UK CMA Proposes Publisher Opt-Out from Google AI Overviews

Summary

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published proposed conduct requirements for Google on January 28, 2026, including a proposal to require Google to allow publishers to opt out of their content being used in AI Overviews without affecting their standard search rankings. The CMA stated that publishers "currently do not have sufficient choice" over how their content is used in AI-generated responses and have "no realistic option but to allow their content to be crawled" due to Google's