Area
Publisher controls
Settings, meta tags and features site owners can use to shape how they appear in AI and classic Search.
Topics in this area 7
24 claims · 6 sessions
The generative AI opt-out in Search Console
A property-level Search Console setting, Search generative AI, lets a site leave AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI in Discover: excluding removes both links to the site and use of its content to ground answers, so the site gets no traffic or impressions from those features, and include is the default. Google says the setting is not a ranking or inclusion signal for regular results and does not affect AI training, which Google-Extended governs; changes generally apply within 1–2 days, and a child property inherits from its closest parent that changed the setting. Day 2 repeated this, with John Mueller presenting it as one of very few indexing-like settings in Search Console, and added the page-level route: nosnippet keeps content out of AI Overviews and AI Mode as a direct input and max-snippet limits that use, as Google's robots meta tag specification confirms, but both also remove or shorten regular snippets. Author’s view: lead-generation, local and e-commerce sites should normally stay included, because AI answers cite and link sources. Day 3's Search Console talk repeated it: every property owner can tell Google whether the site's content may be used in AI search results, because Google wants content owners to control their content. In the Day 1 Q&A, captured by a second recording, Google said the Google-Extended token in robots.txt opts a site out of Google's AI training, that blocking all AI crawlers while allowing search crawlers is a personal decision every site owner can make, and that Apple offers a similar control for Applebot; a community speaker advised not blocking AI training bots in most cases, so that models can represent the brand accurately. Gary Illyes said the generative AI report launched alongside the control, with impressions only to start. Author’s view: Google-Extended is a usage token, not a crawler; disallowing it does not stop Googlebot fetching pages and controls only Gemini training and grounding, while the Search Console setting governs AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google's Day 1 robots.txt talk, in an audio recording, added that robots.txt was designed only to control which clients may access what, not how content is used, and that disallowing the Google-Extended token keeps a directory or a whole site out of Gemini model training; it named Apple's Applebot-Extended as a similar token.
Day 1Day 2Day 3
13 claims · 4 sessions
Google-Extended
Google-Extended is a robots.txt control token, not a crawler with its own user agent: it governs whether crawled content is used to train future Gemini models and to ground Gemini apps and Vertex AI, and it has no effect on inclusion or ranking in Google Search. Day 2 showed how it travels: in Google's example fetch record the applicable robots policy, shown as opt-out-google-extended, stays attached to the fetched page as it goes into processing, and Google's crawler documentation defines the grounding it controls as Search-index content given to the model at prompt time. Google also said Gemini training renders pages the same way Search does, provided the site allows training (said at the event, not in Google's docs). Author’s view: the live read of a page that a Gemini user asks about is not documented, so it is unclear whether Google-Extended applies to it or whether it behaves like a user-triggered fetcher, which generally ignores robots.txt. In the Day 1 Q&A, asked whether Google plans dedicated AI user agents, Google said a site can opt out of Google's AI training with the Google-Extended token. Author’s view: the panel spoke of blocking AI 'crawling or training', but Google documents Google-Extended as a usage token: disallowing it does not stop Googlebot fetching pages. An audio recording of Day 1's robots.txt talk added that a site can keep a directory or the whole site out of Gemini model training by disallowing it for the Google-Extended token, which Google said it respects, and that robots.txt itself was designed only to control access, not how content is used; Google named Apple's Applebot-Extended as a similar token from another company. Author’s view: the speaker's belief that Google was the first to offer such an opt-out needs care, since OpenAI documented blocking its GPTBot crawler in August 2023, before Google announced Google-Extended on 28 September 2023; what Google-Extended added was a training control for pages fetched by Google's existing crawlers, separate from Search.
Day 1Day 2
6 claims · 1 session
Search profiles
Publishers and creators can claim a Search profile with a profile photo, cover image, bio, linked accounts, pinned posts and a follow button. It launched on 4 June 2026 in the US for accounts with a sizable following. Since 16 September 2026, US publishers and creators qualify with 10,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram, X or TikTok, and media groups can manage all their sub-brands from one login. Day 3 linked profiles to Search Console: platform properties let owners verify Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube accounts and see the traffic Google sends to them, and Google's social and video performance guide says that once a Search profile is claimed, all its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties.
Day 1Day 3
3 claims · 2 sessions
Preferred sources
Users can mark sites as preferred sources. Those sites become more visible in Top Stories and are labelled in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Author’s view: it rewards brands people actively choose. On Day 3 Google said it can add a preferred-source badge, or a 'highly cited' badge, to a text result.
Day 1Day 3
3 claims · 2 sessions
Linked subscriptions
Users can link their paid subscriptions to Google so answers highlight paywalled content they already have access to. Google cited 34% more engagement among one publisher's linked subscribers. On Day 3 a Google speaker, unsure of the name, suggested linked subscriptions as an example of a search feature whose container holds text results (not in Google's docs).
Day 1Day 3
46 claims · 7 sessions
Robots meta tags and noindex
Robots meta tags (name robots or googlebot, comma-separated rules, placed in the head, though Google also respects them in the body) are how site owners control indexing, because robots.txt controls only crawling; Google said it does not treat a robots.txt disallow as noindex because some very important sites disallow their key pages by accident or out of ignorance, and a noindex on a disallowed URL is never seen. John Mueller went through the rules: all is the default and does nothing (it is not an instruction to index), noindex keeps a page out of results, none equals noindex plus nofollow, page-level nofollow is a very broad rule he would replace with rel=nofollow on individual links, noimageindex blocks every image on the page, and unavailable_after drops a page after a set date, though most sites do not use it. Google said index selection drops a document carrying noindex (a likely but not certain reading of the recording) if it was not dropped earlier, and removes a page once its unavailable_after date passes, extending Day 1's point that Google must fetch a page to see its noindex. Robots rules added with JavaScript take longer to take effect and removing a noindex with JavaScript does not work, and Google's documentation advises avoiding JavaScript for meta tags. Unlike robots.txt, robots meta tags have no RFC, and John Mueller invited SEOs to help write a specification. Day 3 timed the rules: Google estimated that meta annotations such as robots meta tags are typically processed in 45 to 90 minutes (not in Google's docs), and that once Google has processed a page that now returns a 404 or noindex, the page usually leaves the serving index within one to three weeks, sometimes much sooner. A second recording of Day 2 covered the end of John Mueller's talk: robots meta rules only work if robots.txt lets Google fetch the page; when Google finds a noindex in the HTML it drops the page without even processing its JavaScript, so a script cannot make the page indexable again (Google's JavaScript guide says it may skip rendering), and he recommended putting robots meta tags in the HTML exactly as intended, using JavaScript only where that is impossible. He also suspected that the page-level nofollow rule would probably not be part of robots meta tags if they were reinvented today. Gary Illyes said noimageindex blocks a page's images and, he added, its videos too, because a video's thumbnail is an image (not in Google's docs). Author’s view: a noindex in the served HTML must never be one that JavaScript is expected to lift, and noimageindex does not belong on video watch pages.
Day 2Day 3
42 claims · 6 sessions
Snippets and preview controls
John Mueller's answer to his own quiz was that robots meta tags can make a page more visible: his closing slide recommended max-snippet:-1 and max-image-preview:large, the latter mattering mainly in Discover. The nosnippet rule removes the text snippet and video preview but not the title, max-snippet caps the snippet length in characters (0 equals nosnippet), and data-nosnippet hides one passage, such as a phone number, but works on few elements, can spill over the rest of the page if the HTML is broken, and should not be toggled with JavaScript. Day 2 extends Day 1's opt-out discussion: Google's documentation says nosnippet keeps a page's content out of AI Overviews and AI Mode as direct input, max-snippet limits how much they may use and a page must be eligible for a snippet to be a supporting link, and Mueller said Google builds those answers from snippets. Two points from the talk go beyond the docs, which say only that Google chooses the length: max-snippet:-1 can give a longer snippet than no rule, and a limit too short to be useful may mean no snippet at all. The max-video-preview rule caps previews in seconds and notranslate stops Google offering a translated result; Mueller said a notranslate meta tag named google also switches off Chrome's translation, which Chromium's Translate design document supports and a 2008 Search Central post documents for Google Translate, though Google Search's current documentation does not mention it. Day 3 showed the parts of a text result, attribution, title link, snippet and site name, which Google generates from its understanding of the page even when the owner provides nothing. Google estimated that a snippet or title change takes 1-2 days on average and up to several weeks or months, because the page must first be recrawled and reprocessed; its title link guide says a few days to a few weeks. On Day 2 Gary Illyes repeated that max-image-preview:large can make content do surprisingly well in Discover, and a community speaker said search engines ignore HTML tags written inside a meta description (said at the event).
Day 2Day 3
Across days 32
- Docs D2-C022 Day 2 · Welcome to indexing day!
Google's noindex documentation says the noindex rule works only if the page is not blocked by robots.txt: a crawler that cannot fetch the page never sees the rule, and the page can still appear in search results, for example if other pages link to it.
extendsD1-C106 Day 1 · How Google thinks about crawl budgetThe noindex rule consumes crawl budget, because Google must fetch the page to see it.
- D2-C025 Day 2 · How is HTML interpreted
In Google's example fetch record, the robots policies that apply to a fetch, shown as the value opt-out-google-extended, travel with the fetched page into processing.
extendsD1-C064 Day 1 · How crawling worksThe crawler has multiple tasks: fetch from the internet, ensure it doesn't break the internet, and enforce robots.txt policies. Fetched data is sent for indexing.
- D2-C025 Day 2 · How is HTML interpreted
In Google's example fetch record, the robots policies that apply to a fetch, shown as the value opt-out-google-extended, travel with the fetched page into processing.
extendsDocs D1-C086 Day 1 · How Google interprets robots.txtGoogle-Extended is a control token, not a crawler with its own user agent string. It decides whether crawled content may be used to train future Gemini models and to ground Gemini apps and Vertex AI.
- D2-C025 Day 2 · How is HTML interpreted
In Google's example fetch record, the robots policies that apply to a fetch, shown as the value opt-out-google-extended, travel with the fetched page into processing.
extendsStage D1-C522 Day 1 · How Google interprets robots.txtGoogle said a site can keep a directory or the whole site out of Gemini model training by disallowing it for the Google-Extended token in robots.txt, and that Google respects that policy; the speaker believed Google was the first to offer such an opt-out from model training.
- Stage D2-C058 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
John Mueller said robots.txt does not control indexing, so robots meta tags are what site owners have to use to control it.
extendsAnalysis D1-C110 Day 1 · How Google thinks about crawl budgetA URL blocked in robots.txt can still be indexed without its content if other pages link to it, and Google cannot see a noindex on a page it is not allowed to fetch.
- Analysis D2-C067 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
nofollow is a link-graph hint for search engines, not an access control: to keep AI crawlers away from content, use robots.txt rules for the specific crawlers; at Google, Google-Extended covers Gemini training and grounding, and the Search generative AI control covers AI Overviews and AI Mode.
extendsDocs D1-C127 Day 1 · How Google thinks about crawl budgetGoogle treats nofollow as a hint for crawling, not a block: nofollow links will generally not be followed, but the linked pages may still be crawled if Google finds them through sitemaps or other links. To stop Google fetching URLs on your own site, use a robots.txt disallow rule.
- Analysis D2-C067 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
nofollow is a link-graph hint for search engines, not an access control: to keep AI crawlers away from content, use robots.txt rules for the specific crawlers; at Google, Google-Extended covers Gemini training and grounding, and the Search generative AI control covers AI Overviews and AI Mode.
extends - Docs D2-C069 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
Google's robots meta tag specification says robots meta tags and X-Robots-Tag headers are found only when a URL is crawled, so the rules on a URL disallowed in robots.txt are never seen and are ignored.
extendsD1-C106 Day 1 · How Google thinks about crawl budgetThe noindex rule consumes crawl budget, because Google must fetch the page to see it.
- D2-C072 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
The nosnippet rule also prevents a page's content from being used as a direct input for AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search.
extendsAnalysis D1-C034 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchLead-generation, local-service and e-commerce sites should normally stay included, because AI answers cite and link sources. Sites selling paywalled or licensed content should test exclusion on a child property first. Use nosnippet only if you also want out of regular snippets.
- Stage D2-C073 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
John Mueller said Google uses the snippet as a way of building AI Overviews and AI Mode answers, so if a page forbids a snippet, Google cannot use that snippet for them.
extendsD1-C038 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
- Docs D2-C074 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
Google's AI features guide says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, with no additional technical requirements.
extendsD1-C038 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?AI Mode and AI Overviews use the same crawling and the same index as Search. At serving they add grounding on the Search index and query fan-out.
- D2-C103 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
Setting the Search generative AI control in Search Console to exclude keeps a site's links and content out of Search generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, so the site gets no traffic or impressions from them; include is the default.
extendsD1-C029 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchSearch Console has a property setting called Search generative AI that gives direct control over AI Overviews and AI Mode without affecting web rankings. Its states are inherit from parent, include and exclude.
- Stage D2-C118 Day 2 · Lightning session D: Rendering and JavaScript
To train Gemini models, Google renders every page just as it does for Search, so a page that renders correctly for Search also works for Gemini training, provided the site allows its content to be used for training.
extendsD1-C039 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Gemini is not part of Search, but it uses crawlers for data, shares some technologies such as tokenization and deduping, and grounds on the Search index.
- Docs D2-C121 Day 2 · Lightning session D: Rendering and JavaScript
Google's crawler documentation defines grounding in Gemini Apps and in Grounding with Google Search on Vertex AI as providing content from the Google Search index to the model at prompt time, and sites manage whether their content is used for it with the Google-Extended robots.txt token.
extendsDocs D1-C086 Day 1 · How Google interprets robots.txtGoogle-Extended is a control token, not a crawler with its own user agent string. It decides whether crawled content may be used to train future Gemini models and to ground Gemini apps and Vertex AI.
- Analysis D2-C607 Day 2 · Focusing on Internationalisation and Localisation
Check AI Overviews and AI Mode with native-language queries in each target market, not with translated English keywords, and compare with the country breakdown of Search Console's generative AI performance report; topics where competitors are cited and you are not point to missing or weak local content.
extendsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- Stage D2-C697 Day 2 · Deciding what goes in the index?
Index selection drops a document carrying a noindex rule if it was not already dropped earlier in processing (noindex is a likely but not certain reading of the transcript, supported by the later mention of noindex among the Page indexing report reasons).
extendsD1-C106 Day 1 · How Google thinks about crawl budgetThe noindex rule consumes crawl budget, because Google must fetch the page to see it.
- Stage D3-C063 Day 3 · Making sense of users' queries
Google said fan-out queries are not added to Search Console, because Google considers them part of its infrastructure.
extendsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- D3-C224 Day 3 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on Discover
Google's Discover slide recommended large images at least 1,200 px wide, with more than 300,000 total pixels and a 16x9 aspect ratio, enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting.
extendsStage D2-C089 Day 2 · Controlling indexingmax-image-preview:large matters mainly in Discover, where it allows a large image that draws people's attention, so the rule can make a page more visible than leaving it out, John Mueller said.
- Stage D3-C316 Day 3 · How Search results are born
Google generates the parts of a text result, such as title link and snippet, from its understanding of the underlying web page, even when the site owner provides nothing extra.
extendsStage D2-C724 Day 2 · How does the index look like?The snippet shown for a web result is reconstructed from the tokens stored in Google's index: Google knows the position of each token in the document and rebuilds the snippet from those positions.
- Stage D3-C317 Day 3 · How Search results are born
Google can add elements to a text result, such as a 'highly cited' badge or a preferred-source badge.
extendsD1-C027 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchSites that users mark as a preferred source are more visible in Top Stories and are labelled in AI Mode and AI Overviews.
- Docs D3-C468 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Google's social and video performance guide says that if you already claimed your Search profile, all of its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties in Search Console.
extendsD1-C025 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchPublishers and creators can claim a dedicated Search profile with a name, profile photo, cover image, bio, connected social and website accounts, pinned posts and links, and users can follow it.
- Docs D3-C468 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Google's social and video performance guide says that if you already claimed your Search profile, all of its verified accounts are added automatically as platform properties in Search Console.
extendsStage D2-C960 Day 2 · Lightning session F: MediaA community speaker said publishers can also verify their social accounts in Search Console, which makes it easier to track the performance of content repurposed for social platforms.
- Stage D3-C495 Day 3 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your users
Nik Vujic said he hopes Search Console's generative AI report will get query data.
extendsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- Docs D3-C535 Day 3 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your users
Beyond Search Console, Google's AI features guide suggests tracking conversions and time spent on the site in tools such as Google Analytics to understand the value of traffic from AI features.
extendsDocs D1-C062 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's guide for generative AI features recommends the Generative AI performance report in Search Console for measuring how content performs in generative AI features on Google Search and Discover.
- Analysis D3-C542 Day 3 · Lightning session L: Understanding SERPs and your users
Google's own line on Day 1 was to measure success by metrics that matter to the business, and its Generative AI performance report shows impressions but no clicks; together with the community talk this argues for a report that puts organic next to direct, branded paid search, conversions and revenue.
extendsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- D2-C103 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
Setting the Search generative AI control in Search Console to exclude keeps a site's links and content out of Search generative AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, so the site gets no traffic or impressions from them; include is the default.
repeatsDocs D1-C030 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchThe Search generative AI control covers AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. Excluding removes both links to the site and use of its content to ground answers.
- Stage D2-C850 Day 2 · Controlling indexing
John Mueller said robots meta rules only work if robots.txt allows Google to fetch the page.
repeatsAnalysis D1-C110 Day 1 · How Google thinks about crawl budgetA URL blocked in robots.txt can still be indexed without its content if other pages link to it, and Google cannot see a noindex on a page it is not allowed to fetch.
- D3-C224 Day 3 · Uncovering Trustworthy Experiences on Discover
Google's Discover slide recommended large images at least 1,200 px wide, with more than 300,000 total pixels and a 16x9 aspect ratio, enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting.
repeatsStage D2-C936 Day 2 · Using images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videosSetting the max-image-preview robots meta tag to large can make content perform surprisingly well in Discover, Gary Illyes said.
- Stage D3-C436 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Search Console has a tool with which every property owner can tell Google whether the site's content may be used in AI search results, because Google wants content owners to control their content.
repeatsD1-C029 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchSearch Console has a property setting called Search generative AI that gives direct control over AI Overviews and AI Mode without affecting web rankings. Its states are inherit from parent, include and exclude.
- Stage D3-C437 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Search Console added reporting of the impressions a site's content gets in the AI surfaces of Google Search, found in the left navigation nested under Search results.
repeatsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- Stage D3-C439 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions broken down by pages, countries and devices.
repeatsDocs D1-C124 Day 1 · How Search works and where's AI?Google's launch post for the Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026; rolled out to all sites worldwide by 31 August 2026) lists impressions, pages, countries, devices (Search only) and dates, and no click or query metrics.
- Stage D3-C440 Day 3 · Inside Search Console: What’s New & How to Use It
Google called AI reporting in Search Console an evolving space and expects the generative AI report to get richer, with more information in the future.
repeatsStage D1-C196 Day 1 · What's new in the world of SearchGoogle said Search Console's generative AI reporting launched alongside the generative AI control, starting with impressions only, and may expand later.