Opt Out of AI Overviews: What the Search Console Setting Removes, What It Leaves Alone and What It Costs

Since 31 August 2026, any site in Search Console can switch itself out of Google's AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover. Clients who believe AI answers are eating their clicks will ask their agency to flip it. The change takes a minute. The cost shows up in next month's report, and the agency will be the one explaining it.

This guide covers what the setting does, what it leaves alone, how it differs from the older controls, and how to decide whether a client should opt out of AI Overviews at all.

What does the Search generative AI setting do?

The Search generative AI setting removes a site's links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Google Discover, and stops Google using the site's crawled content as input for those AI responses. Google's Search Console help page for the control lists three options: Include, which is the default for every property; Exclude; and Inherit, which is the default for any property that sits under a parent property.

An excluded site gets no traffic and no impressions from those features. Google also says plainly that content from other sites can still appear in the answer, and may look similar to yours. The question the AI answers does not go away. Someone else's page answers it.

How do you opt out of AI Overviews?

To opt out of AI Overviews, open the client's Search Console property, go to Settings > Search generative AI and choose Exclude. Before you do, check which property you are in, because the setting is inherited.

• Inheritance: a property takes the setting from its closest parent that has its own setting. If no parent has one, it inherits from the top-level domain property.
• Overrides: the owner of a child property, such as a subdomain or URL-prefix property, can override the inherited setting. The domain property owner gets a notification when that happens.
• Timing: Google says changes generally take a few days. Content is usually excluded within 1 to 2 days after the change goes live, and some content takes longer because of caching.

The control did not appear overnight. Google announced it on 3 June 2026 as a test with a subset of UK website owners, and updated the post to say it had rolled out to all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026.

Does opting out hurt rankings or stop AI training?

Opting out does neither: Google says the setting is not a ranking or inclusion signal for the rest of Search, and it does not affect AI training. The announcement says the control "will not be used as a ranking signal" outside the generative AI features. The site's blue links stay where they were.

Three limits are worth telling a client up front. First, Google says the site's content may still help power Search in general, for example by informing language understanding. Second, the setting does not override other choices, such as taking part in Merchant Center or Google Ads. Third, training is a separate decision with a separate tool, covered next.

Opt-out vs Google-Extended, nosnippet and noindex

Each of the four controls removes something different, and only the Search Console opt-out targets Google's AI search features while leaving regular results untouched.

Google's crawler documentation says Google-Extended does not affect a site's inclusion in Google Search and is not a ranking signal. It has no user agent of its own; it is a token you name in robots.txt. So a client worried about Gemini training wants Google-Extended, not the Search Console switch.

The robots meta tag rules show why nosnippet is the expensive option: it strips snippets and video previews from every Search result for that page, not just the AI ones. Before Search Console had a switch, nosnippet was the blunt way to stay out of AI answers. Now it only makes sense for specific pages or passages, using data-nosnippet on the passage rather than the whole page.

What does opting out of AI Overviews cost a client?

Opting out costs every impression and click the site was earning from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features, and Google says other sites' content can take that space. The scale is not small. Google's June post put AI Overviews at more than 2.5 billion monthly active users and AI Mode at more than one billion monthly users.

What Google has not said is how many clicks a typical site gets from those features, or whether the people who would have clicked from an AI answer go on to click a regular result instead. Nobody can promise a client that opting out wins the traffic back. The help page points to the Generative AI performance report in Search Console as the way to estimate what a change might do, and that is the right place to start.

Should a client opt out of AI Overviews? A decision checklist

A client should opt out of AI Overviews only when the AI features are showing their content without sending visits that convert, and the goal cannot be met by a narrower control. Work through these before recommending it:

1. Pull the Generative AI report. Note impressions by page and country for the last three months.
2. Match those pages to clicks. In the Performance report, check whether the pages that appear in AI answers are the ones losing clicks, or whether the decline is elsewhere.
3. Check conversions in GA4. If organic visits to those pages still produce leads or sales, excluding them puts revenue at risk.
4. Name the real goal. If the worry is Gemini training, use Google-Extended. If it is one paywalled passage, use data-nosnippet. Only a "stay out of Google's AI answers entirely" goal needs the switch.
5. Look at the business model. Publishers whose content is the product have a stronger case. A local service business or online store usually gains from being named in the answer.
6. Remember the other engines. The switch does nothing for ChatGPT or Perplexity. A client who leaves Google's AI answers still needs to know where they stand in the rest.
7. Confirm the property. Decide whether the change belongs on the domain property or one subdomain, given the inheritance rules.

How to set a baseline and get written sign-off

Before anyone changes the setting, freeze a dated baseline and get the client's decision in writing, because the switch moves numbers the agency is judged on. The baseline should hold:

• Generative AI report impressions for the last 28 days and the last three months.
• Search Console clicks and impressions for the top 20 landing pages.
• GA4 organic sessions and conversions for the same pages.
• A snapshot of the tracked prompts where the brand appears in AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.

The sign-off email can be short: what will change, what will not, the expected effect on impressions, the review dates (30 and 90 days), and how to reverse it. Say plainly that Google has not published how long it takes to reappear after switching back to Include.

How to report the opt-out to the client

Report the opt-out as a dated event with a before-and-after comparison, led by clicks and conversions rather than impressions. Add an annotation on the change date. Expect Generative AI report impressions to fall away within a few days; that is the setting working, not a penalty. Then compare the 30 days after against the baseline, adjusting for seasonality.

Keep the Search Console impressions caveat in mind as well. Google has already fixed one impressions logging error in 2026, covered in our post on the Search Console impressions correction, so impressions alone are a weak basis for any verdict. For the bigger picture of which metrics to lead with, see SEO KPIs that prove work.

An AI visibility tracking tool keeps the other engines in view after the switch, and an SEO reporting tool puts Search Console and GA4 side by side, so the 30-day review compares like with like.

AI Overviews opt-out FAQ

Does opting out of AI Overviews hurt Google rankings?

No. Google says the Search generative AI setting is not a ranking or inclusion signal for the rest of Search. The site keeps its regular results and loses only its links and content in AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover.

How long does it take to opt out of AI Overviews?

Google says changes generally take a few days. Content is usually excluded within 1 to 2 days after the change goes live, though some content can take longer because of caching and propagation.

Does the opt-out stop Google training AI on my content?

No. Google says the setting does not affect AI training. To limit use of your content for training future Gemini models, Google points to the Google-Extended token in robots.txt.

Is the opt-out the same as nosnippet?

No. nosnippet removes text snippets and video previews everywhere in Search and also stops the page being a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. The Search Console opt-out leaves snippets in regular results untouched.

Can a site opt back in after excluding itself?

Yes. Set the control back to Include in Search Console. Google says changes generally take a few days, but it has not published a separate timeline for how quickly a site reappears in AI Overviews and AI Mode.