Online publishers in the UK will be able to choose not to appear in Google’s Artificial Intelligence Overviews, following a requirement announced by the Competition and Markets Authority. The regulator said the change would put publishers, including news organisations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google. Google said it is testing new features that allow website owners to remove their sites from Artificial Intelligence search, with the UK trial coming before a global rollout.
Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from Google’s generative Artificial Intelligence results. Google said withdrawing from Artificial Intelligence search features would not affect how those sites are ranked in the main search results. The CMA also said Google must properly attribute publishers’ content when it appears in Artificial Intelligence search results, including clear links to their sites, so users can better trust what they are reading.
CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell described the measure as a “world-first requirement” and said it would deliver “fair treatment, greater transparency and meaningful choice for businesses and consumers”. Theo Bamber, chief executive of the News Media Association, which represents UK news publishers including the Financial Times and Guardian Media Group, called it a “significant step” toward a fair digital economy, while saying progress depends on strong and consistent political support.
Google controls more than 90% of the online search market in the UK according to the CMA, and for almost 30 years websites and publishers have relied heavily on its search results to drive users to their businesses. Many publishers say traffic has fallen since Google moved links to other sites lower on the results page and displayed Artificial Intelligence overviews at the top instead. Some users have also moved from traditional search engines to Artificial Intelligence chatbots that generate answers from information scraped from existing websites.
Google has nine months to bring all the changes in, but the CMA says it wants to see “important parts” of the requirements implemented earlier. The regulator has additional powers over Google and other large technology companies because they are designated as having an influential position in the digital market, and it said it will continue monitoring developments in Google search, including further Artificial Intelligence integration.
