Cloudflare plans to block AI bots and introduce a pay-per-crawl system to compensate content creators. Google AI Mode and AI Overviews cannot be blocked without also hindering Google's search indexing. CEO Matthew Prince expresses confidence that Google will eventually allow the blocking of Answer Boxes and AI Overviews, without affecting classic search indexing. Despite calls for more control, Google's current response has been limited, and no clean solution exists to prevent content usage in AI Overviews while maintaining search rankings.
Gemini is blocked by default. We will get Google to provide ways to block Answer Box and AI Overview, without blocking classic search indexing, as well.- Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) July 3, 2025
We've all been asking Google to give us this level of control. In which Google says, no, or you can use nosnippet controls but that will also impact your Google Search results in some ways.
There isn't a clean way to block your content from being used in AI Overviews or AI Mode while being fully safe with ranking in the main Google search results.
I am not sure how Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, is so confident he will get Google to give him a way to do this.
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