Google shipped a switch on 31 August, and a regulator is the reason
For two years there was no way to be in Google Search but out of its AI answers. Now there is, and it makes the old advice wrong twice over.
Google, 31 August 2026 · UK Competition and Markets Authority, 3 June 2026 · September 1, 2026 · 3 min read
Until three weeks ago, a business had exactly two options: appear in Google Search and in AI Overviews, or appear in neither. The only lever anyone had switched off the AI summary and the preview text under your ordinary search listing at the same time. You gave up one to avoid the other.
That changed on 31 August 2026, worldwide, with a setting in Search Console. Google’s wording:
“website owners can decide if they want their site to appear in and help ground responses in our generative AI Search features”
Two details matter more than the switch itself.
It explicitly will not affect your ranking. Google states that the setting “will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these generative AI Search features.” Opting out costs you the views inside those features and nothing else. That is a real commitment, and it removes the fear that has kept publishers from touching any of this.
It arrived with reporting. Search Console now shows how often you were seen inside those AI features, which pages appeared, and where the readers were. That is the part to act on. Not the opt-out. The measurement.
Why it exists is the more interesting story. This was not a product decision. On 3 June 2026 the UK competition regulator ruled that Google holds too much sway over the market, and ordered it to do three things: give publishers a real say over whether their content feeds AI answers, explain in plain language how it gets used, and report how many people actually read it there. The regulator called that opt-out “a world first”. Google has nine months to put it fully in place, and must report back every six months for the first year.
One country’s regulator won a setting that every site owner on earth now has.
In the same announcement, Google discloses the scale of what you’d be opting out of: AI Overviews has over 2.5 billion monthly active users and AI Mode has passed one billion.
So should you use the opt-out? Almost certainly not. You would be removing yourself from the surface you are trying to appear on, to protect content from a system that is already the largest answer engine on the planet. The only ones with a real case for it are the businesses that live on the click, news sites, recipes, reference works, and even for them it is a painful trade.
The reason it matters to you is different, and it is about the advice you have been given.
For two years, Google-Extended has been recommended as the way to stay out of AI Overviews.
It never was. Google’s own documentation on its bots is explicit that Google-Extended governs
Gemini app training and Vertex AI grounding, and that a page appears in AI Overviews if it is
listed in ordinary search results with its preview text. There was no lever. Anyone who told you
otherwise was repeating something that had never been checked against the documentation.
That advice is now wrong twice: it never did the job, and there is now something that does.
The practical action, and it is the same one either way. Open Search Console and look at the generative AI reports. The data starts the day Google started collecting it. It does not fill in the past. Whatever date you first look is the earliest date you will ever be able to show anyone. If you do nothing else this month, do that.
One more thing worth watching. Bing has its own version of this report, inside its tools for site owners, in public preview since February 2026. The two count differently. If you are comparing them, you are comparing two different definitions of being seen.
