Google’s AI Search Controls: What Small Sites Should Do
For a couple of years, the honest answer to “can I keep my site out of Google’s AI answers without leaving search entirely?” was “not really.” In June 2026 that changed. Google announced a Search Console setting and some new reporting aimed at site owners who want a say in how their pages are used. This note explains what was announced, what it leaves untouched, and how we would approach the decision for a small business website.
What Google announced
Google’s post from June 3, 2026 describes a toggle in Search Console. It lets you choose whether your site can appear in, and help ground answers for, three generative surfaces: AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI Overviews inside Discover. The post was later updated (August 31) to say the feature had reached all websites worldwide, after starting with a small group of UK site owners.
Two details matter. First, opting out means no traffic and no impressions from those features. Second, Google states the setting is not a ranking signal for anything outside them, so ordinary blue-link results are not meant to change.
The timing is not a coincidence. A Japanese tech outlet reported that the UK Competition and Markets Authority set conduct requirements for Google Search on the same day, including a requirement that publishers be given tools to keep their content out of AI-powered search features. Google was given a period of months to put the full set of changes in place.
The new reporting
Alongside the toggle, Search Console is gaining impression metrics for pages that show up in generative AI responses, plus information on which pages appear and in which countries. Google says more metrics will follow. Separately, its documentation says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted inside the usual Performance report under the “Web” search type, so you do not need a special tool to see the clicks.
What you do not need to do
Google’s AI features documentation is blunt about this: there are no extra requirements to be shown in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no AI-specific file, markup or special structured data is needed. A page simply has to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet. That is good news, because a lot of “AI SEO” advice sells complexity that the search engine itself says is unnecessary.
The documentation’s checklist reads like ordinary good practice:
- Let Googlebot crawl the site, including at the CDN or hosting layer, not just in robots.txt.
- Link your pages to each other so content is easy to find.
- Keep important information in text, with useful images and video as support.
- Make sure structured data matches what visitors can actually see on the page.
- Keep Merchant Center and Business Profile details current if they apply to you.
- Verify the site in Search Console so you can diagnose problems.
Finer-grained controls already existed
If switching off whole features feels too blunt, the older tools still work. The documentation lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex for limiting what is displayed, and the Google-Extended token for limiting use of content for AI training and grounding in some of Google’s other systems. Changes take time to register, since recrawling can take days to months, so a URL Inspection check is worth doing after you edit.
How we would decide
Leave it on if you depend on being discovered
A local service business, a studio or a small shop usually gains more from being mentioned than from hiding. Someone asking a long, comparison-style question may be sent to your page as a supporting link, and Google claims such visits tend to be higher quality. Treat that as Google’s claim rather than a guarantee, and judge it on your own numbers once the new reports are available.
Consider opting out if your content is the product
Publishers of original research, paid guides, or reference material may reasonably decide that an AI summary substitutes for a visit. For them, the toggle is a business decision, and it is reversible. If you try it, note the date, and compare clicks and conversions before and after rather than relying on a feeling.
Do not touch it blindly
Because opting out removes both traffic and impressions from those features, you lose visibility as well as usage. A middle path is to leave the toggle alone and use snippet controls on only the pages that matter most, such as a paid resource.
A short action list
- Confirm your site is verified in Search Console.
- Check that crawling is allowed at every layer, including any CDN rules.
- Review the new AI-related reporting when it appears for your property, and record a baseline.
- Decide per section of the site, not per company: marketing pages and paid content have different needs.
- Revisit the decision in a quarter, since Google has said the tooling will expand.
If you would like help reading these reports alongside your analytics, or tidying the technical basics Google lists, our services page outlines how we work with small teams.