A client asked me a blunt question last month. If Google is going to answer his customers’ questions right on the results page, what is his website even for? I hear some version of that a lot now. Until recently the honest answer was that there wasn’t much he could do about it. Now Google has given site owners a switch.
Since August 31, every website in Google Search Console can choose to keep its links and content out of Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Google Discover. We’re six weeks into that worldwide rollout, so this is a good moment to make the call on purpose instead of leaving it at the default. My advice for most businesses: stay in, and change how you measure search.
What Google changed
The new Search generative AI control sits under Settings in Search Console, according to Google’s Search Console help documentation. Every property is included in AI features by default. You can exclude a property instead, and Google is plain about the result: “You won’t receive any traffic or impressions from these features.” A property can also inherit whatever setting its parent domain uses.
Some of the fine print is worth knowing before anyone touches it. Google says the control “isn’t used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search,” so opting out of AI answers isn’t supposed to hurt your regular listings. It has nothing to do with AI training, either. That’s a separate control called Google-Extended. And once you change the setting, give it a few days. Google says most content drops out within one to two days.
Google also added a generative AI performance report. It shows how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, date and device. One catch, which Search Engine Journal pointed out when the rollout finished: you get impressions, not clicks.
Google didn’t do this purely out of goodwill. On June 3, the same day it announced the control, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority imposed what it called a “world first” requirement that publishers get tools to keep their content from powering AI features like AI Overviews. Google’s own announcement acknowledged it was working with regulators, the CMA among them, and it tested the control with UK site owners before taking it global.
Naturally, Google also argued for staying in. It says AI Overviews has more than 2.5 billion monthly active users and AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users, and that it has added more inline links and website previews to get people clicking through.
The traffic worry is legitimate
Business owners aren’t imagining this. The Pew Research Center looked at browsing data from 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. When people saw an AI summary, they clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits. Without a summary, it was 15%. Links inside the summary itself got clicked in just 1% of visits to pages that had one.
That data is more than a year old, and Google has redesigned its links since. I’d read it as a direction, not a forecast. Still, when the answer is sitting on the results page, fewer people need to come to yours.
Now read this line from Google’s documentation before you flip the switch. If you exclude your site, “Content from other sites will still be available in those features, and it may appear similar to yours.”
So the answer doesn’t go away when you opt out. You do. Somebody asking Google about your product category or your service area still gets a response, and a competitor, a review site or some forum thread ends up speaking for you.
For some organizations, exclusion is a reasonable choice. If you’re a publisher and the content is the product, or you sell paid research, or you’re in the middle of licensing talks, being summarized for free may cut into the business model. I get that. A local service company, a manufacturer, a consultant or a retailer is in a different spot. For them, getting cited in an AI answer is close to what showing up on page one used to be.
Where I’d start
Whichever way you go, somebody should own the decision. Here’s what I’d have a team do this month:
- Find out what your Search Console property is set to right now, and whether it’s inheriting from a parent property. If an agency, a web developer or IT runs the account, ask who’s allowed to change it.
- Open the generative AI performance report and see which pages Google is pulling into AI features. Like it or not, those pages are now some of your most visible public statements.
- In the regular Performance report, look for pages where impressions hold steady but clicks drop. That usually means an AI answer is handling the question before anyone visits.
- Publish things only you can say. Google’s updated guidance leans hard on unique, non-commodity content. Original data, firsthand expertise, honest pricing explanations and local knowledge are a lot harder to replace than generic advice.
- Clean up your facts. AI tools will summarize whatever is on your site, including the old hours and the service page that contradicts another service page.
- Build an audience you own through email, a podcast, video or plain old customer relationships. None of that depends on a search results page, and every visit you do get should ask people to stay in touch.
- Track leads, calls, inquiries and branded searches next to traffic. Visits alone won’t tell you whether visibility is turning into business.
Don’t leave this to the web team
It’s tempting to hand this setting to whoever runs the website. I’d push back on that. I spent 14 years in broadcast media, and I see this as a media relations question.
An AI answer is earned media. Your content gets quoted, condensed and put in front of an audience you didn’t pay to reach. Treat your site the way you’d prepare for a press interview. Know your key messages, say them clearly, and make sure the claims you care about most are accurate and easy to check. Clear writing gives AI tools, and the people reading their answers, a reason to point back to you.
If your team wants a second set of eyes on your search visibility or your website content, or wants help building an audience of your own, schedule a consultation. I’m happy to talk it through.