Allowing publishers to opt out of AI Overviews without affecting search is a “huge engineering project”, a Google boss told publishers last week. [Wednesday 11th]
Sulina Connal, Google’s managing director leading news and books partnerships in Europe, also set out how the tech giant is responding to publisher feedback and said it is planning to do “more focused deals” following its first AI-related news provider payments announced in December.
The Financial Times is the latest publisher to join Google’s latest group of AI deals which are believed to involve cash payments to publishers and include “extended display rights and content delivery methods like APIs” announced in December. The Guardian and The Washington Post were among those already signed up.
Google is currently “exploring updates” to allow news publishers to opt out of their content being used in AI Overviews without it affecting how they appear in search.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority said last month it planned to force Google to do so and the tech giant responded the same day to say it was already looking at it. The CMA also said Google should give publishers “clear and detailed metrics” on how users engage with their content when it appears in AI Overviews, including clickthroughs.
Connal told editorial and product leaders at the FT Strategies News in the Digital Age conference in London on Wednesday 11 February: “We’ve heard the need for more controls and we’ve heard that pretty consistently, controls on how news content appears on search, and we have a set of proposals from the authority in the UK.
“What I can tell you at this stage is that we’re exploring more granular controls. Because AI is integral to how search works, implementing the new controls is a complex engineering, huge engineering project, and we have been highly intentional in our approach. The idea is to focus on simple, scalable tools that you can use to manage your content.
“We also understand that to allow you to make informed decisions about search AI features you need more information, and measuring users’ engagement is key to that. We hear you, and we hear you loud and clear.”
Google rolls out Top Stories preferred sources and subscriptions in Gemini
Connal also said Google is participating in a “two-way exchange” with publishers and that many new features “came directly from our conversations with you”.
“Publishers raised the question of user trust and shared this anxiety of being found in an abundance of content and. our product teams have responded with preferred sources in search that lets a user choose sources of information that they trust.”
Google launched the ‘preferred sources’ feature in the US last summer, allowing users to see their selected newsbrands more often in the Top Stories box at the top of search results if they have published “fresh and relevant” content. The feature rolled out to all English-language users globally in December.
Newsbrands are now making the most of it by asking their users directly via their websites, newsletters and social media to add them as a preferred souce. The Guardian told users in its tutorial: “By selecting the Guardian as a preferred source you’ll have more control over what shows up in your search results without having to rely on the algorithm alone.”
Connal also cited a new feature in which the Gemini app will prioritise and highlight links to publishers with which a user has a subscription. This is expected to later roll out to AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Connal continued: “You expressed concerns about attribution. Will you be seen in the future world? Our product teams have responded by putting more links on AIO. These are active discussions. They are creating change in our product.
“And this is our model for the future. But to make it work, we need your help to define what signature journalism looks like in an AI world… we believe you believe in an AI world, real journalism is the ultimate competitive advantage, and we want to work with you to send that authority that you bring to a lasting audience relationship. And clickbait has never been a useful way for any of us to serve our users.”
Connal also said Google is “testing different deals and different approaches to deals, some of which we announced at the end of last year, and we intend to continue these efforts.
“So there’s definitely more to come from us on a slightly more scaled approach, as well as more focused deals that help advance the user experience.”
Financial Times licenses content into Google AI pilot projects
Financial Times chief executive Jon Slade announced the title’s new deal with Google at the event on Wednesday.
Slade said: “I really commend Google for showing up to the debate and being prepared to listen and act, and I’m encouraged by emerging licensing deals, by discussions of marketplaces grounded in high quality journalism and by growing recognition that original reporting and human judgement have value in an AI era.
“And in that vein, I am very pleased to announce that Google and the FT have now signed a deal licensing FT journalism into a series of AI pilot projects.
“We don’t yet know precisely where this will take us. It is a pilot, after all, but I’m excited about what we can create together, and I’m grateful that Google recognises not only the importance of high quality journalism empowering accuracy and utility in its products, but also the things that matter to us in a licensing arrangement…
“It was, I think it’s fair to say, a long road, but these pioneering moves to create systems that reward original, authentic human judgement and labour are an opportunity to reset the dynamics of the era that we are emerging from into the AI era that we are moving towards, to move from a system that rewards facsimiles and clickbait journalism to ensuring that value flows to the news organisations that check and recheck stories before publication, and who invest in the stories and investigations that change our world for the better.
“And I believe that fair remuneration works for all parties. A sustainable ecosystem for news with a fair value exchange and reward to those that produce the journalism used in AI products ensures a reliable, robust and accurate product for consumers.”
Google search traffic ‘moving from large publishers to emerging news sources’
Chartbeat data published by Press Gazette in January showed global traffic to publishers from Google Search dropped by a third in 2025 – although not all brands are affected equally.
Arun Venkataraman, who leads Google’s global industry research partnerships with the news ecosystem, told a separate event in London hosted by Beehiiv on Thursday that “overall traffic referrals from search have actually not decreased based off of our internal data.
“But what is happening is the sources that that traffic referral is going to are more disparate.”
He said charts showing decline like the Chartbeat ones have tracked a limited number of publishers or looked at a certain geography or market.
“But what actually might be happening is it’s because some of that traffic is now going to emerging news sources that might be more relevant in certain contexts.”
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