Online publishers and news organisations will now be able to prevent Google from using their content to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models, or from appearing in the company’s AI search summaries, the UK’s competition watchdog has announced.
In October 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) classified Google search and search advertising with strategic market status (SMS), a designation that enables it to consider proportionate, targeted interventions to ensure that general search services are open to effective competition.
Following a consultation on potential digital market fairness measures launched in January 2026, the CMA has now introduced conduct requirements to give publishers more control and stronger bargaining power over the use of their content.
This includes requiring Google to provide “effective tools” that allow publishers to prevent their content being used in the company’s AI features, and allowing publishers to opt out of allowing their content to be used for the “fine-tuning” of AI models.
Google must now ensure that publisher content is properly attributed, with clear links displayed in AI‑generated search results. The measures follow complaints from media and civil society organisations that publishers have experienced a drop in click-through traffic to their sites since Google started placing AI-generated summaries at the top of search results. Until now, websites were unable to opt out of their content being scraped for AI overviews without also withdrawing from appearing in traditional Google search results.
“Today, we have introduced a world‑first requirement on Google’s search services in the UK, enabling fair treatment, greater transparency and meaningful choice for businesses and consumers,” said CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell.
“With features like AI Overviews rapidly reshaping online search, it is crucial that content publishers, including news organisations, have appropriate bargaining power over how their content is used. At the same time, these measures will help tens of millions of UK search users better understand and trust the information presented to them.”
The watchdog added while these new requirements are expected to “put publishers, like news organisations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google”, it will take an “active role” in overseeing how Google implements the measures.
“[Google] will have nine months to implement all changes but the CMA expects important parts of the controls to become available to publishers well before that deadline,” said the CMA in a blogpost announcing the measures.
“Google will also be required to submit and publish compliance reports, supported by key data and metrics, explaining changes it has made and how it has complied. These are due every six months for the first year, after which the CMA will review the frequency of reporting.”
Google has said it would start testing a new control from Wednesday on a subset of UK-based media sites, allowing owners to manage how their links and content appear in its AI search features, with the aim of rolling the controls out globally.
A study by search engine optimisation platform Authoritas from July 2025 previously found that a site ranked first in a search result could lose around 79% of its traffic if it was listed below an AI overview.
However, a Google spokesperson at the time said in a statement that the study was “inaccurate and based on flawed assumptions and analysis”, using outdated estimations and a set of searches that did not represent all the queries that would generate traffic for news websites.
A further study run by the Pew Research Center also showed a big hit to referral traffic from Google AI Overviews, with a month-long survey of almost 69,000 Google searches revealing that users only clicked a link under an AI summary once every 100 times.
A Google spokesperson said that study also used “flawed methodology and skewed queryset that is not representative of search traffic”.
In a blogpost published on 3 June 2026, Google said it was engaging with regulators such as the CMA “to ensure website owners have the right tools as user preferences evolve”.
Blog author Mrinalini Loew, the general manager at Google Search Ecosystem, added the company will begin testing a new tool allowing website owners to manage how their links and content appear in its AI search features, such as AI overviews and AI mode.
“We are beginning to roll these features out to a subset of website owners in the UK, allowing for thorough testing before rolling them out to website owners globally,” she said, adding that the controls will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside the generative AI search features.
Responding to the CMA announcement, tech-focused civil society group Foxglove said although it welcomes the regulator new measures, it is concerned that implementation needs to be faster to end ongoing damage to the news industry. It added further action may be needed to ensure effective scrutiny of Google’s compliance.
“We’re delighted that the CMA is finally standing up to Google’s theft of journalists’ work,” said Foxglove’s co-executive director Rosa Curling, who added the group has been urging them to do this for the past year.
“Google’s AI Overviews are a threat not only to an independent news industry, but to an informed democracy. Google’s AI Overviews don’t only take others’ work without payment. They also make it harder for journalists to directly reach their audience – threatening their survival. Without independent journalism, it becomes far harder to hold powerful governments and corporations to account.
“Until now, the only way to stop Google stealing your work was to opt out from being visible at all in Google search. With Google controlling 90% of search, this was akin to removing yourself from the internet.”
She added that there are concerns that Google may still be able to “wriggle out” of the obligations imposed by the CMA: “The measures would allow it to mark its own homework, rather than being subject to rigorous, independent audit. The timeframe is too generous – there is no reason to give Google nine months to put a stop to the terrible harm it is causing – which it has, itself, been aware of for years.
“The CMA must watch Google like a hawk – both to ensure compliance with these measures, and to act urgently on any harm resulting from its new proposals around new AI features and agents in search.”
