Google will let website owners opt out of AI Mode and AI Overviews

Google has announced that publishers will now be able to decide whether their websites appear in and are used by AI-powered search features — independently of regular Search results.

The company confirmed the change on its official blog, introducing a new toggle in Search Console. With it, website owners can choose whether their pages contribute to and appear within generative AI features such as AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI Overviews in Discover. The Gemini app is excluded from this toggle — the setting applies only to Search products.

Sites that opt out will no longer receive traffic or impressions from those features. Importantly, Google stated that this choice will not affect how a site ranks in regular search: "Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features." The company also confirmed that this control won't be used as a ranking signal for results outside of generative AI Search features.

Alongside the new control, Google is rolling out additional analytics inside Search Console. Publishers will gain access to impression metrics showing which of their pages appear in AI responses and in which countries. Google noted it plans to expand these metrics over time as it continues working with website owners to understand what insights are most useful.

For now, the toggle and new stats are being tested with a limited group of domain owners in the UK before a broader global rollout.

The timing is worth noting. Following Google's expansion of AI Overviews, users began voicing frustration with the quality of search results and started looking for alternatives — DuckDuckGo installs rose by as much as 30% in the weeks that followed.