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Yes. Website owners can now exclude a verified site property from Google’s Search generative AI features, including AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. The setting is called the Search generative AI control in Google Search Console. It operates at the property level, is available worldwide, and excludes both your links and the crawled content Google would otherwise use to ground an AI response.
What the opt-out actually controls
Google’s Search generative AI control is a direct, feature-level exclusion. After it takes effect, Google says the selected property’s links and content will not appear in the covered Search generative AI features. The content also will not be eligible as an input for generating a response or preview in those features.
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The scope is broader than AI Overviews alone. The control covers:
- AI Overviews in Google Search
- AI Mode in Google Search
- Generative AI features in Discover
Google announced that this control had rolled out to all websites worldwide on August 31, 2026. It applies to a verified Search Console property, rather than to an individual search query or a single AI answer.
What you give up when you exclude a property
Google states that an excluded site will not receive impressions or traffic from the covered generative AI features. That is a specific loss of visibility in those surfaces; it is not a documented estimate of how many visits any particular publisher would lose.
Google has reported more than 2.5 billion monthly active users for AI Overviews and more than one billion monthly users for AI Mode in 2026. Those are Google’s own figures, not independent measurements of publisher reach or of the effect of opting out. Google’s public documentation does not provide a topic-specific, independent traffic study for excluded sites.
How to opt out in Search Console
You need owner or appropriate user access to the verified property you want to change. The control is not a robots.txt line and it is not set in the page editor.
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- Open the Search generative AI control page for the verified site property.
- Select “Exclude my site’s links and content from Search generative AI features.”
- Review the property’s inheritance information. Search Console indicates whether the current setting comes from a parent property or is a manual setting on this property.
- Save or confirm the exclusion when Search Console presents the confirmation action.
The exact property you select determines the scope. Check that it corresponds to the pages you intend to exclude before confirming.
Understand property scope before changing the setting
Search Console can contain several representations of the same site. A domain property can cover all protocols, subdomains and paths in that domain. A URL-prefix property can cover only the specified protocol, host and path prefix. Subdomain and path properties can therefore produce narrower scopes than the domain property.
Properties can also inherit a setting. A child property follows the relevant parent property unless you configure an override for that child. A child-level control applies to that child property and its subpages. If your site has separate domain, subdomain, URL-prefix or path properties, inspect each one so an inherited setting does not accidentally leave a section included or exclude more of the site than intended.
When the exclusion becomes visible
The change is not instantaneous. Google says content should generally be excluded within one to two days after the change goes live, although caching and propagation can make some pages take longer.
Use this sequence to avoid misreading a temporary result:
- Record which property you changed and whether the setting is inherited or manually overridden.
- Allow Google’s propagation window to pass before judging the result.
- Check the control page again to confirm that the intended property still shows the exclusion.
- Test representative URLs and queries only as a spot check. A single result is not proof that every page has updated, because cached responses and feature availability can vary.
- If pages continue appearing after the propagation period, verify that the pages belong to the property you changed and that a parent property is not supplying a conflicting setting.
The control affects future eligibility in the covered features; it should not be treated as a promise that every cached rendering disappears at the same moment.
What the setting does not change
It is not a general Google Search ranking control
Google says the Search generative AI control is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search. Excluding a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative Discover features does not, by itself, demote pages in ordinary web results or remove them from the index.
The same documentation says content may still help Google’s systems understand query language and web-page language. Therefore, exclusion from these generative features is not a promise that Google will stop processing every signal associated with the pages.
It is not an AI-training opt-out
The Search Console control does not affect AI training. Google directs site owners who want to manage use for certain Google AI systems and generative APIs to the separate Google-Extended crawler token in robots.txt. Google-Extended and the Search generative AI control address different purposes; using Google-Extended alone should not be described as an AI Overviews exclusion.
It does not remove pages from Search
If the objective is to keep a page out of Google Search altogether, Google points to the noindex directive. That is a much broader action: it can remove the page from ordinary search results, not merely from generative AI features.
How the alternatives differ
Google offers several controls that are often confused with the Search generative AI setting. They differ in what they cover, how narrowly they apply and what a searcher can still see.
| Control | Feature coverage | Scope | Effect on ordinary Search visibility and snippets | Effect on AI grounding or training | Time to take effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search generative AI control in Search Console | AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover | Verified property; child properties can inherit or override a parent | Google says it is not a ranking or inclusion signal for other Search; ordinary indexing and snippets are not automatically removed | Prevents the property’s links and crawled content from appearing in the covered features or serving as grounding input; does not affect AI training | Generally one to two days; caching and propagation can take longer |
nosnippet |
Text snippets and video previews on the Search surfaces covered by Google’s specification; also prevents direct input to AI Overviews and AI Mode | Page-level | Removes the ordinary textual snippet and applicable preview, so the search result can show substantially less descriptive information | Blocks the page’s content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode; it is not a training control | Google does not state a fixed propagation time in the cited specification |
max-snippet |
Limits text-snippet length and the amount of content used as direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode | Page-level, with a character limit | Retains a snippet up to the permitted length; max-snippet:0 is equivalent to nosnippet |
Positive values limit direct-input content; Google documents an exception when the publisher separately grants permission, such as through structured data or a license | Google does not state a fixed propagation time in the cited specification |
data-nosnippet |
Search snippets for marked text sections | Selected sections of a page | Leaves the rest of the page eligible while keeping marked text out of snippets | Acts as a section-level preview restriction, not as the site-wide Search Console exclusion; the cited guidance does not define it as a training control | Google does not state a fixed propagation time in the cited guidance |
noindex |
Ordinary Google Search inclusion | Page-level | Tells Google not to show the page in Search results | Because the page is removed from Search eligibility, this is broader than an AI-feature exclusion; it is not an AI-training setting | Google does not state a fixed propagation time in the cited guidance |
| Google-Extended in robots.txt | Google’s separate AI systems and generative APIs identified by Google-Extended | Crawler-token rules in robots.txt | Does not constitute a Search ranking or indexing instruction | Addresses whether sites help improve systems such as Bard and Vertex AI generative APIs; it does not by itself opt a site out of AI Overviews | Depends on crawler processing; no fixed time is stated in the cited documentation |
Choosing the right control for your goal
You want normal Search traffic but not generative AI placements
Use the Search generative AI control. It is the only control in this set designed specifically to exclude a property’s links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative features in Discover while leaving the rest of Search governed by its existing systems.
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You want to hide sensitive passages but keep the page searchable
Use data-nosnippet around the sections that should not appear in snippets. This is narrower than excluding the entire property, but it requires page-level implementation and does not turn into a site-wide AI-feature switch.
You want shorter previews, not a complete preview ban
Use a positive max-snippet value appropriate to your page. The value limits characters rather than removing the page from Search. Setting it to zero has the same effect as nosnippet, so treat zero as a full snippet restriction rather than a small limit.
You want a page absent from Google Search
Use noindex for that page and accept the loss of ordinary Search visibility. It is not a substitute for the Search Console AI control when the page should remain discoverable in standard results.
You are concerned about training use
Review Google-Extended guidance and configure the robots.txt token for the systems it covers. Do not assume that an AI Overviews exclusion changes training permissions, because Google explicitly separates those functions.
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Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode do not require special AI-specific technical markup. A page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet to qualify as a supporting link. Meeting those conditions does not guarantee that Google will crawl, index or display the page in an AI feature.
Best Value
Google recommends the same foundational SEO practices used for Search overall: make important pages accessible for crawling, provide useful and clear content, and maintain the technical conditions needed for indexing and snippets. Inclusion remains a Google decision, not an entitlement created by adding a special AI tag.
Common mistakes and recovery steps
Changing the wrong property
A URL-prefix property may cover only one protocol, host or folder. If other parts of the site remain included, compare the URL of an affected page with the property definition and inspect the corresponding domain or subdomain property.
Overlooking inheritance
A child property can follow a parent’s setting. If the control page identifies an inherited value, decide whether the parent scope is correct or whether the child needs its own override.
Expecting an immediate disappearance
Search features can use cached and previously processed data. Check the saved setting and allow propagation before escalating a suspected failure; do not infer that the control is ineffective from one result seen shortly after the change.
Using robots.txt as an AI Overviews switch
Google-Extended is for a different purpose. A robots.txt rule using that token does not replace the Search generative AI control for AI Overviews, AI Mode or generative Discover features.
Deploying noindex to solve a narrow AI concern
noindex can remove the page from ordinary Search, which may be a far greater visibility change than intended. Choose the Search Console control when the desired boundary is limited to generative AI features.
Bottom line
Website owners can opt out of Google AI Overviews, but the current mechanism is broader than that name suggests. In Search Console, the Search generative AI control excludes a verified property’s links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. It does not change other Search ranking signals or AI-training permissions, and Google says the exclusion may take days to propagate. Select the property scope carefully, account for inheritance, and use Google-Extended, snippet directives or noindex only when their different purposes match your goal.
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