Google rolled out its Generative AI performance report to all sites worldwide on August 31, 2026.

• It shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, but it does not report clicks.

• If a page never appears, the AI has never used it to answer anything.

• Google also added a control that removes your site from AI features entirely. Opting out means no impressions and no traffic from them.

• Service pages and town pages are what get quoted. A five page site with a gallery gives the AI nothing to work with.

What the Generative AI report actually shows you

Search Console has always told you about the blue links. This is different. The Generative AI performance report isolates the impressions your pages earned inside Google's AI features, so you can see which pages the machine is drawing on when a homeowner asks it a question instead of typing a keyword.

You get impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates. You do not get clicks. Google has not released click data for these features, so the report answers "am I being used" and not "did it send me a customer." That is still a large step forward, because until now the honest answer to "does my business show up in AI search" was that nobody could tell you.

Where to find it

Open Search Console, choose the property for your site, and look in the performance section for the generative AI reporting. If your site has very few AI impressions, the report may show little or nothing. That is information too.

Why a blank report is the most useful thing you will see this month

For most trades websites in the Fraser Valley, the first look at this report is going to be thin. That is not a glitch. It is a diagnosis.

AI answers get assembled from pages that make a specific, checkable claim about a specific service in a specific place. A homepage that says "quality workmanship since 2009, serving the Lower Mainland" gives a language model nothing to quote. A page titled "Torch on flat roof repair in Chilliwack" with real detail about how the job runs and where you stop driving gives it something to lift. The map pack ranks businesses. AI answers quote pages, and that is a higher bar.

What tends to show up in the report

• Individual service pages written for one trade and one problem

• Town and service area pages that name real boundaries, not a list of thirty cities

• Genuinely useful explainer content, like what a Surrey homeowner should expect a panel upgrade to involve

• FAQ sections that answer a question in one or two sentences before elaborating

What almost never shows up

• Homepages built around a slogan

• Photo galleries with no text

• A single "Services" page listing roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, excavation, painting, concrete and landscaping as bullet points

The switch that can take you out of AI search entirely

Alongside the report, Google shipped a control that lets a site decide whether its content helps ground responses in Google's generative AI features. Google is direct about the trade off. Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from those features, though standard web search rankings are not affected.

For a contractor, the risk is not that you would deliberately turn it off. It is who else can. Plenty of BC trades businesses still have a former web developer or a marketing company they stopped paying years ago sitting in Search Console with full access. Audit that access this week. It takes five minutes and it protects a channel you are only now able to measure.

How to work the report if you run a service area business

Most BC contractors are service area businesses. You do not have a showroom in Abbotsford. You drive from a yard in Chilliwack out to Hope one day and into Langley the next. That changes how you should read this.

Step one. Note every page that shows any AI impressions at all. Those pages already work. Write more like them.

Step two. Find the services that make you the most money and check whether each one has its own page. If your excavation work is half your revenue and it lives as one paragraph on a shared page, that is the gap.

Step three. Check your geography honestly. A page for every town you have ever driven through is noise. A real page for each of the three or four communities where you actually take jobs is signal, and it is the kind of page that answers "who does this work near me."

Step four. Re-check the report in four to six weeks. Impressions moving is the confirmation that the page did its job.

Frequently asked questions

How do I check if my business appears in Google AI Overviews in BC?

Open Google Search Console for your website and go to the Generative AI performance report, which became available to all sites on August 31, 2026. It lists the pages of your site that earned impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. If no pages appear, Google's AI features have not been using your site.

Does this report show me how many customers came from AI search?

No. The report includes impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates, but Google does not currently include click data for generative AI features. Treat it as a visibility measure, not a lead source report.

Why does my contractor website show up in normal Google results but not in AI answers?

Ranking and being quoted are two different jobs. Normal search ranks whole sites and profiles. AI answers pull specific sentences from specific pages, so a site with strong general rankings but only a handful of thin pages often has nothing worth quoting.

Is Google Business Profile enough for AI search, or do I need website pages?

Your profile still matters for local visibility, but it is not enough on its own. Industry research into local AI citations consistently finds business websites carrying a large share of the sources behind AI recommendations, which means the pages you never got around to building are doing the work.

How long before new pages show up in the report?

Give it four to six weeks after the pages are published and indexed. Publish, then check the report again rather than judging it in the first week.

The bottom line

For two years the advice about AI search ran on faith. Now there is a report with your name on it, and it will tell you plainly whether Google's AI has ever used your website to answer a homeowner's question. Most BC contractors are going to open it and find very little, and that is the point. The fix is not a trick. It is a website built as a real set of service and service area pages instead of a brochure, which is the same thing that has been winning local search all along.

If your site is five pages and three of them are photos, that is the job to do first. Built Tough builds contractor websites structured to be found, quoted and booked. See what that looks like on our web design page.