Google Search Console AI Search Controls: What Website Owners Can See and Change Now

Google Search Console now lets verified site owners include or exclude their links and content from Google’s generative Search features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The new Generative AI performance report shows impressions by page, country, device, and date, but it does not provide a separate AI ranking position or every user query.
Excluding a site from generative Search features stops AI-feature visibility and traffic, but Google says the setting is not used as a ranking signal for ordinary Search results.

What the new Google Search Console AI Search control does

Google Search Console now has a setting called Search generative AI control. It lets an eligible property include or exclude its links and content from generative features in Google Search, including AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative AI features in Google Discover.

As of August 31, 2026, Google says the control and related reporting have rolled out worldwide. The default setting is to include the site. That means eligible pages can appear as links in AI-generated search experiences and may help ground the information shown in those responses.

The distinction that matters most is this: the setting controls visibility in certain AI features, not your site’s ordinary Google Search ranking. Google says choosing “Exclude” is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search.

How to change the setting in Search Console

You need owner or full-user access to the relevant Search Console property. Open the property, go to Settings, and select Search generative AI control.

You’ll generally see three choices:

Include my site’s links and content in Search generative AI features: The default option. Your pages can be linked in AI Overviews and AI Mode and can help ground responses.
Exclude my site’s links and content from Search generative AI features: Google says your links and content will be prevented from appearing in these features, and you won’t receive impressions or traffic from them.
Inherit control from parent: The property follows the setting of its closest configured parent property.

Use the official control page for the exact property you manage:

Open Google Search Console

Open the official Search generative AI control page

Changes are not necessarily instant. Google says content is generally excluded within one to two days after the control goes live, although some pages may take longer because of caching and propagation across Google’s systems.

How inheritance affects subdomains and folders

The setting can apply differently depending on how your Search Console properties are structured. A domain property can act as a parent for subdomains, protocol variations, and URL-prefix properties. A URL-prefix property can also be the parent of a narrower folder property.

For example, a property for example.com/business/ may control a child property such as example.com/business/cats/. A child property normally inherits the closest parent setting unless an owner manually changes the child configuration.

This matters for publishers that manage a blog, store, newsroom, or customer portal separately. Before changing the setting, check whether you’re applying it to the whole domain or only to a specific subdomain or directory.

What happens if you exclude your site?

Excluding a property prevents its links and content from appearing in Google’s covered generative Search features. The site also becomes ineligible to receive impressions and traffic from those features.

It does not mean that Google will remove the site from ordinary Search. Google says the control is not a ranking signal for other Search results. A page can remain indexed and continue appearing in standard results if it meets Google’s normal technical and quality requirements.

Exclusion also does not block every form of Google use. Google says content may still help its Search systems understand language and queries. The setting is separate from controls for model training, such as Google-Extended, and separate from controls that remove pages from Search entirely.

Use noindex when the goal is to keep a page out of Google Search altogether. Use preview controls such as nosnippet, data-nosnippet, or max-snippet when you want to limit how page content is displayed. Those are different decisions from excluding a property from generative Search features.

Read Google’s robots meta tag and snippet controls

What the Generative AI performance report shows

The Generative AI performance report is designed to show how often links to your site appeared in covered AI features on Google Search. The Search report currently includes AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google Discover has a separate generative AI performance report.

The report can help answer practical questions such as:

Are AI-feature impressions rising or falling over time?
Which pages appear most often?
Are impressions coming mainly from Canada, the United States, or other countries?
Does visibility differ between mobile, desktop, and tablet?

Open the official report documentation and Search Console entry point here:

Open the official Generative AI performance report guide

Available dimensions and metrics

The report groups data by several dimensions:

Dimension	What it tells you
Pages	Which final URLs were linked by a generative AI feature, usually assigned to the canonical URL.
Countries	Where the search originated, such as Canada or the United States.
Dates	How impressions changed by day, week, or month. Dates use Pacific Time.
Devices	Whether impressions came from mobile, desktop, or tablet searches.

The main metric is impressions, meaning links to your site were shown to a user in a covered generative AI feature. The report is not a complete record of every time Google’s systems considered your content. Search Labs experiments are excluded, and a property may not show a report if it has not received enough qualifying impressions.

How to interpret AI impressions without confusing them with rankings

AI impressions should be treated as a visibility signal, not as a new ranking position. Google’s documentation does not give website owners a separate AI ranking number, and the report should not be read as proof that a page was the “top” source for a particular answer.

There are also aggregation differences to keep in mind. In the chart, if two links from the same site appear in one generative AI search feature, they count as a single property-level impression. Page-level tables can tell a different story because they group results by URL. That is one reason chart totals and table totals may not match exactly.

The report also belongs to the Web search type in Search Console’s broader Performance report. Its launch does not mean Google has necessarily added a second set of impressions to your regular Search total. Compare the dedicated report with clicks, conversions, and engagement in your analytics platform before making a business decision.

What website owners should do now

For most publishers and small businesses, the sensible first step is to leave the property included while gathering baseline data. Excluding the site is a deliberate traffic trade-off: it removes AI-feature visibility rather than simply hiding one preview format.

A practical review process looks like this:

Confirm that the correct domain, subdomain, or URL-prefix property is selected.
Check whether the property inherits its setting from a parent.
Open the Generative AI performance report and record the date range, top pages, countries, and devices.
Compare AI visibility with ordinary Search clicks, leads, sales, newsletter signups, or other meaningful outcomes.
Review important pages for clear answers, accurate information, strong page experience, and normal technical eligibility.
Change the control only if the potential loss of AI-feature traffic is consistent with your publishing, licensing, or business goals.

Google says there are no special technical requirements or separate AI-only SEO tricks required for eligibility. Pages still need to be indexed and eligible to appear in ordinary Search with a snippet. That makes the new report useful for measurement, but it does not replace technical SEO checks, content quality work, or analytics.

Which control should you use?

Choose Include if you want the opportunity to receive visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode and are comfortable with your content helping support those experiences.

Choose Exclude if your organization has a clear legal, licensing, editorial, or commercial reason to avoid generative Search visibility and accepts that traffic and impressions from those features will stop.

Use noindex only when the broader objective is to remove a page from Google Search, not merely from generative AI features. For model-training restrictions, review Google-Extended separately. These tools address different parts of Google’s ecosystem, so one setting should not be treated as a substitute for another.

Review Google-Extended controls

Helpful Links

Google Search announces new controls and insights for website owners – Read Google’s announcement about the worldwide rollout of generative Search controls and reporting.
Google Search Central AI features and your website guide – Review Google’s guidance on eligibility, technical requirements, preview controls, and AI features in Search.
Google Search Console overview – Open Search Console to manage verified properties, inspect pages, and review Search performance.
Search generative AI control – Official page referenced in the article.
Generative AI performance report (Search) – Official page referenced in the article.
Robots meta tag, data-nosnippet, and X-Robots-Tag specifications – Official page referenced in the article.
Google’s common crawlers – Official page referenced in the article.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Does excluding my site from Google AI Overviews remove it from normal Search?

A. No. Google says the Search generative AI control is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of Search. Excluding a site affects covered generative AI features, while normal indexing and Search visibility are controlled separately.

Q. Does the Search Console AI control stop Google from training AI models on my content?

A. No. The control is for visibility in certain generative Search features. Google says model-training preferences are handled separately through Google-Extended, while noindex is the broader control for keeping a page out of Google Search.

Q. Why can the Generative AI report be missing from my Search Console property?

A. Google says the report may not appear if the property has not received enough qualifying impressions, if access has not finished appearing for the property, or if the site has been excluded from generative Search features.

Q. Does the report show every query that caused an AI impression?

A. No. The report focuses on impressions and dimensions such as pages, countries, dates, and devices. It does not provide a complete query-level view of every AI response in which a site may have been considered.

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