Can you now block your site from Google's AI answers? The Search Console toggle and AI performance report are live for all websites worldwide, and opting out costs every AI impression

What Google shipped, in Google's words

The primary source is Google's own announcement, first published June 3, 2026 and updated August 31 with the worldwide rollout; Search Engine Land reported the update the same day. The mechanics live in Google's help documentation: the toggle sits under Settings, then Search generative AI, in Search Console. Turn it off and "links to your site and your site's content won't appear in Search generative AI features." Propagation is fast by Google standards: exclusion "within 1-2 days after the control goes live, but some content may take longer" due to caching.

• Scope: AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI Overviews in Discover. Not classic blue links, not the index.
• Not a ranking signal: the control "isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search," and "your site's content may still be used to power Google Search as a whole."
• Not a training control: Google's help doc says plainly that "this control doesn't affect AI training." Blocking model training still runs through `Google-Extended` in robots.txt, a separate mechanism.
• The cost: "Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features." It is site-level and binary — the documentation describes no per-page version.

Why this matters if you care about AI visibility

First, the measurement half is the bigger story for most businesses. The AI performance report — impressions, pages, countries and devices inside Google's AI features, no clicks — is now officially available to every property, closing a gap we have been tracking since June: when we tested whether the report's data was reachable through the Search Console API on August 11, Google's help doc still said "a subset of website owners" even as the report appeared on nearly every property checked. For the first time, any business can read first-party numbers on whether Google's AI features show its pages, from Google, for free. (Read them carefully; an August logging bug already produced one phantom cliff.)

Second, the toggle makes grounding a choice, which means being in Google's AI answers is now something a site affirmatively consents to by default. Publishers with licensing leverage may use the lever; for a local business or SaaS that wants to be recommended, the practical reading is the reverse — the door is open unless you close it, and closing it costs every generative impression while the AI surfaces keep growing. Third, the boundary: this is Google only. The toggle says nothing about whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini's consumer app name your business when a buyer asks — that is a different measurement, per engine, and it is the one our free 60-second check reads directly.