Google now gives website owners a direct AI opt-out toggle to remove their content from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover’s AI features, without losing regular search rankings. That is a meaningful new control. But data from NewzDash published this week shows the tradeoff may be harder than a single toggle can resolve, because AI and organic results are not always separate surfaces.
What does the new Search Console AI opt-out actually do?
The setting lives under Settings > Search generative AI in Search Console. According to Google’s support documentation, the default includes your site’s links and content in AI features, allowing content to appear as links and help “ground” (anchor, or provide factual context to) AI responses. Choosing to exclude removes your content from AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover’s AI features entirely, including any link placements within those features. You receive no impressions or traffic from those features while excluded.
Google confirmed it began respecting these changes on June 17. Once you change the setting, Google says it generally takes a few days to process, then content drops out within one to two days, though caching (temporary storage of older page versions across Google’s systems) can extend that window. The control is still rolling out to a subset of accounts. Jamie Indigo, Director of Technical SEO at Cox Automotive, flagged it appearing on a U.S. account in July, posting on LinkedIn: “Search generative AI controls in Google Search Console. I’m not even British and it’s not even my birthday!”
Why did UK regulation push this into existence?
In June 2025, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) imposed a conduct requirement on Google to give website owners more control over how their content is used in generative AI. Google began testing the toggle with UK properties the same week. For UK publishers, the requirement is mandatory, with compliance deadlines extending into next year. Outside the UK, the setting is a voluntary product choice. Both paths converged on the same control, and the setting began appearing on accounts outside the UK in July, per Search Engine Journal’s reporting.
What did publishers have before this setting?
Until this year, there was no dedicated control to separate AI features from regular Search. The tools that existed, robots.txt, noindex, and snippet directives, were blunt instruments. Nosnippet, for instance, removes content from AI Overviews but also strips traditional snippets at the same time, an all-or-nothing tradeoff Google acknowledged in January 2025 when it said it was exploring AI-specific controls.
Google-Extended, a robots.txt token (a line added to a site’s robots.txt file that sends instructions to specific crawlers), addresses a different question entirely. According to Google’s crawler documentation, Google-Extended controls whether crawled content can be used for training future Gemini models powering Gemini Apps and the Vertex AI API, and for grounding in Gemini Apps specifically. It does not control whether content appears in AI Overviews or AI Mode in Search. The new Search Console setting fills that distinct gap.
What the setting does not do
Five limits are worth understanding before you change anything:
- Not a ranking signal. Google’s support documentation states explicitly that this control is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search.
- Does not affect AI training. To limit whether your content trains future Gemini models, you still need Google-Extended in robots.txt. These are separate controls.
- Does not override Merchant Center or Google Ads. Shopping participation remains its own decision.
- General Search use continues. Your content may still help Google understand query language and page language for Search as a whole, even if you opt out of AI features.
- Inheritance applies by default. If your property has a parent property in Search Console, it inherits the parent’s setting automatically unless you manually override it at the child level.
When AI and organic results share the same surface
This is where the tradeoff gets complicated. According to NewzDash, which tracks news visibility for publishers, Top Stories carousels from organic Search are currently rendering inside AI Overviews on U.S. trending news results. If that is happening on your content, a toggle that excludes you from AI features may also pull you out of a Top Stories placement that sits inside an AI Overview. The setting treats AI and organic as separate layers. Google’s actual result pages sometimes don’t.
John Shehata, CEO and founder of NewzDash, flagged this as an open issue for publishers evaluating the control, according to Search Engine Journal’s reporting.
What this means for AI-search visibility
This section reflects Hingewise’s analysis and is distinct from the source reporting above.
The core issue is simpler than it sounds: when you opt out, you are not removing an AI layer from your content. You are removing yourself from a surface where AI and organic have merged. Picture a news result page where your Top Stories card sits inside an AI Overview box. The toggle does not surgically lift the AI glass off the top. It removes the card. That distinction matters for anyone making this decision based on traffic.
For publishers who monetize referral traffic from Top Stories, the decision requires checking actual data first, not assumptions. Is your content currently getting impressions inside AI Overviews? Is any of that traffic converting? Opting out blind, without that baseline, risks losing traffic from a surface you may not have realized was working.
For brands less dependent on article traffic but concerned about narrative control in AI responses, the calculus looks different. Opting out removes your content as an input to AI responses, which can matter if your content is being cited in ways you don’t endorse.
One thing the sources do not address: opting out does not guarantee your slot in an AI Overview disappears. Google’s documentation confirms that “content from other sites will still be available in those features, and it may appear similar to yours.” You vacate; a competitor potentially fills the space. That is not a reason to stay in. It is a reason to make the call based on your own data, not on a general principle.
Hingewise’s position: this setting marks the first time AI-search visibility and traditional organic visibility are officially two separate variables under publisher control. That structural shift means tracking them separately is now worth building into any search reporting setup, regardless of which option you choose.
Before you change your Search generative AI control: a quick checklist
- Pull 90-day Search Console data and identify what share of your impressions currently come from AI Overviews versus standard results.
- Run manual searches on your key topics and check whether Top Stories placements are rendering inside AI Overviews on those queries.
- Review your property hierarchy in Search Console to understand which properties will be affected by a parent-level change before making one.
- Check whether Google-Extended is already set in your robots.txt if AI training is also a concern. The two controls address different things and are set in different places.
- Change one property first and monitor impressions for 10 to 14 days before rolling the setting site-wide.
- Document the exact change date so you can correlate any traffic shifts in analytics rather than attributing them to other causes.
The setting’s expansion beyond the UK suggests Google views AI-specific opt-outs as a permanent part of its publisher controls, not a temporary regulatory concession. How that control evolves as AI Overviews expand into more result types is the variable worth watching through the rest of 2025.
Lam Nguyen · Hingewise
Sources: Search Engine Journal · Google Search Console Help · Google Developers, Common Crawlers
This article was drafted with AI assistance from the sources cited above and checked against them before publishing. The "What this means for AI-search visibility" section is Hingewise's editorial analysis, built on the frameworks and positions we use in our GEO work. How we work: Editorial policy.