Google has added a Search Console toggle to opt out of AI Mode and AI Overviews. With zero-click searches near 60% and publisher traffic down sharply, the opt-out is a trap dressed as a choice.
Opting out of AI answers does not protect your traffic. It just makes you invisible in the place the traffic now goes.
Google has finally given publishers a way out of its AI answers. In June 2026 it added a toggle in Search Console that lets a site opt out of appearing in AI Mode and AI Overviews, separately from normal Search.
Sounds like a win for sites watching AI eat their traffic. It is not. It is a trap dressed as a choice.
Here is the catch. The opt-out controls whether your content feeds AI answers, but staying out does not bring the clicks back. The clicks already left. Google search traffic to publishers fell 33% globally in the year to November 2025. Zero-click searches, where the user gets an answer and never visits a site, now sit near 60% of all queries. For news searches that figure ran higher again.
The businesses most tempted to opt out are the ones being cited in AI Overviews without the click. That feels like theft. But pull yourself out and you do not punish Google, you remove yourself from the surface where buyers now form their shortlist. The answer engine keeps running. You are just not in it.
Why it matters
For Australian businesses this forces a real decision about what your content is for. If the goal was raw traffic, that model is breaking and no toggle fixes it. If the goal is to be the source the AI cites and the brand the reader remembers, you want to be in the answer, not hidden from it. The metric that matters is shifting from clicks to citations and brand recall. Opting out optimises for a number that is already falling.
The share of Google searches that now end without a click to any website. Source: The Next Web
What to do about it
The open web you optimised for is changing shape. Hiding from it is not a strategy. Being the answer is.