<![CDATA[PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews.]]>PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. You get multiple scary warnings if you try. I was curious what's the actual impact on site traffic, so I turned it off. It went from ~1k AI summaries a day to zero, with no measurable impact on visits to the site.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/topic/7c5be122-fe4c-45ab-9be7-86541343234f/psa-if-you-have-a-website-or-a-blog-you-can-use-google-search-console-to-turn-off-the-use-of-your-site-in-ai-overviews.RSS for NodeTue, 25 Aug 2026 01:00:54 GMTThu, 20 Aug 2026 13:05:04 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:31:17 GMT]]>@failedLyndonLaRouchite @lcamtuf some people implemented that, yes, generating random noise text on the fly when robots crawl them, made to took kind of like real english text from a distance, but nonsensical, i think it needs a lot of websites doing that to have a visible effect, but it might. if anything, it must make it costlier to run such crawling operations.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/tshirtman/statuses/117128788535703318https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/tshirtman/statuses/117128788535703318Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:31:17 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:14:11 GMT]]>@lcamtuf

thanks

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/failedLyndonLaRouchite/statuses/117128485341856752https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/failedLyndonLaRouchite/statuses/117128485341856752Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:14:11 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:12:58 GMT]]>@Lee_Holmes Why? The AI summary still appears on top of the SERP, reducing the likelihood of people scrolling down / clicking on anything. It just can't lean on your website content anymore.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lcamtuf/statuses/117128480575151351https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lcamtuf/statuses/117128480575151351Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:12:58 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:57:41 GMT]]>@lcamtuf

possibly totally silly question

surely it is possible to take say 1,000 pages of text, and run it thru a program that subtly alters the text into sort of nonsense, and you upload that every day

and if a lot of people did this, wouldn't it poison the AIs ?

or the AIs are now smart enough to get around this ?

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/failedLyndonLaRouchite/statuses/117128420477217344https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/failedLyndonLaRouchite/statuses/117128420477217344Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:57:41 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:51:57 GMT]]>@lcamtuf Hmm, that's interesting. If it was stealing traffic, I would have expected turning it off to have bumped the traffic up by at least a tiny bit.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/Lee_Holmes/statuses/117128397938992472https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/Lee_Holmes/statuses/117128397938992472Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:51:57 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:27:59 GMT]]>@teun I don't *think* they expose this setting otherwise (i.e., robots.txt and meta tags only let you opt out of training or out of search altogether).

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lcamtuf/statuses/117128303673887543https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://infosec.exchange/users/lcamtuf/statuses/117128303673887543Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:27:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:19:08 GMT]]>@lcamtuf No such settings on a recently-claimed (DNS TXT) site. Will check again tomorrow.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/klausman/statuses/117128268918443929https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/klausman/statuses/117128268918443929Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:19:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:09:06 GMT]]>@lcamtuf could you be a bit more specific of what is necessary here?

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/klausman/statuses/117128229448324517https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/klausman/statuses/117128229448324517Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:09:06 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to PSA: if you have a website or a blog, you can use Google Search Console to turn off the use of your site in AI overviews. on Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:40:03 GMT]]>@lcamtuf

Just to be clear, this means that I need to have a Google account in order to stop their shenanigans, right?

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://kolektiva.social/users/teun/statuses/117128115242262445https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://kolektiva.social/users/teun/statuses/117128115242262445Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:40:03 GMT