Should a Local Business Opt Out of AI Overviews? (Almost Never)

Since August 31, every website can opt out of AI Overviews from Google Search Console. For almost every plumber, roofer, HVAC company or cleaning service, the right move is to leave that switch alone. Here is what it does, what it does not do and what is worth checking instead.

What did Google add to Search Console on August 31?

On August 31, Google made its generative AI performance reports and a new “Search generative AI” control available to every site worldwide, according to Google’s Search Console help page. The control covers three places your pages can appear: AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover.

This did not come out of nowhere. Google announced the reports and the opt-out control on June 3, and testing started with UK sites. That was the same day the UK Competition and Markets Authority issued a conduct requirement saying Google must let sites opt out of AI features without a penalty in regular search, as Search Engine Journal reported.

The new reports show impressions from those AI features. They do not show clicks. You can see how often your site appeared in an AI answer, but not how many people visited because of it.

How do you opt out of AI Overviews in Search Console?

The control is set per property, and each property has one of three settings.

If you have a real reason to go ahead, the process is short:

1. Pick the right property. Make the change on the property that covers the pages you want out, and check which child properties inherit from it.
2. Switch the control to Exclude. Follow Google’s help page for where the “Search generative AI” control sits in your property.
3. Give it a day or two. Google says an exclusion typically takes effect in one to two days.
4. Write down the date. Add a note in your analytics and reports so a later drop in impressions has an explanation.

What the AI opt-out does not do

Two points are easy to miss, and both matter before anyone touches the setting.

It does not stop AI training

The Search Console control does not govern whether Google can use your content to train its AI models. Google handles that separately through Google-Extended. If training is your concern, this is the wrong switch.

It does not change your regular rankings

Google is explicit that excluding a property won’t hurt you in the rest of Search:

“this control isn’t used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search.”

Google, Search Console Help

That is reassuring, but it cuts both ways. Opting out will not lift your regular rankings either. What it changes is whether your pages can earn traffic and impressions from Google’s AI features.

In our reading, the setting governs your site’s participation, not whether those features appear. If a homeowner searches for water heater repair and Google shows an AI Overview, that answer can still be built from other businesses’ pages. Opting out just means yours are not among them.

Should a local business opt out of AI Overviews?

Almost never. The case against it comes down to how often these features appear and who gets named in them.

Similarweb’s 2026 report puts AI Overviews on 43% of Google searches, up from about 15% a year earlier, according to Digital Applied’s summary. Semrush Sensor reads about 48% of tracked results pages, per Search Engine Roundtable. The two use different methods, so the fair summary is roughly 4 in 10 to half of searches. Similarweb also counted 279 million AI Mode visits in May 2026, against 126 million in June 2025.

Opting out means stepping away from a large and growing share of the results page.

The click research is the strongest argument for leaving. In a randomized experiment posted to SSRN, researchers Agarwal (Indian School of Business) and Sen (Carnegie Mellon) followed 1,065 users across 68,089 searches. When an AI Overview appeared, organic clicks fell 39.8% and zero-click searches rose 34.5%, while sponsored clicks stayed flat. AI Overviews showed on about 41% of their queries.

Those are real losses. But for a local service business, removing yourself from the answer does not bring those clicks back to you. A homeowner who reads an AI Overview about a leaking water heater and never clicks may still remember the company it named, then call or look it up on Maps. If you opted out, that name belongs to a competitor.

We covered what this means for service pages in our post on AI Overviews showing on about half of Google searches. The short version: earn your place in the answer, and make the click worth taking.

The rare case for excluding

If one property holds content you sell, such as paid training material, excluding just that property can make sense. Because a property can inherit its parent’s setting or override it, you can limit the change to the part of the site that needs it. For a business whose goal is phone calls and booked jobs, that case is hard to make.

Other AI switches to check before September 15

The Search Console control is not the only AI setting that can affect your visibility, and one deadline is close.

Cloudflare announced on July 1 new default AI crawler settings that take effect September 15. For newly onboarded domains, search crawlers stay allowed, while AI training and agent bots are blocked on pages that show ads. Sites can opt out before September 15.

The detail that matters most: Cloudflare treats “mixed-use” crawlers by their most restrictive behavior. If a site blocks AI training, Googlebot, Applebot and BingBot can end up blocked too. That would cost a local business far more than any AI feature.

Cloudflare’s blog describes the default in terms of new domains, but Engadget reported that free accounts also switch. Until that is cleared up, check your settings whatever kind of account you have.

What about llms.txt? Adoption is rising. Originality.ai counted 36,120 sites with one in May 2026, up from 4,088 in June 2025, according to PPC Land. But Ahrefs’ study of 137,000 domains found that 97% of llms.txt files got zero requests in May 2026, and Google says llms.txt is not required for Search. Google also said Cloudflare’s Content Signals robots.txt directive “has no effect,” Search Engine Roundtable reported. Neither deserves much of your time right now.

What to do instead of opting out

If the worry is losing clicks to AI answers, put that energy into being the business the answer names and the one worth clicking.

• Make each core service page answer the basics directly: what you do, where you work and how quickly you can come out.
• Keep your business name, address, phone number and service area identical on your website and Google Business Profile.
• Read AI impressions in Search Console as a visibility number, not a traffic number, since the report has no clicks.
• Track calls and form leads by source so you can see whether search is still producing jobs.

That is the core of our answer engine optimization work, and our analytics and tracking setup gives you the lead data to judge it.

Not sure whether a past developer changed one of these settings? Ask us to take a look.

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