News publishers in Britain will have the option to block their content from appearing in Google's artificial intelligence search results, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced. The feature is being trialled in the UK before rolling it out to "website owners globally".

The competition regulator said the changes would "put publishers, like news organisations, in a stronger position to negotiate content deals with Google". Google will also need to ensure that publisher content is "properly attributed, using clear links", in AI‑generated search results.

The tech giant has its own AI platform, Gemini, and has rolled out AI features in its traditional search engine. This has made regulators concerned about how Google powers its AI tools.

News publishers around the world have been complaining about a significant drop in click-through traffic to their websites since Google introduced the AI Overviews feature at the top of search results, which does not encourage users to access the full articles on publishers' own websites.

So far, websites have been unable to opt out of their content being scraped for AI Overviews without also withdrawing from traditional Google search.

Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA, said: "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."

Google will have a new toggle in the Search Console that allows publishers to manage how their content is used in AI search tools, including AI Overviews, AI Mode, or AI Overviews in Discover. Publishers that opt out entirely will not receive traffic or impressions from generative AI features. At the same time, the control will not be used as a ranking signal for search results outside of AI search features. New Search Console insights are also being deployed for website owners, containing metrics and information about which webpages are appearing in AI responses and which countries they are appearing in.

News Media Association CEO Theo Bamber said in a statement: "Their success now relies on efficient implementation, robust enforcement and the ability to adapt and strengthen the rules if they are not working properly, in a fast-moving technological environment."

Mrinalini Loew, general manager of Google's Search Ecosystem, said in a blog post that the company is listening to publishers and engaging with the CMA.

"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," Loew said in a statement.

Google controls over 90 per cent of UK web search, the CMA has found, which gives it significant market power. For nearly three decades, websites and publishers have relied on its search results to drive users to their businesses. The company has nine months to bring all the changes in, but the CMA "expects important parts of the controls to become available to publishers well before that deadline".