Google now lets any website owner exclude a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover with one setting in Search Console. Staying in is the default. This guide covers what the control does, what Google says happens if you flip it, who has a real reason to, and how to decide with your own data. If you work on generative engine optimization, this choice sits underneath all of it.
What Google's new AI control does
Search Console now has a "Search generative AI control" that lets a site keep its content out of Google's AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. You find it under Settings > Search generative AI, and Google's help page says including your site is the default for every property. Google also states that as of August 31, 2026, the feature is available to all websites worldwide.
Google's announcement states the consequence directly: "Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features." The help page adds that once you change the setting, it generally takes a few days for your content to be excluded, and some content may take longer because of caching and propagation across Google's systems.
What stays the same if you opt out
By Google's account, your regular search listings are not affected. The help page says the control "isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search," and the announcement says it will not be used as a ranking signal outside the generative AI features.
Two limits matter. First, the topic does not disappear: Google notes that "Content from other sites will still be available in those features, and it may appear similar to yours." You leave the answer, but the answer stays, built from other sites' pages. Second, this is a Google control only. It does not change how ChatGPT or any other engine treats your site.
How this differs from blocking AI training crawlers
The Search control decides whether your site can appear in Google's AI answers. Training controls such as Google-Extended and GPTBot decide whether your content can be used to train AI models. They are separate switches with separate outcomes, and mixing them up is an easy way to block the wrong thing.
Google describes Google-Extended as a standalone product token that publishers use to manage whether content Google crawls may be used for training future generations of Gemini models. Google's documentation states that it "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search." The Search generative AI help page points the same way: to limit training of the models behind Search's AI features, use Google-Extended, not the Search Console toggle.
OpenAI draws the same line. Its crawler documentation says GPTBot is used to make its generative AI foundation models more useful and safe, and that disallowing it indicates a site's content should not be used in training. A different crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features, and sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links.
- Search generative AI control (Search Console): appear in Google's AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features, or not.
- Google-Extended: whether crawled content may train future Gemini models. No effect on Google Search inclusion or ranking, per Google.
- GPTBot: whether content may train OpenAI's foundation models.
- OAI-SearchBot: whether your site can be shown in ChatGPT search answers.
Who might reasonably opt out
This is a judgment call, not a rule from Google, but the strongest case belongs to a site whose content is the product, or whose revenue depends on the visit itself. Think paywalled publishers, sellers of original research or data, and ad-funded sites where a summary replaces the page view. A business with legal or contractual limits on how its content is reused may also want to ask its counsel.
The click data supports the worry, but only on average. SparkToro, using Similarweb panel data for US Google searches from January to April 2026 and publishing on June 9, 2026, reported that 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click. Ahrefs, in a study published February 4, 2026, found that the presence of an AI Overview correlates with a 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page. Google tells the other side of the story: in its Q2 2026 earnings remarks on July 22, 2026, it said "we're now sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search." The first two are third-party averages and the last is a Google total across the web. None of them tells you what happens to your pages.
Why most service businesses should stay in
If you sell a service, the page is not the product. The booked call is. Opting out removes you from Google's AI answers, and Google describes no ranking benefit elsewhere in Search in return. For a business that wants to be found, that is a cost with no stated upside.
Scale is part of the reason. Google reported on July 22, 2026 that AI Mode has passed 1 billion monthly active users. Google's own guide says the best practices for SEO continue to be relevant because its generative AI features are rooted in its core ranking and quality systems. That means the work you already do on SEO is also the work that makes you eligible to appear in AI answers. If your concern runs the other way, and you are not showing up at all, start with why a business goes missing from AI answers and our earlier piece on why your business is invisible to ChatGPT.
How to decide with your own data
Decide from your own numbers, not from an industry average. Search Console now has a generative AI performance report, and it is the best place to start, with one limit. Google's help page lists impressions as its only metric, grouped by page, country, device and date, and Search Engine Roundtable's launch coverage confirms it has no click data and no query data. It tells you whether you appear, not whether anyone visits.
- Open the generative AI performance report and note which pages get impressions in AI features.
- Compare those pages in the normal Performance report and in your analytics. Do they also bring visits, calls or form fills?
- Put a value on both sides. What is a visit from search worth to you, and what is being named in an AI answer worth when the reader never clicks?
- If the pages that appear are also the ones that produce leads, stay in. If AI features show your content to many people and your revenue depends on the visit itself, opting out becomes a reasonable option.
- If the data is thin or unclear, stay in. You can change the setting later, though Google says a change takes a few days to apply.
What to do this week
Check the setting, read the report, and write the decision down. That replaces a guess with a record.
- Open Settings > Search generative AI in Search Console and confirm the control is set the way you intend. The default is included.
- Open the generative AI performance report and screenshot the pages and impressions for a baseline.
- Open your robots.txt and look for lines naming Google-Extended, GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot. Blocking a training token or crawler is a legitimate choice. Blocking a search crawler removes you from that engine's answers, so make sure that was on purpose.
- Write down the decision, the date and the reason, so you can compare against the next quarter's numbers.