The company posted on its official blog earlier today, saying that it will start testing a toggle inside of its Search Console to give webmasters the ability to remove domains from AI search results. This new toggle will roll out for a small set of test domains in the UK and then spread globally.
“Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features,” reads part of the post. “This control will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of these generative AI Search features.”
More tools inside the Search Console
New tools showing deep AI-related metrics are now available in the Search Console. | Image by Google
For everyone else, who embrace AI Overviews and the new AI order, Google is rolling out new insights in the Search Console.
The detailed data will show 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.”
Back in May during its annual I/O conference, Google announced a new dynamic Search Box that expands in size to fit big queries and also supports images, videos, files, and Chrome tabs as input data.
AI Overviews is now more than two years old
Google began rolling out AI Overviews to US users back in May 2024. Later that year, despite early citicism, the company expanded the feature to more than 100 countries worldwide.
In the beginning of 2026 Google morphed AI Overviews into AI Mode, where users can ask follow-up questions under the AI summary.
The internet is changing. Is conventional Google Search dead?
The end of Google Search as we know it? | Image by Google
The world is definitely changing. According to data from an Ahrefs Study, the presence of an AI Overview reduces the organic CTR for position-one content by a staggering 58%. This means people don’t go to websites anymore and rely on AI summaries alone. This results in a drastic drop in revenue for publishers who actually generate the content and several big media outlets going out of business.
The new option to exclude websites from AI Search results might be a tool for publishers to limit the negative impact, but on the other hand, given how people are using the internet nowadays, it may very well be a suicide.
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