A new twist has cropped up in the long-standing Google AI Overviews opt-out controversy, and this time, it’s all about one particular issue that publishers actually care about: their presence in Top Stories. The search engine has, according to tracking platform NewzDash’s data, recently started featuring the Top Stories carousel within the AI Overviews and not below in the SERPs as a separate block. That shift raises a real question for publishers who are now weighing whether opting out of AI Overviews could also mean losing their Top Stories placement.
What NewzDash Discovered
To evaluate how common the occurrences described above are, NewzDash analyzed the frequency with which the Top Stories carousel appeared in aggregated news searches, with a specific focus on instances where the carousel was embedded within an AI Overview rather than appearing as a standalone entity. According to the findings, the carousel appeared in search results for 15.5 percent of the US searches on average and 17.46 percent for the UK searches. The most frequent occurrences were seen in the searches relating to entertainment.
While the findings may be seen as significant, it is necessary to keep in mind several limitations. NewzDash did not report the sample sizes, the temporal scopes of their research, or even the volumes of the searches analyzed. So the percentages are best read as a snapshot rather than a definitive measurement. One notable detail: the two placements never appeared together. A given search showed Top Stories either as its own block or nested inside the AI Overview, never both. John Shehata, founder and CEO of NewzDash, states that the nested placement offers a better position on the page, but there are no figures as of now that confirm whether one version generates more clicks than the other.
Google’s AI Opt-Out Setting Explained
The setting to opt out from AI Overviews is only available through the Search Console, and it only concerns the AI Overviews block. Google announced the launch of the setting on June 17, but only a part of the website owners in the UK were allowed to enable it at the start of the availability. Google’s help center lists it as a feature which is rolling out to a part of the website owners.
Shehata believes that the Top Stories carousel embedded inside the AI Overviews is another element which will receive less visibility once the site owner opts out from the AI Overviews. His argument directly concerns the data from the first section of the article, specifically the fact that the Top Stories are actually represented by the links from the publishers which may appear within the AI Overviews’ content. If those links are removed due to the site owner’s opt-out, then the Top Stories carousel will obviously lose its publishers’ content. According to Shehata, there is a high probability of this scenario unfolding, and NewzDash is planning on testing this situation to confirm it.
Where Google’s Documentation Falls Short
On its official help page, Google only confirms that the Top Stories carousel, as well as the content linked to the Top Stories publishers, will not appear within the AI Overviews if the website owner opts out from this setting. At the time of writing, there is no official confirmation or refutation from Google concerning the possibility for Top Stories block to disappear alongside AI Overviews’ removal.
The issue with Google’s documentation concerns the fact that it only comments on the visibility of Top Stories as a whole. Google only mentions that it complies with the Top Stories publishers’ preferences while removing all the elements that depend on those publishers. There is no mention of what happens to the Top Stories carousel within the AI Overviews. Therefore, it is completely up to the publishers to decide whether to risk losing this particular feature.
A Common Point Of Confusion: Google-Extended
It is possible that the confusion around Google’s Top Stories may stem from the fact that the Google-Extended setting does not affect the visibility in Google’s AI Overviews or the Top Stories. This setting solely concerns Google’s ability to use the websites’ content to train the upcoming Gemini models and the Grounding with Google Search on Vertex AI feature, so blocking it only impacts those aspects.
The official documentation from Google confirms the absence of any correlation between the visibility within Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode, or Top Stories and the Google-Extended setting. Blocking it will not impact the websites’ visibility in any of the three elements. Therefore, a publisher which opts out of the Google-Extended feature in hopes of denying Gemini models access to its content will fail to do so, since this setting only concerns the Vertex AI.
Why This Shift Matters For Publishers
Prior to this update, the debate around the possibility of opting out of AI features was largely concerned with content. Should Google be allowed to summarize the work of a newsroom in such a way that satisfies a reader, thus making the article click irrelevant? This dilemma, among other factors, is already proving challenging for publishers seeking to balance traffic and integrity, but the figures published by NewzDash only exacerbate the problem: the Top Stories carousel is becoming an increasingly prominent part of the space that can be opted out of, which means that, in addition to potentially losing traffic to articles presented in Google in the form of summaries, many newsrooms will have to give up the placement in Top Stories, which is the guaranteed traffic source.
What Comes Next
However, Google has indicated that it intends to unveil additional features under the controversial opt-out setting as it rolls out new functionality in Search. As such, the list of features identified in the three examples provided is unlikely to be exhaustive, and the setting’s scope is likely to grow over time.
For the time being, this debate only concerns those news publishers who currently have access to the toggle. However, as more digital publishers gain access to the tool and Google tests the expansion of Top Stories carousel, the issue will become relevant to a growing audience. And until Google issues an official clarification, newsrooms are left to speculate on the practical implications of the policy change, relying on assumptions rather than documented evidence.
FAQs
Q1. What did NewzDash find about Top Stories and AI Overviews?
NewzDash found that Google occasionally places Top Stories carousel within the AI Overviews, not separated. Such cases happened in 15.5 percent of the US queries and 17.46 percent of UK searches where Top Stories appeared at all.
Q2. Can these two placements be combined?
No. All the queries found by NewzDash had either version 1 or version 2, not both.
Q3. What is AI opt-out of Google?
AI opt-out is a new feature in Google Search Console designed to help the site owners to opt out of their content’s appearance in the results of AI overviews. According to Google, the option became available for testing on June 17 th.
Q4. Can AI Overviews opt-out eliminate Top Stories section?
Possibly, according to John Shehata, the founder of NewzDash. Since Top Stories carousel occasionally appeared inside the AI Overviews, blocking the content from both might be possible, although it is still unconfirmed.
Q5. Did Google comment on the Top Stories fate after the Opt-out release?
No. Google’s help documentation addresses the opt-out rule at the level of the whole AI Overviews feature but does not specifically say what happens to a Top Stories carousel nested inside it.
Q6. Are Google-Extended and the AI opt-out setting mean the same?
No, they do not. There is a lot of misunderstanding between the two. Google-Extended is meant to train next-generation Gemini models and support Gemini Apps and Vertex AI grounding. This tool has no impact on the websites’ presence in the Search results, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.
Q7. In which category was Top Stories carousel nested in AI Overviews the most?
According to NewzDash’s findings, these were the Entertainment searches that saw the highest percentage of Top Stories sections in both countries.
Q8. Is there any data regarding the click-through rates of the Top Stories placed in two different ways?
There is no public data concerning this matter. Shehata describes the nested placement as sitting in a better spot on the page.
Q9. Will Google provide more options to AI opt-out as they continue to improve Search?
Since Google announced their continuous work on the Search feature, it may well be that the AI opt-out will receive more functions to eliminate the site’s presence in the search results.
