UK media groups should be allowed to opt out of Google AI Overviews, CMA says

Wed, 28 Jan 2026

News organisations hope proposals will increase leverage to get paid if content is used in AI summaries

Web publishers and news organisations could be given the power to stop Google scraping their content for its AI Overviews, under measures announced by the UK competition watchdog to loosen its grip on online search.

Media organisations have experienced a drop in click-through traffic to their websites – and therefore their revenue – since Google started posting AI summaries at the top of search results, which many people read without clicking through to the original journalism.