GEO Tip of the Week: Check Your AI Search Inclusion Settings in Google Search Console
Google just gave site owners a direct on/off switch for whether their content can be used to ground AI Overviews and AI Mode answers — and most brands don't know it exists yet. If you haven't checked this setting, there's a real chance you're invisible to Google's AI features for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of your content.
What the new AI inclusion control is and why it matters
Google is rolling out a new setting inside Search Console, expanding beyond its initial UK rollout, that lets you explicitly choose whether your site can be used to ground Google's generative AI answers. This is separate from your regular organic rankings — it does not touch the traditional "ten blue links" results. It only controls whether Google can pull from your content and cite your site inside AI Overviews and AI Mode.
There are three options:
- Include: Google can use your content to help write AI answers and can link back to your site as a source.
- Exclude: Google cannot use your content to ground AI answers or cite your site in them.
- Inherit from parent: for accounts with parent/child properties, the child follows whatever the parent property is set to, unless manually overridden.
For almost every brand, ‘exclude’ is the wrong setting. Citation inside AI Overviews correlates with a real boost in click share, and being cited is one of the clearest ways to control your own narrative in a space where an AI model might otherwise describe your brand secondhand, or not at all. But settings like this have a way of getting misconfigured by default, inherited incorrectly from a parent property, or simply never checked — and an accidental Exclude is invisible until you go looking for it.
Here's what to do
- Log into Search Console and go to Settings. It is under AI Controls. Availability is expanding market by market, so if you don't see it yet, check back in the coming weeks — it's rolling out broadly.
- Confirm every property is set to Include. Check each property individually, especially if you manage multiple domains, subdomains, or international variants.
- Audit parent/child relationships. If any property is set to "Inherit from parent," confirm the parent property is actually set to Include, not Exclude by default.
- Recheck after any Search Console restructuring. Adding new properties, verifying new domains, or reorganizing your account are all moments where this setting can silently reset — make it part of your setup checklist going forward.
- Document the setting for your team. This is exactly the kind of toggle that gets flipped accidentally by someone troubleshooting an unrelated issue. A one-line note in your GEO or SEO playbook prevents that.
What happens when you get this right
This is one of the lowest-effort, highest-stakes checks in GEO right now. It takes minutes to verify and costs nothing to fix, but getting it wrong means Google's AI features simply cannot cite you — no matter how strong your content, trust signals, or technical foundation are. Every other GEO tip in this series assumes Google is even allowed to consider your content in the first place. This is the setting that determines whether that's true.
Check it out today. It's a two-minute task that could be the difference between showing up in AI Overviews and disappearing from them entirely.
