Google now lets you opt out of AI Overviews. Should you?
Since 31 August 2026 a Search Console setting removes a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features without affecting its normal rankings. For most service businesses it is the wrong switch to flip.
Since 31 August 2026 every site in Search Console has a setting that removes it from Google's AI answers without touching its ordinary search results. It sits under Settings, then Search generative AI, and it has two positions: include your site's links and content in Search generative AI features, or exclude them. Excluding takes the site out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover.
Google states that the control only affects whether content can appear in those features and is not a ranking or inclusion signal for the rest of Search. That separation is the new part. Before it, the only levers were the ordinary preview directives, nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex, and using them to stay out of AI answers also cost you your normal snippet or your listing.
A correction to our own post
On 7 September we published which AI crawlers actually obey robots.txt, and it said there was no AI-specific opt-out for Google's AI features. That was already out of date: this control had reached every site a week earlier. The post now carries a dated correction pointing here. The rest of it, on which crawlers honour robots.txt, stands.
Should you use it
For almost every business that sells a service, no. An AI answer that names you is the closest thing search now has to a recommendation, and opting out hands that slot to whoever did not. The case for excluding is narrow: a site whose value is the answer itself, such as a reference table, a calculator or a recipe, where being summarised replaces the visit rather than prompting it.
- Read the baseline first. The new Generative AI performance report shows which pages appear in AI answers, and deciding without it is guessing.
- Compare those pages with what they earn in the main Performance report. A page with high AI impressions and falling clicks is the only real argument for the switch.
- Remember it is site-wide. There is no per-page version of this control, so a single reference page is not a reason to remove the whole site.
