The story. Google has a Search Console control that lets publishers exclude content from its AI features, but publishers say they cannot decide without click data. Google must give that data to UK publishers by 3 December. (Digiday, 9 November 2026)
01What happened
- The control exists, and it is global. It followed the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s first conduct requirement on Google. Google opened it to sites worldwide on 31 August.
- It is all or nothing. Publishers cannot opt out of individual features. Page-level grounding controls are due by 3 March 2027.
- Google has shared impressions, not clicks. Chris Dicker, CEO of Candr Media, says clicks are “the metric that will determine whether they turn it off or not.” Google is required to give UK publishers click data by 3 December and has not confirmed it will do so globally.
- Publishers are waiting. Dicker says “everyone is holding off,” and expects the data before Black Friday, when few will risk experiments.
- Google is making visibility more attractive. AI Mode and AI Overviews now show links more often, and Google says its Preferred Sources feature has grown sevenfold this year.
- Open questions remain. Some publishers expect excluded sites to drop out of the Top Stories carousel inside AI Overviews. Google has not said how its control treats it.
02What it means inside a GAM network
The decision is a revenue question before it is a policy question. Search referrals fill pages and pages fill ad impressions, so every opt-out choice is also an inventory forecast. A publisher that cannot say how many sessions and how much ad revenue come from Google search and Discover cannot judge the trade.
David Buttle of the publisher standards coalition SPUR describes Google’s approach as providing enough traffic from AI surfaces that publishers say yes voluntarily. He also says bundling Discover’s control with the one for summaries elsewhere makes opting out harder. That is his view, not Google’s.
Because the controls are bundled, the first test most publishers can run is blunt. The Economist Group’s Josh Muncke described the plan as testing where and how, then making structured, data-driven calls, not a single in-or-out decision.
For smaller publishers, the missing piece is that click data may arrive for the UK first. Google has not said it will be global, so plan on needing your own measurement.
Publishers have a switch and not the number that tells them when to use it.
03What publishers should do about it
04The bottom line
Publishers have a switch and not the number that tells them when to use it. Google has made staying on look better while the choice is still bundled. Publishers with their own traffic and revenue split by source can judge the click data when it lands; those without will be guessing.
If you want help splitting Google-referred revenue out of your GAM and analytics data, see our publisher services. For the background on the regulation: A World First: UK Regulators Just Handed Publishers an Off Switch for Google’s AI.