Google AI Overviews: How Pages Appear and Opt-Out Controls

AI Overviews are AI-written summaries that Google shows in some search results, with links to the pages they use. A page needs no special markup to appear. It must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet in Google Search. If you want to limit how Google uses your text there, use nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex. A Google-Extended rule in robots.txt does not change AI Overviews.

What AI Overviews and AI Mode are

Google first tested AI answers in 2023 as SGE (Search Generative Experience). SGE was an experiment in Search Labs, Google’s opt-in program for new features. On May 14, 2024, Google started to show AI Overviews to everyone in the U.S.

Google’s page AI features and your website covers AI Overviews and AI Mode together. AI Mode is a separate Search mode for questions that need more exploration, reasoning or comparison. Google says that AI Overviews appear only when its systems decide that they add value to classic results.

Both features can use query fan-out. Query fan-out means that Google runs several related searches on subtopics to find more supporting pages. The two features can use different models, so their answers and links can differ.

What a page needs to appear as a link

Google lists these conditions on its AI features page:

1. The page is indexed in Google Search.
2. The page is eligible to show with a snippet.
3. The page meets the normal Search technical requirements.

Google says that there are no other technical requirements. You do not need an AI text file, a new machine-readable file or special schema.org markup. Meeting the conditions does not guarantee that Google crawls, indexes or shows the page.

AI Overviews use the normal Google Search index, which Googlebot builds. Google says that the Googlebot rules in robots.txt control crawling for Search. Google’s own advice for these features is normal SEO practice. Allow crawling in robots.txt and in your CDN or hosting. Link to important pages from your other pages. Keep important content in text. Make structured data match the visible text.

Controls that limit AI Overviews

Google names four controls on its AI features page. The robots meta tag documentation gives the details.

Control	What it does
nosnippet	No text snippet in any Google result, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google also does not use the content as direct input for them.
max-snippet:[number]	Limits the snippet length. It also limits how much content Google can use as direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode. max-snippet:0 is the same as nosnippet.
data-nosnippet	An HTML attribute that keeps the marked text out of snippets.
noindex	Removes the page from Google Search, so it cannot appear as a link.

<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:50">
<p>This text can appear. <span data-nosnippet>This text stays out of snippets.</span></p>

You can also send the same rules in an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. Each control also changes your normal search snippets. Google documents no control that applies to AI Overviews only. For more on these rules, see the meta robots tag page.

Google-Extended does not control AI Overviews

Google-Extended is a robots.txt product token, not a separate crawler. Google’s crawler documentation says that it controls the use of your content for Gemini model training. It also controls grounding in Gemini Apps and in Grounding with Google Search on Vertex AI. The same page says that Google-Extended “does not impact a site’s inclusion in Google Search.” AI Overviews are part of Google Search. For details, see Google-Extended.

After you add a control

Make sure that Googlebot can see the new rule. Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console for this. Google must crawl the page again before the change applies. Google says this can take days to months. You can request a recrawl in the same tool.

Measure traffic from AI Overviews

Search Console counts clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode in the Performance report. They are part of the total Search traffic, under the “Web” search type. Google also suggests that you track conversions and time on site in an analytics tool.