Key takeaways
- Google’s Search Generative AI control offers Include, Exclude or Inherit, live in the UK from 17/06/2026.
- Exclude removes AI citation and linking within 1 to 2 days and does not affect traditional rankings.
- There is no page-level option yet, only property-wide settings.
- A Munich court ruling held Google directly liable for false AI Overviews claims, adding legal context to the launch.
- For most sites, staying opted in still outweighs the risk, with sensitive-content pages the main exception worth reviewing.
Google has added a new Search Generative AI control to Search Console, letting site owners choose whether their content can be cited or linked inside AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative summaries in Discover.
The setting rolled out to UK properties on 17/06/2026, with three options: Include, Exclude, or Inherit from the parent property.
This is not a small toggle. It is the first time Google has given publishers a direct, standalone lever over their presence in AI-generated search results, separate from traditional indexing controls. It also arrives weeks after a German court held Google liable for AI Overviews that fabricated claims about two publishers, which is almost certainly not a coincidence.
What is the Search Generative AI control?
The control sits in Search Console, under Settings > Search generative AI, and applies at the property level. Site owners can pick one of three settings.
- Include is the default. Content can appear as a source and help ground AI Overviews and AI Mode responses, the same as before this control existed.
- Exclude removes the property from these features entirely. Google has stated the setting “isn’t used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search,” meaning traditional organic rankings stay untouched.
- Inherit from parent applies the parent property’s setting to a subdomain or subdirectory automatically, useful for agencies managing multi-property accounts, though it can be overridden at the child level.
How fast does exclusion take effect?
If you switch a property to Exclude, Google removes it from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s generative summaries within one to two days, depending on caching and how often that content is re-crawled. The change does not require a noindex tag and does not affect crawlability.
Choosing Exclude does not restore any traffic these features were sending your way. The property simply stops being eligible for AI citation, full stop. There is currently no partial or page-level version of this setting. It applies to the whole property, not individual URLs.
Does this stop Google training AI models on your content?
No, and this is the point most site owners get wrong first. The Search Generative AI control governs visibility in Search features. It has no bearing on what Google’s models are allowed to learn from.
To limit AI training specifically, Google points site owners to Google-Extended, a separate crawler directive added through robots.txt.
Selecting Exclude on the assumption that it also blocks training creates a false sense of control. You still give up every citation and impression the feature would have sent your way, without touching training at all.
Include vs exclude vs inherit at a glance
| Setting | Effect on AI features | Effect on traditional rankings | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Include (default) | Eligible for citation and linking in AI Overviews, AI Mode, Discover | No change | Most commercial and content sites chasing AI visibility |
| Exclude | Removed within 1 to 2 days, no citation or linking | No change, confirmed by Google | Sites with sensitive medical, legal or financial content that need tighter control |
| Inherit | Follows the parent property’s setting | No change | Agencies and multi-property accounts managing several subdomains |
Why is this control controversial?
The debate is less about the setting itself and more about its binary nature. A site cannot say “cite our pricing pages, but not our clinical content.” It is Include or Exclude for the whole property.
That is a genuinely difficult trade-off for sites publishing both commercial and sensitive material on the same domain. Giving site owners an opt-out also reads, at least in part, as a way for Google to shift responsibility back onto publishers who chose to stay opted in.
A legal ruling adds pressure
Google is facing real legal pressure over AI Overviews accuracy. The Regional Court of Munich issued a preliminary injunction on 28/05/2026 (case no. 26 O 869/26).
AI Overviews had falsely linked two publishers to “dubious business practices” and subscription scams. Those connections did not even appear in the search results Google was summarising.
The court rejected Google’s usual search engine immunity. It treated the AI Overviews text as Google’s own statement, not a neutral listing.
Google confirmed on 12/06/2026 that it would appeal, calling the case “specific and narrow errors, not the foundational way AI Overviews displays web content.”
Independent research questions AI Overviews’ accuracy
Oumi, commissioned by The New York Times, tested AI Overviews against SimpleQA, a 4,000-question factual benchmark built by OpenAI.
Around 91% of answers contained the correct fact. At Google’s scale, that remaining 9% still adds up to millions of wrong answers every day.
The trustworthiness figure is more revealing than the accuracy figure. Only 39% of answers were both correct and fully backed by their cited sources. Claim by claim, just 67% were supported by the sources shown.
Oddly, the newer Gemini 3 model scored more accurately on raw correctness than Gemini 2, yet produced more unsupported claims on the same questions.
Only 39% of AI Overviews answers tested were both factually correct and fully supported by their cited sources, according to Oumi’s SimpleQA-based study for The New York Times.
Should you opt out of AI Overviews and AI Mode?
For most sites, the answer is no. Search is moving into a zero-click era, where AI features now account for a growing share of the visibility a brand gets on Google.
Opting out means forfeiting every citation, impression and mention those features would otherwise generate, and competitors will happily take that space instead.
The calculation changes for high-sensitivity content: pages about medical conditions, treatment claims, legal eligibility or financial advice, where an inaccurate AI summary carries real reputational or compliance risk.
For these pages, some site owners will reasonably decide that reduced visibility is worth avoiding a misattributed claim.
Being cited and being linked are not the same thing
AI Overviews sometimes name a brand without linking to it, and sometimes link through without naming the source directly. Either way, Search Console’s new AI reporting is currently the only way to see impressions from these features, since click-through data for AI-generated answers is not yet broken out separately.
Does a noindex tag do the same job?
Not quite, and the two controls behave very differently. A noindex tag blocks a page from Google entirely, so it disappears from both traditional rankings and any AI feature at the same time.
It is a robots-level instruction, and it applies to every crawler that respects it, not to Google alone.
The new AI control is more surgical. It lets a property keep its traditional rankings intact while switching off eligibility for AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s generative summaries specifically. If your goal is to protect one or two pages from AI misquoting while keeping them fully indexed and ranking normally, noindex is the wrong tool. The AI control is built for exactly that scenario, once page-level granularity becomes available.
How do you change the setting in Search Console?
Changing the setting takes four steps.
- Open Google Search Console and select the relevant verified property.
- Go to Settings, in the left-hand menu.
- Select Search generative AI, then choose Include, Exclude or Inherit from parent.
- Save the setting. Allow 1 to 2 days for the change to take effect.
The change is property-wide, so review parent and child properties first. An inherited setting on a subdomain or regional site can silently pull it out of AI features if the parent property is set to Exclude.
Staying included only pays off if the content itself is built to be extracted cleanly. Clear structure, direct answers and attributable claims are what determine whether a page gets cited accurately in AI Overviews, not the Include setting on its own.
The same principle holds beyond Google. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini reward similar structural signals, which is the foundation of generative engine optimisation.
Frequently asked questions about Google’s New AI Overviews Control
Will the AI control roll out beyond UK websites?
Google has confirmed a wider rollout is planned but has not published a firm date or market order. Site owners outside the UK should keep checking Search Console under Settings, since Google typically expands similar controls in regional stages.
Can I apply different AI visibility settings to different pages on my site?
No. The control works at the property level, covering a domain, subdomain or verified subdirectory. Page-level exclusion is not available, which is the main limitation site owners with mixed sensitive and commercial content are raising with Google directly.
Does opting out affect my eligibility for AI Overviews ad placements?
Google has not addressed this in its documentation. Ad placements inside AI Overviews are still in limited testing, and it is unconfirmed whether Exclude removes a property from those placements as well as organic citations.
Is the Munich court ruling final, or could Google overturn it on appeal?
It is a preliminary injunction, not a final judgment. Google confirmed on 12/06/2026 that it will appeal, arguing the case involves narrow errors rather than a fundamental flaw in AI Overviews. The wider question, whether AI summaries count as Google’s own speech, remains unresolved.
How can I check if my site is currently cited in AI Overviews?
Search Console’s AI performance reports show impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode. Click data is not yet broken out from traditional search, so impressions remain the clearest available signal for now.
Does switching between Exclude and Include take effect at the same speed both ways?
No. Exclude clears existing citations within 1 to 2 days as caches refresh, but it does not erase answers a user already saw before the change. Switching back to Include is slower, since Google needs to re-crawl and re-process the content before citations return.
