What is Search Console's generative AI control?

This control is not a line in robots.txt, or the noindex tag, or the rule for Google-Extended. It is a switch inside Search Console that decides one thing: whether your site can appear in the generative AI features of Google Search. For a store it matters for two reasons. The first is that someone may suggest turning it off to "protect the content," and it helps to know what you gain and what you lose. The second is that any owner of the property can change it, and a site excluded by mistake stops showing up in AI Overviews and AI Mode while the store notices nothing in the rest of Search.

How it works

Where it is and what options it gives. In Search Console, under Settings, in the Search generative AI section. It has three options: include the site's links and content in Search's generative AI features, which is the default; exclude them; or inherit the setting from the parent property.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}

Which features it covers. AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's generative AI features, a list Google expects to keep updating.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control} It does not cover classic results: Google makes clear the control only decides whether your content can appear in those features and is not used as a ranking or inclusion signal in the rest of Search.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}

What excluding means. Two things, according to Google. Content crawled on your site can no longer be used as input to generate an answer or a preview in those features, and links to your site and its content stop appearing in them: you will not receive traffic or impressions from those features. Other sites' content stays available in them, and it may look like yours.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control} For a store, that means the answer still exists, with other stores' product pages. There is a nuance worth reading in full: even if you exclude the site, its content may still be used for how Search works in general, for example so its systems better understand the language of queries.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}

What it does not touch. The control does not override what you have decided in other services, such as Merchant Center or Google Ads.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control} For a store this is the practical fact: excluding the site from the generative features does not take your products out of Google Merchant Center.

How it is inherited. A property inherits the setting of the closest parent property that has stopped inheriting. Google's example: a URL-prefix property such as https://example.com/business/cats inherits the control from the domain property example.com.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control} So a store can decide for the whole domain and make an exception for one section, if it has that section registered as a separate property.

How long it takes. After you change it, it usually takes a few days to apply. Google talks about one or two days from when the control takes effect, with some content taking longer because of caching and propagation across its systems.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}

Since when. Google extended it to all sites worldwide on August 31, 2026.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control} To measure how your content performs in those features, and get a sense of how changing the setting would affect traffic, Google points to the generative AI performance report.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control} That report counts impressions in AI Overviews and in AI Mode, and only appears if the site is included in the generative AI features.⁠^{[2]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)}

The other controls are still there. To limit what is shown from a specific page, Google still points to nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. AI features and your website} The Search Console control acts on whole properties; those act page by page or fragment by fragment.

In a store

A store with its domain registered in Search Console and two URL-prefix properties, one for the blog and one for the catalog. This is a fictional example: the store and its decisions are invented to show how the settings combine under Google's inheritance rule.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}

The useful reading is the last row: anything without a property of its own follows the domain. If someone excludes the whole domain, the entire store drops out of the generative features, and its product pages stay in the classic results and in whatever it receives from Merchant Center.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}

How to check it

1. Open Search Console, go to Settings and find the Search generative AI section in the domain property. Confirm which option is selected.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}
2. Repeat on each URL-prefix or subdomain property you have: if one stopped inheriting, its setting rules over that part of the site.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}
3. Check who owns each property. Owners change the setting, and it helps to know who can.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}
4. Look for nosnippet or a very short max-snippet in your templates. Even if the control is set to "include," those controls limit what can be shown from those pages.⁠^{[3]Google Search Central. AI features and your website}
5. If you change the setting, write down the date and follow the generative AI performance report over the next few days. The change is not immediate.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control}⁠^{[2]Search Console Help. Generative AI performance report (Search)}

Related concept: Google-Extended

Google-Extended is a product name used in robots.txt, with no crawler of its own: Google crawls with its usual agents and respects what the site says for that name.⁠^{[4]Google Search Central. Google's common crawlers (Google-Extended)} It decides on the use of content to train Gemini models and for grounding, not on Search.⁠^{[4]Google Search Central. Google's common crawlers (Google-Extended)} The control's help page says it from the other side: the control does not affect AI training, and to limit that for the models that generate the answers in those features, it points to Google-Extended.⁠^{[1]Search Console Help. Search generative AI control} The Search Console control decides on Search's generative features and not on training. They are two separate decisions, and a store can make each one on its own: stay in AI Overviews and AI Mode and not let its content train models, or the reverse. The full set of options for each AI bot is in the entry on AI bot blocking.

To go further, the crawling and indexing reading path orders the rest of the terms.