Google will let websites opt out of AI Overviews, but it's trying to tempt them not to

Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode can be useful tools, but users and website owners have had their fair share of complaints about these features. Now, Google is testing a new toggle to let websites opt out of its generative AI search results.

Google announced today that it’s adding a new control that will let website owners manage how their content appears in the company’s AI Search features.

The new toggle will appear in Search Console. Webmasters can use it to ensure that Google doesn’t use content from their websites to provide search results in its generative AI Search features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Naturally, opting out of these features will mean that websites won’t receive any traffic from those results, either. However, the company has confirmed that it will not use this setting as a ranking signal. Website owners can, therefore, safely opt out of generative AI Search tools without affecting their website’s ranking in Google Search.

This new control is a direct result of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority’s recent ruling, ordering Google to give publishers more control over how their content is used by the company.

Meanwhile, Google is adding new insights to Search Console as well. These will include data such as impressions and views from AI Search features. Though the company doesn’t say this outright (obviously, it won’t), it’s quite possible that it wants website owners to be tempted not to opt out of AI Search once they see the impressions and visits their websites receive from features like AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Possibly to that same end, the company today also announced that AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly active users, and AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users as well.

Recently, Google has been making its generative AI features more useful for publishers as well. It increased the number of inline links that appear within AI responses, and it also added “Preferred Sources” to AI Overviews and AI Mode.

This new control, though necessitated by the UK’s CMA, is obviously not something Google would want website owners and publishers to use. It’s currently available to a small set of website owners in the UK, and the company says it will roll out the controls globally once it has done a thorough testing — as for when that might happen, your guess is as good as ours.