Google will allow websites to exclude themselves from AI search results
Key takeaways
- The company says opting out won't impact placement in regular searches.
- The company plans to first test the toggle with a small subset of domain owners in the UK before rolling it out globally.
- "Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features," Google said.
The company says opting out won't impact placement in regular searches.
Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images More than three years after it began rolling out AI Overviews and a year after the debut of AI Mode, Google is giving webmasters the option to exclude their domains from its AI-generated search results. In a blog post published early Wednesday morning, the company said it would begin testing a new toggle inside of its Search Console designed to allow website owners to decide if their webpages appear in and help ground the company's latest AI search features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. The company plans to first test the toggle with a small subset of domain owners in the UK before rolling it out globally.
"Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features," Google said. "This control will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these generative AI Search features." Alongside the toggle, the company said it's beginning to roll out new insights inside of Search Console designed to provide webmasters with metrics and more information about which of their pages appear in AI responses and in what countries. "We're continuing to work with website owners to understand what insights will be most helpful to inform their strategies, and we'll introduce additional metrics over time," Google said.