I Used to Trust Google Search Console. Then I Realized It Was Lying to Me

I used to think my Google Search Console dashboard was gospel. A falling "average position" was a five-alarm fire. A rising CTR was proof I was a genius. For years, I watched my charts, tweaked my content, and assumed the numbers told the whole story.

Then I realized something: we were all reading it wrong.

The Problem with "Average Position"

Most SEO advice treats your GSC report like a physics equation. Tweak this, optimize that, and watch your rank climb. It’s no wonder we all panic when the numbers go haywire for no apparent reason.

The real issue isn't that your content suddenly stinks—it's that Google broke the scoreboard. With AI Overviews, they've mashed together two completely different games into one meaningless "average."

Think about it. A #3 spot in the traditional "10 blue links" is prime real estate. It's visible, it gets clicks, it's what you've been fighting for. But a #3 mention inside an AI-generated answer? That’s a footnote. It's a tiny citation link buried in a paragraph that’s designed to stop people from clicking.

Google now averages these two realities together.

So when your page that was a solid position 4 is now also the 14th source in an AI answer, your dashboard shows "average position 9." You didn't get worse; the math just got stupid. You're about to "fix" a problem that doesn't exist, based on data that's fundamentally dishonest.

What Actually Works: Two Approaches That Don't Suck

You can't trust the dashboard anymore. But you can choose how to play the new game. It boils down to a simple choice for every important page on your site.

1. Force the Click (For Your Most Valuable Content)

For the pages that actually make you money—your product pages, your service pages, your gated whitepapers—an AI summary is a disaster. You need the user on your site. The goal here isn't to be cited; it's to make a click non-negotiable.

When to do this:

Your product pages where you need to show pricing and features.
Your lead-gen pages with forms to download assets.
Your deep-dive comparison posts where your unique analysis is the whole point.

How to do it:You need to tell Google not to summarize your page. There are a few meta tags for this, but the simplest one that seems to work is noarchive. Add <meta name="googlebot" content="noarchive"> to the head of your page. This tells Google not to save a copy of your page, which seems to prevent it from being used in AI answers.

It's a simple line of code, but it's your new shield. It puts you back in control of your most critical user journeys.

2. Play the Citation Game (For Building Authority)

For your other content—mostly top-of-funnel blog posts that answer questions—getting featured in an AI Overview can actually be a win. You might lose the immediate click, but you gain something else: authority. You become the source.

When to do this:

Informational posts answering "what is" or "how to" questions.
Glossary pages that define industry terms.
Any content where being seen as the expert is the primary goal.

How to do it:Make it ridiculously easy for a robot to understand you.

Answer the question immediately. Your first paragraph should be a direct, concise answer to the main keyword. No long, fluffy intros.
Structure for skimmers. Use clear subheadings (preferably phrased as questions), bullet points, and bold text. Make your page look like the perfect cheat sheet.
Use the right language. Use tools that show you the exact questions and phrases your audience uses in forums and on social media. Frame your content around that.

The key: You're not writing for a human reader anymore. You're writing a brief for Google's AI.

Translating Google's PR

When you hear Google's CEO talk about their "commitment to the open web," you need to learn to translate. This isn't cynicism; it's strategic survival.

What they say: "We're augmenting, not replacing, human content." What they mean: "We're using your human content to train our AI to generate answers so people don't have to click on your site."

What they say: "We're dedicated to supporting the web ecosystem." What they mean: "We're dedicated to keeping users inside our ecosystem. Yours is secondary."

What they say: "Advertising will adapt to the new experience." What they mean: "Get ready to pay for ad placements inside the AI answers that are currently stealing your organic traffic."

Your job isn't to get angry about it. It's to build a strategy that works in this new reality.

The Real Rules of AI SEO

Every page is different, but here’s what actually matters now:

Become a data skeptic. Stop obsessing over "average position." It’s a vanity metric. Focus on what leads to business outcomes: clicks, conversions, and revenue. Dig into your GSC data page by page. Is a page with lots of impressions but a tanking CTR getting cannibalized by AI? That's the real story.
Be intentional. Don't let Google decide the fate of your content. For each important page, make a conscious choice: are you forcing the click, or are you playing for the citation?
Make your tech work. If you decide to opt out of AI summaries, don't just add the tag and hope for the best. Use GSC's tools to verify that Google has seen the change and request a recrawl. Don't wait months for the bot to come back.
Accept that this is the new normal. The line between organic results, AI answers, and ads is only going to get blurrier. The game is shifting from "ranking" to "being the source."

Getting Started (Without the Panic)

Pick 5-10 of your most important pages. These are the pages that drive leads or sales.
For each page, make a choice: Force the Click or Play the Citation Game?
For the "Force the Click" pages: Add the noarchive meta tag. Ask Google to recrawl them.
For the "Citation Game" pages: Rewrite the first paragraph to be a direct, perfect answer to the main keyword.
Watch your real metrics. Ignore average position. Are clicks and conversions on your "Force the Click" pages recovering? Are you seeing more brand mentions from your "Citation Game" pages?

That’s it. No "data soup." No "black box." Just understanding the new game and making smart choices.

The Bottom Line

SEO works when it's not based on vanity metrics. When you build content so authoritative that Google has to cite it, or so valuable that you can force the user to your site, you win. When you're just blindly chasing a number on a broken dashboard, you're set up to fail.

The best AI-era SEO doesn't feel like a technical battle. It feels like having a clear, confident strategy for every single piece of content you create.

And that's not something an algorithm can take away from you.