Where is the Search generative AI control in Search Console?

Open the property, go to Settings and look under AI controls for Search generative AI. It shows Include by default. The direct page is Settings > Search generative AI, and you can choose Include, Exclude, or Inherit control from parent if the property has a parent property. Google rolled the control out to all websites worldwide on August 31, 2026.

Does excluding my site from Search generative AI features hurt my regular rankings?

Google says no. Its help page states the control isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search. What you lose is every link and impression in AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover, and other sites' content can still appear there in your place.

Does the Search generative AI control stop Google from training on my content?

No. Google's documentation says the control doesn't affect AI training. To limit training of the models behind these features you use the Google-Extended token in robots.txt, which is a separate control. Your content may also still be used to power Search in general, for example to understand the language of queries and pages.

How long does it take for the exclusion to work?

Google says content is generally excluded within one to two days after the change goes live, but some content can take longer because of caching and propagation across Google's systems. Expect a few days before the generative AI performance report shows the drop.

Is there a page-level way to keep content out of AI Overviews?

Not through this control, which applies to the whole property and its child properties. Today the page-level options are the existing preview controls: nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex. They also limit how the page shows in regular search results, so use them only on pages where that trade-off is acceptable.

Opt Out of AI Overviews in Search Console? Read This First

The short answer

Since August 31, 2026, every Search Console property has a Search generative AI control (Settings > Search generative AI) that removes your whole site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover. It's a site-wide switch, not a page setting. It doesn't touch your regular rankings, and it doesn't stop AI training. For most businesses that sell services, the right setting is the default: Include.

We checked the switch, and the new Generative AI report that ships with it, on our own property before writing this. The numbers are further down. Short version: AI features showed our pages 690 times in three months, and the report can't tell you how many of those turned into visits. That's the part that makes the opt-out decision harder than it looks.

What does the Search generative AI control actually do?

The control sits under Settings > AI controls > Search generative AI in each property. You get three options:

Include (the default). Your pages can appear as links in AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features, and your content can help "ground" the AI answer. You get impressions and traffic from those features.
Exclude. Your links and content are kept out of those features. In Google's words, "You won't receive any traffic or impressions from these features."
Inherit control from parent. This is the default when the property has a parent, like a URL-prefix property under a domain property.

According to Google's help page for the control, excluded content usually disappears within 1-2 days after the change goes live, with some content taking longer because of caching. Google also says the setting "isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search."

One sentence on that page deserves more attention than it gets: if you exclude your site, "Content from other sites will still be available in those features, and it may appear similar to yours." Opting out doesn't remove the answer. It removes you from the answer.

What the control doesn't do

Most of the confusion is here, so it's worth being blunt:

It doesn't stop AI training. Training is governed by the Google-Extended token in robots.txt, a separate control. Google's crawler documentation says Google-Extended "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal." The two settings answer different questions.
It isn't page-level. The control applies to every page in the property and its child properties. If you only want one section out, you either set an override on a child property or use page-level preview controls.
It doesn't override Merchant Center or Google Ads. Google's help page says the control doesn't override other choices to participate in services like those.
It doesn't make your content invisible to Google. Google says your content may still be used to power Search as a whole, for example to understand the language of queries and pages. To leave Search completely, you'd need noindex, which is a much bigger decision.

If what's really bothering you is AI crawlers in general, that's a robots.txt conversation, and we covered it in should you block AI crawlers.

What we saw in our own Generative AI report

Before telling anyone to flip a site-wide switch, look at what it would cost. So we pulled the Generative AI report for vixi.agency, a domain property, for July 30 to October 29, 2026:

690 impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode over the three months.
280 of those came in the last 28 days, so the pace is going up.
67 different URLs were shown at least once, across 82 countries. The United States led with 168, then Spain with 50.
Desktop accounted for 581 impressions, mobile 107, tablet 2.
AI features were about 9% of all Web impressions the site got in the same window. They aren't a side channel anymore.

The pages that showed up most tell you what AI answers like to cite. The top URL was a comparison post, GoHighLevel vs n8n for agencies, with 82 impressions. Next came the English homepage (77), a post on a Meta Ads change (50), a HYROS vs Triple Whale comparison (48) and a post on n8n's commercial license (46). The Spanish homepage had 41 on its own.

Comparisons and "what changed" explainers are what got cited. Generic overview pages barely appeared. That matches what we've written about the AI search citation gap: AI answers pull from pages that settle a specific question.

The report doesn't show clicks

Here's the catch. The Generative AI report has an impressions column and nothing else. Google's launch post lists impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates, and says more metrics may come "over time."

So the report tells you how visible you are inside AI answers. It doesn't tell you what that visibility is worth, and you can't see the traffic you'd lose by opting out. AI impressions are also already counted inside the regular Performance report under the Web search type, so the regular report won't separate them for you either.

You have to estimate the value yourself. The next section covers how.

Should you exclude your site from AI Overviews?

Our view: almost no service business, SaaS company or agency should exclude. For a business that sells something other than the content itself, a link inside an AI Overview is a brand impression at the exact moment someone is comparing options. Opting out doesn't stop the comparison from happening. It only takes your name off it.

There are cases where Exclude is a reasonable call:

The page view is the product. Publishers, recipe sites, and reference sites earn money from ads or subscriptions on the page. If an AI answer satisfies the visitor without the click, the trade can be bad.
The content is licensed or paywalled and you don't want it summarized for free.
You have a documented accuracy problem. If AI answers keep misstating your prices, dosages or legal terms and the corrections don't stick, keeping the content out may be safer. Try page-level controls on the affected pages first.
You're negotiating. Some publishers use exclusion as leverage. That's a business decision, not an SEO one.

If you're on the fence, don't treat Exclude as a free experiment. Google documents how fast exclusion happens, not how fast you come back, and competitors keep the citations in the meantime.

What about page-level controls?

Google's AI features documentation lists the page-level options: nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex. The catch is that they also limit how the page appears in normal results. A nosnippet page loses its regular snippet too, which usually hurts click-through.

Use them surgically. data-nosnippet on one pricing table you don't want quoted out of context is reasonable. A blanket max-snippet:0 on the whole blog is not.

How to check and change the setting without breaking anything

Here's the order we'd follow on any property, ours or a client's:

Export the Generative AI report. Performance > Generative AI, three months, then export Pages, Countries and Devices.
Join it to real traffic. Match the exported URLs to clicks in the regular Performance report and to landing-page sessions and conversions in your analytics. Pages with lots of AI impressions and real leads are the ones you'd be putting at risk. We wrote about how AI search visitors convert if you need a benchmark.
Map the property hierarchy. This is where agencies get caught. A URL-prefix property like https://example.com/blog/ inherits from the domain property example.com unless someone overrides it. Google says owners of the top-level domain property see a notification when a child property overrides the parent.
Change it on the right property. Make the decision at the top-level domain property. Use child overrides only when a section really needs a different answer.
Re-check after a week. Give caching a few days, then confirm the Generative AI report moved the way you expected. Write the decision and the date down for the client, because six months from now somebody will ask why AI Mode never mentions them.

For agencies: if you manage client properties, check this setting during onboarding the same way you check sitemaps and verification. A client's previous agency, or an in-house person reading one alarmist headline, can exclude a whole domain with a single save. Nothing in the regular Performance report will tell you it happened. You'll just see AI impressions go to zero. Add it to your technical SEO audit checklist next to robots.txt and sitemaps.

The bottom line

The control is site-wide, sits in Settings > Search generative AI, and defaults to Include.
Excluding removes your links and grounding from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features within days. It doesn't touch rankings or training.
The new report shows impressions only, so you have to bring your own click and lead data before making the call.
On our own site, AI features were already about 9% of Web impressions, and comparison posts got most of the citations.

If you'd rather have someone read your Generative AI report next to your analytics and tell you what it's worth, that's part of our free review. Get a Free Automation Audit and we'll send back an initial report within 24 hours covering your AI search visibility, the property settings above, and the pages most likely to get cited. If you want ongoing help, see our SEO and GEO service.