Controlling how Google uses your content in AI answers

Google documents six controls that bear on how your content appears in its AI features, and each one does a different job. The one most people reach for first, Google-Extended, does not remove a site from AI Overviews or AI Mode. The ones that do, nosnippet and max-snippet, also change how your ordinary search result looks.

As of October 2026, only one control takes a site out of AI Overviews and AI Mode without touching its regular search snippets: the "Search generative AI control" in Search Console. It works on a whole Search Console property, not on single pages. For a single page or a single paragraph, you are back to the snippet controls and their trade-offs.

Most businesses that want customers to find them should leave all of this at the defaults. The controls matter when you have a specific reason, such as paywalled material or a policy on AI training.

The six controls at a glance

"Grounding" in this table means supplying web content to an AI model at the moment it answers, so the answer rests on current pages.

The page-level rules are defined in Google's robots meta tag specification. Where the last column says "not mentioned," take it literally: the specification names web search, Google Images, Discover, AI Overviews and AI Mode (and Assistant, under max-snippet), and says nothing about the Gemini app or Vertex AI. We do not know whether the snippet rules reach those products, and Google has not said.

nosnippet: the page-level switch

Google's definition reads: "Do not show a text snippet or video preview in the search results for this page." It continues: "This applies to all forms of search results (at Google: web search, Google Images, Discover, AI Overviews, AI Mode) and will also prevent the content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode."

The rule is one line in the head of the page. Google's own example addresses Google only:

<meta name="googlebot" content="nosnippet">

The cost is the part people miss. The same rule removes the descriptive text under your link in normal results. Google's featured snippets documentation says: "To block all snippets (including featured snippets and regular snippets) from appearing for a given page, add the nosnippet rule to that page." And because a page must be "eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet" to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, our reading is that you give up the link there as well as the quotation. Google does not state that outcome in one sentence.

The rule does not remove the page from the index, and Google does not say it changes ranking.

max-snippet: a limit, not a switch

Google defines max-snippet:[number] this way: "Use a maximum of [number] characters as a textual snippet for this search result." Like nosnippet, it applies across search results including AI Overviews and AI Mode, and "will also limit how much of the content may be used as a direct input" for those two features.

A value of 0 is the same as nosnippet, and -1 lets Google choose the length.

Three limits apply. Google publishes no number of characters at which a page drops out of AI Overviews or AI Mode. A short limit also makes featured snippets less likely; Google says "the shorter your max-snippet rule setting, the less likely the page will appear as a featured snippet." And the limit does not cover content you supply another way: it "does not apply in cases where a publisher has separately granted permission for use of content," such as in-page structured data.

data-nosnippet: hiding part of a page

When only one passage is the problem, you can mark that passage. Google says this is done "with the data-nosnippet HTML attribute on span, div, and section elements." On any other element the attribute is not valid.

One quirk is that Google treats the attribute as boolean: "As with all boolean attributes, any value specified is ignored." Writing data-nosnippet="false" does not switch it off. To stop hiding a passage, remove the attribute.

Other documented details:

• Google's instruction on scripts: "do not add or remove the data-nosnippet attribute of existing nodes through JavaScript."
• If a page has both nosnippet and data-nosnippet, "nosnippet takes priority."

For AI features, Google's guidance names data-nosnippet in its list of controls: "To limit the information shown from your pages in Search, use nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, or noindex controls." The specification's own section on the attribute talks only about snippets. It does not spell out the "direct input" effect the way the nosnippet rule does, so do not rely on it for anything sensitive.

noindex: out of Search entirely

noindex means "Do not show this page, media, or resource in search results." A page that is not in Search cannot be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Google's Search Console help puts it plainly: "To block your content from appearing in Google Search completely, use noindex."

It is the wrong tool for a page you still want customers to reach from Google. For PDFs and other files that cannot carry a meta tag, Google says to send the rule as an X-Robots-Tag HTTP response header.

Google-Extended: training and Gemini, not Search

Google-Extended is a token you put in robots.txt. Google's crawler documentation says it manages whether content "may be used for training future generations of Gemini models that power Gemini Apps and Vertex AI API for Gemini and for grounding" in "Gemini Apps and Grounding with Google Search on Vertex AI."

The same page states what it leaves alone: "Google-Extended does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search." So a disallow line for this token will not take you out of AI Overviews or AI Mode. By Google's description it does cover grounding in Gemini Apps, which is a visibility cost if your customers use Gemini.

Google documents it only as a robots.txt token, and its own example applies it to part of a site. Google does not say whether a new disallow affects models that were already trained. The other vendors' training tokens are listed in our guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt.

The Search generative AI control in Search Console

This is the newest control. Google's help page for it notes: "As of August 31, 2026, we've rolled out this control to all websites worldwide." You find it under Settings, then Search generative AI. It covers AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Google Discover, and it has three options.

Four facts decide whether this control suits you.

• It is per property, not per page. You can set it on a domain, a subdomain or a URL-prefix property, and a child property can override its parent. You cannot exclude one article.
• It leaves the rest of Search alone. Google says "this control isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search." Your regular snippets stay.
• It is not a training opt-out. "This control doesn't affect AI training; to limit training of the models used to generate responses in Search generative AI features, use Google-Extended."
• It is not instant. Google says "it generally takes a few days for your site's content to be excluded."

Excluding your site does not remove the topic from AI answers. Google notes: "Content from other sites will still be available in those features, and it may appear similar to yours." Before changing the setting, Google suggests measuring what you would lose with the Generative AI performance report. Inclusion is also now a condition of eligibility for these features, as our guide to Google AI Mode explains.

Why a control may not be working

1. The page is blocked in robots.txt. Google says that if a page is disallowed from crawling, "any information about indexing or serving rules will not be found and will therefore be ignored." Our robots.txt guide explains the file.
2. Google has not recrawled the page. Google's AI features documentation says "crawling can take anywhere from several days to several months."
3. Googlebot is not seeing the rule. Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console "to see the HTML that Googlebot received while crawling the page."
4. Two rules conflict. "In the case of conflicting robots rules, the more restrictive rule applies."
5. You are looking at a different product. These rules are documented for Google Search. Google warns that they "may not be treated the same by all other search engines."

Conclusion

Each of Google's controls has a narrow, documented job. The snippet rules work page by page and cost you ordinary snippets. The Search Console control works property by property and leaves ordinary results alone. Google-Extended is about Gemini training and grounding, not AI Overviews or AI Mode. And noindex removes a page from Search altogether. None of them corrects what an AI answer says about you using other websites; that process is in our guide to what to do when AI says something wrong about your business. For most businesses, visibility in AI answers is the goal, so the right setting is the default and the real work is making pages worth citing, as our article on how AI Overviews affect SEO describes. If you are not sure which of these rules are already on your site, a free GEO audit is a good place to start. More guides are in our GEO and AEO Guide.

Frequently asked questions