How to opt out of Google AI Overviews (and what it costs you)

You can opt a whole site out of Google AI Overviews with the Search generative AI control in Search Console (Settings, then Search generative AI), which Google rolled out to all sites on August 31, 2026. It removes your links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's generative AI features together; there is no switch for AI Overviews alone. For single pages or passages, the robots rules nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex still apply, each with a cost in regular Search.

Google-Extended is not one of these controls. Blocking it in robots.txt does not remove you from AI Overviews. Below is each control, what it removes from AI features, what it also removes from regular results, and how to check what you would lose first, checked in September 2026.

Is there a way to opt out of AI Overviews only?

No. The site-wide control covers a group of features at once, and the page-level rules apply to all of Search. Google's control lists AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover as the features it governs, and says it expects "to update this list over time." You can leave all of them or none.

The page-level rules work the other way round: they target AI features and regular results alike. nosnippet removes your snippet from AI Overviews and from the ordinary blue-link result. That leaves the Search Console control as the only way to leave Google's AI features while keeping normal snippets.

What controls does Google offer, and what does each remove?

Google offers one site-wide control and four page-level robots rules. The table shows what each removes from AI features, what it also removes from regular Google Search, and its scope. Google-Extended is included because it is often mistaken for an AI Overviews control.

How do you use the Search generative AI control?

Open the property in Search Console, go to Settings, choose Search generative AI, and select the option to exclude your site's links and content. Google says exclusion takes effect "within 1-2 days after the control goes live," though some content can take longer "due to caching and propagation across Google systems."

1. Open Search Console and select the property. A domain property such as example.com covers its subdomains and protocols.
2. Go to Settings, then Search generative AI.
3. Choose "Exclude my site's links and content from Search generative AI features." The default is "Include," or "Inherit control from parent" for a property that sits under another one.
4. Save, then wait a few days before checking.
5. To treat one section differently, add it as a URL-prefix property (for example https://example.com/blog/) and set the control there. Google says a property inherits its control "from its closest parent that has changed its control," and a child can override it.

Google spells out what exclusion means. Links to your site and your content "won't appear" in those features, your crawled content "won't be eligible to be used as an input to generate an AI response," and "You won't receive any traffic or impressions from these features." It also warns that "Content from other sites will still be available in those features, and it may appear similar to yours."

How do nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet work?

They are robots rules that limit how much of a page Google can show or use. nosnippet shows no text snippet for the page and keeps it from being a direct input to AI Overviews and AI Mode. data-nosnippet hides specific passages. max-snippet caps the number of characters. All three apply to regular results too.

Examples from Google's specification:

<!-- No snippet anywhere in Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode -->
<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">

<!-- Snippets capped at 20 characters -->
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:20">

<!-- One passage excluded from snippets -->
<p>This text can be shown in a snippet
<span data-nosnippet>and this part would not be shown</span>.</p>

For files that have no <head>, such as PDFs, send the rule as a header instead: X-Robots-Tag: nosnippet.

Three details from Google's documentation matter in practice:

• data-nosnippet only works on span, div and section elements, in valid HTML with every tag closed. An unclosed div hides everything after it.
• Don't add or remove data-nosnippet with JavaScript on existing elements. Google may extract it before or after rendering, so set it in the HTML the server sends.
• max-snippet:0 is the same as nosnippet, and max-snippet:-1 means no limit. The limit "does not apply in cases where a publisher has separately granted permission," such as content in structured data.

Google's featured snippet documentation adds that lowering max-snippet makes a featured snippet less likely but "doesn't guarantee" it, and only nosnippet does.

How do you opt out one section or one page only?

For a section, use a URL-prefix property. For a single page or passage, use a robots rule. The Search Console control works on whole properties, so a directory such as /research/ can only be excluded on its own if it is its own property. A single page can only be kept out of AI features with a page-level rule, which also affects its regular snippet.

1. For a section: add https://example.com/research/ as a URL-prefix property, verify it, open Settings, then Search generative AI, and choose Exclude there. The rest of the site keeps the parent's setting.
2. For one page: add <meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">, accepting that the page loses its normal snippet as well.
3. For one passage, such as a proprietary figure or a paywalled summary: wrap it in <div data-nosnippet> in the server-rendered HTML.
4. To reverse any of these, set the control back to "Include my site's links and content" or remove the rule, then let Google recrawl the page.

Why doesn't Google-Extended remove you from AI Overviews?

Because it controls a different product. Google says Google-Extended manages whether content it crawls "may be used for training future generations of Gemini models" behind the Gemini Apps and Vertex AI, and for grounding in those products. It adds, in the same entry, that it "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal."

AI Overviews and AI Mode are part of Google Search, so a Disallow for Google-Extended leaves them untouched. The Search Console control page draws the same line from the other side: the control "doesn't affect AI training," and it points to Google-Extended for that. Google-Extended has no user agent of its own; Google crawls with its usual crawlers and reads the token as a permission. The full picture is in Google-Extended explained.

What does opting out of AI Overviews cost you?

It costs the impressions and clicks you get from AI Overviews and AI Mode, and does not remove the answer. Google says other sites' content "may appear similar to yours," so the AI Overview still appears, built from someone else's page. The page-level rules cost more, because they also shrink or remove your regular snippet.

Check the numbers before deciding:

1. Open Search Console's generative AI performance report. It counts impressions of links to your site in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and device, and reached all sites on August 31, 2026.
2. Sort by page to see which pages get the most AI impressions.
3. Compare with the Performance report for the same pages and dates.

Analytics cannot separate these visits for you. GA4's Organic Search channel includes clicks from "Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode," and its AI Assistant channel explicitly excludes them.

If what worries you is a traffic drop, find its cause before removing your pages from AI features; the steps are in how to diagnose a Google traffic drop. If you want the opposite outcome, being cited more, see how to get cited in Google AI Overviews.

What about Bing and Microsoft Copilot?

Bing uses its own robots rules for Copilot. Its webmaster guidelines say NOARCHIVE "prevents content from being used in Copilot responses and grounding results," NOCACHE "limits Copilot to using only the URL, title, and snippet," and NOSNIPPET or DATA-NOSNIPPET may limit Copilot citation quality. NOINDEX keeps a URL out of Bing search, Copilot and grounding results altogether.

Google's Search Console control has no effect on Bing, and Bing's rules have none on Google. Decide per engine.

Check which directives your pages actually send

A stray robots rule is easy to ship by accident, from a CMS setting, a plugin or a staging template. Run the free scan on LaunchScaler to see what your pages send today: it takes a URL, needs no account and runs 156 checks across 6 of its 7 categories at no cost. Its search checks read noindex in both the meta robots tag and the X-Robots-Tag header, robots.txt rules that block pages you want ranked, and a noindex hidden behind a robots.txt block where Google can never see it.