Google has given UK domain owners two new controls in Search Console: a toggle to opt out of AI Overviews and AI Mode entirely, and a generative AI performance report that shows how often pages appear in AI responses. Both features are limited to a subset of UK site owners for now, with a global rollout unscheduled. The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) required Google to offer the opt-out, making this the first case of a regulator compelling Google to grant publishers control over AI surface visibility.

The performance report covers impressions, pages, countries, devices, and date ranges down to hourly granularity. It does not include click data. A Google spokesperson, quoted by Search Engine Land, said the company is “continuing to work with website owners to understand what insights will be most helpful,” which suggests click data is not coming soon. Bing Webmaster Tools released a comparable AI performance report earlier and is already global; Google’s is still UK-restricted.

The opt-out toggle covers AI Overviews, AI Mode (Google’s conversational search experience), and AI Overviews in Discover. Google is explicit that using the toggle is not a ranking signal for standard web search results. Sites that opt out lose all impressions and traffic attributable to generative AI features. They keep their position in the classic blue-link index.

Google cited its own scale on the announcement: AI Overviews at over 2.5 billion monthly users and AI Mode at over 1 billion. The company is also increasing the number of links shown inside AI results, a detail that works against the case for opting out.

The CMA framing matters here. The UK regulator did not simply request this. It required Google to let publishers opt out of content being used to fine-tune AI models, a broader right than just controlling SERP display. Google is fulfilling that requirement with this toggle. The EU had previously raised antitrust concerns over AI Overviews; the UK rollout pattern suggests Google is sequencing compliance geographically before opening access globally.

The real strategic question is not how to use the toggle but when opting out is ever rational. For most publishers, AI Overviews impressions are already unmonetized: the generative response absorbs the query and click-through rates on sourced links are low. But total removal from AI surfaces also means zero brand signal in those responses. The opt-out makes sense for sites whose content is being used to answer queries that never generate a visit in the first place, or for publishers whose editorial terms prohibit third-party AI training use.

The new performance report changes the calculus. Until now, any decision about AI surface presence was based on anecdote and third-party estimates. Impressions data, even without clicks, lets a team measure the gap: how often do pages appear versus how often does that appearance lead to a visit. If a site is generating millions of AI impressions and near-zero referral traffic from those impressions, the case for opting out is quantifiable rather than theoretical.

SEO and GEO teams with access to the UK rollout should run the impression report for at least thirty days before touching the opt-out toggle, because the data is the only honest basis for the decision.

Reported by Barry Schwartz for Search Engine Land on June 3, 2026.