Google will allow websites to exclude themselves from AI search results

Igor Bonifacic· Jun 3, 2026 · 5:10 AM UTC ·2 min read · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 46 views

TL;DR · WeSearch summary

Google has announced that it will allow websites to opt out of appearing in its AI-generated search results. This new feature will be tested with a small group of domain owners in the UK before a global rollout. The company assures that opting out will not affect a site's ranking in traditional search results.

Key facts

▪Google will allow webmasters to exclude their domains from AI-generated search results.
▪The feature will be tested with a small subset of domain owners in the UK before a global rollout.
▪Opting out will not impact a site's placement in regular search results.

How this story was covered

5 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 8 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.

Centre · 4

▪ Google Is Testing an Option for Websites to Opt Out of AI Search — CNET
▪ Google tests option to allow sites to opt out of appearing in AI search results — Google
▪ Publishers in UK can opt out of Google AI search results — BBC News — Tech
▪ Google will let websites opt-out of AI Mode & Overviews in Search — 9to5Google

About this source

Engadget files mainly under tech. We currently carry 439 of its stories.

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Original article

Engadget · Igor Bonifacic

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Story provenance

Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record

inspect →

Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.

Record

Original publisher	Engadget
Canonical URL	https://www.engadget.com/2186257/google-will-allow-websites-to-exclude-themselves-from-ai-search-results/
Publication time	Wed, 03 Jun 2026 05:10:00 +0000
Retrieval time	2026-06-03T05:16:55.971Z
Last seen	2026-06-03T05:16:55.971Z
Headline source	Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite)
Excerpt source	publisher body
Excerpt method	First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited.
Summary	WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer)
Summary source text	contentText
Citation coverage	Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL.
Cluster	gBZm9mG46XcK · 5 stories
Cluster logic	Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison.
Ranking reason	Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking.
Publisher visit	Yes — open original
Substitutes article?	No — link-out required for full text

Rights status (four layers)

Publisher-declared

No publisher-confirmed rights record for this source yet.

Machine-readable

No source-specific machine-readable restriction detected beyond the public feed.

WeSearch interpretation

WeSearch declared handling (basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed). This is WeSearch policy, not a legal grant on the publisher's behalf.

Unknown

Retrieval and training permissions are not asserted unless the publisher confirms them.

WeSearch handling by dimension

Indexing	May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)?	Allowed
Snippet	May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown?	Allowed
AI summary	May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article?	Limited
Retrieval / RAG	May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation?	Not asserted
Model training	May the content be used to train AI models?	Not asserted
Commercial reuse	May the content be reused commercially?	Not permitted

Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.

Open original publisher → Source rights JSON → Machine-readable provenance → Rights framework → WESEARCH-STORY-PROVENANCE-V1

Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand

Big Tech Google Google will allow websites to exclude themselves from AI search results The company says opting out won't impact placement in regular searches. By Igor Bonifacic June 3, 2026 1:10 am EST Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images More than three years after it began rolling out AI Overviews and a year after the debut of AI Mode, Google is giving webmasters the option to exclude their domains from its AI-generated search results. In a blog post published early Wednesday morning, the company said it would begin testing a new toggle inside of its Search Console designed to allow website owners to decide if their webpages appear in and help ground the company's latest AI search features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode.

…

Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Engadget.

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