In June 2026 the CMA imposed the first conduct requirements on Google Search anywhere in the world. Publishers got a control over whether their content feeds AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus attribution rules, on 3 June. Fair ranking and data portability followed on 17 June, and the fair ranking rules cover AI Overviews as well as blue links. At the same time Google started rolling out new AI performance reports in Search Console, to UK sites first. For most small businesses the opt-out is the wrong button and the reports are the useful part. None of it promises anyone a position.
On 3 June 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority did something no regulator anywhere had done before. It imposed a legally binding conduct requirement on Google's search service. Two weeks later it imposed two more. If you run a small business in the UK, almost none of the coverage was written for you. It was written for publishers, and the publisher story is genuinely different from yours.
So here is the plain version. What the CMA actually required, what turned up in Search Console as a result, which of the new controls you should touch, and which one you should leave alone. I have linked the GOV.UK decisions throughout so you can read the wording yourself rather than take my summary of it.
What the CMA actually did, in order
The background is the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which gave the CMA a new regime for firms it designates as having Strategic Market Status. Google's general search and search advertising services were designated under that regime, and designation on its own changes nothing. What changes things is a conduct requirement, which is the CMA telling a designated firm to do a specific thing by a specific date.
Three landed in June 2026.
The publisher requirement, 3 June 2026. Publishers can opt out of having their content used to power AI features in Google Search, such as AI Overviews. Following consultation, the CMA extended that to cover the use of content for fine-tuning AI models. Google has to attribute publisher content properly, using clear links. Google is also barred from acting in ways that undercut the control, which in practice means it cannot quietly demote a site in ordinary search because that site exercised the opt-out. Google has nine months to build all of it, and has to file compliance reports every six months for the first year. Sarah Cardell, the CMA's chief executive, called it a "world-first requirement on Google's search services in the UK".
Fair ranking and data portability, 17 June 2026. Google has to rank organic results using objective and non-discriminatory criteria, be more transparent with businesses about how ranking works, give advance notice of significant changes, and run a proper process for businesses to raise concerns and get an answer. The CMA's own wording is that the fair ranking requirement applies to organic results and AI Overviews, but not to sponsored results. Google has six months to implement fair ranking and three months for data portability, which turns its voluntary data sharing process into a legal obligation.
Read those two paragraphs again and notice who they are aimed at. The first is aimed at people whose content is the raw material for an AI answer, which is publishers. The second is aimed at every business that depends on being ranked, which is you.
The bit that showed up in Search Console
In the same week, Google's Search Central blog announced Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console. The reports give you a dedicated view of impressions inside generative AI features on Search, meaning AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus generative AI features in Discover.
What they contain: impressions, the pages that appeared, countries, devices for Search, and dates down to hourly granularity. What they do not contain: clicks, click-through rate, or query data. Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable both reported that the rollout started with a subset of UK site owners before going wider, and both drew the obvious link to the CMA requirement. Google has not framed it that way in its own announcement, so treat the causation as trade press inference rather than as something Google has stated.
Either way, the practical effect is the same and it is worth saying clearly, because it is new: a UK business can now, for the first time, see how often its pages appear inside Google's AI answers, separately from ordinary search. Before this, AI Mode impressions were folded into the main performance report totals with no way to separate them out. That was the situation Google confirmed back in June 2025 and it was genuinely frustrating.
The report is impressions only. So it tells you whether you are being shown, not whether anyone came. That is half a loaf, and half a loaf is a lot more than none.
The opt-out toggle, and why it is almost certainly not for you
Alongside the reports, Google is adding a control that lets a site block its content from appearing in AI search features: AI Overviews, AI Mode, and AI features in Discover. This is the direct product of the CMA's publisher requirement, and it is the part most likely to be misread by a small business owner who saw a headline about Google taking traffic.
Here is what the control actually does, in Google's own framing. If you opt out, your site does not appear in and does not help ground responses in those generative features. You get no traffic from them and no impressions from them. And critically, the CMA required that using it must not be used against you as a ranking signal in ordinary search results outside those features.
So the trade is: give up whatever visibility you currently have inside AI answers, keep your ordinary search visibility, and gain a bargaining chip.
That trade makes sense if you are a national newspaper with a licensing team, because the bargaining chip is the entire point. It makes very little sense if you are a dental practice in Bromley or a firm of accountants in Sheffield. You have no licensing negotiation to conduct. Your content is not being substituted for by an AI summary in a way that costs you a subscription. What you have is a chance of being named in an answer when somebody asks which accountant to use, and the opt-out throws that away for nothing in return.
I have written before about the separate question of blocking AI crawlers at the server, and the reasoning here is the same shape. Blocking is a real option with real costs, and it is right for a small number of businesses with a specific reason. For most, it is a switch that only turns things off.
What fair ranking does and does not promise
The fair ranking requirement is the one with the widest reach and the most room for misunderstanding, so let me be careful about it.
It requires Google to use objective and non-discriminatory criteria, to be more transparent about how ranking works, to give advance notice of significant changes, and to have a route for businesses to raise concerns. Those are obligations about process. They are not obligations about outcomes.
Nothing in the requirement says your site will rank higher. Nothing in it entitles you to a position. If a provider tells you the CMA rules mean they can now get you ranked, that is not a reading of the decision, it is a sales line, and you can check it against the GOV.UK page in about two minutes.
What could genuinely change over the next year or two is the quality of the information you are working from. Advance notice of significant ranking changes, if it arrives with real detail, is a meaningful improvement on the current situation where the industry reverse-engineers updates from volatility charts. A proper complaints route is meaningful for businesses that get hit by something they cannot diagnose. That is worth having. It is also slow, and none of it is in your hands.
What this means depending on what you actually are
| If you are | The opt-out control | The AI performance reports | Fair ranking |
|---|---|---|---|
| A publisher with a licensing deal to strike | Genuinely useful, it is your negotiating position | Useful for valuing what you are giving up | Useful, plus attribution rules |
| A local service business | Leave it alone | The main thing worth watching | Background, not an action |
| An ecommerce site | Leave it alone unless you have a specific reason | Worth watching by page | Background |
| A professional practice | Leave it alone | Worth watching, especially by query topic later | Background |
What I would actually do in the next ninety days
None of this is dramatic, and that is the point. The regulation changed what you can see. It did not change the work.
- Check whether the AI performance report has reached your property. It is rolling out to a subset of sites, so it may not be there yet. If it is, take a screenshot of the first month you have, because you will want a baseline and the report is not retroactive.
- Do not touch the AI features opt-out. Unless you are a publisher with a licensing conversation to have, there is nothing in it for you and it costs you impressions.
- Check nothing else is already blocking you. A control you never set can still be switched off at the crawler level. Robots.txt rules, a Cloudflare bot setting, a plugin default. This is the single most common reason a business is missing from AI answers and it has nothing to do with the CMA.
- Record which pages appear. The report gives you pages and impressions. If three pages carry your AI impressions, those three pages are the ones worth getting right, and the rest of the site is a lower priority than you think.
- Separate the AI impression trend from your organic trend. They move differently. Treating them as one number is how people end up drawing the wrong conclusion about a perfectly healthy site.
- Diarise the deadlines. Fair ranking is due six months from 17 June 2026. The publisher controls and dashboards are due within nine months of 3 June 2026. Both will produce a second wave of announcements, and a second wave of people selling you something on the back of them.
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The honest limits
Three things worth saying plainly.
First, this is regulation of Google's behaviour, not a tool you operate. The CMA has told Google to be fairer and more transparent. It has not given you a lever. Anyone selling you a "CMA compliance package" for your search visibility is selling you a thing that does not exist.
Second, the timelines are long and they can move. Nine months for the publisher controls means some of this is still being built into 2027. The reports you can see today are a partial rollout to a subset of sites.
Third, and this matters most: an impressions report is not a promise. Seeing that your page appeared in an AI answer 400 times last month tells you that you were shown. It does not tell you that you were recommended, that anyone read it, or that anyone came. I cannot promise you a ranking, a citation or a customer, and neither can anybody else. What this regime does is make the picture slightly less dark than it was in May.
Questions people ask
These are the questions I get asked most about the CMA decisions, with short sourced answers. The fuller working is in the sections above.
Does the CMA decision mean Google has to rank my site higher?
No. The fair ranking conduct requirement, imposed on 17 June 2026, requires Google to rank organic results using objective and non-discriminatory criteria, to be more transparent about how ranking works, to give advance notice of significant changes, and to run a process for businesses to raise concerns. Those are obligations about how Google behaves, not about where any particular site appears. Nobody is entitled to a position, and nobody can promise you one.
Should I opt out of Google's AI features?
For most small businesses, no. Google's own framing is that sites which opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from generative AI features. The control exists because the CMA required it on 3 June 2026, and it was designed with publishers in mind, who can use it as bargaining power in licensing negotiations. A local business has no such negotiation and would be giving up visibility for nothing. The CMA did require that using the control cannot be held against you in ordinary search rankings, which is an important protection, but it does not make the trade a good one for a small firm.
Why did the UK get the Search Console AI reports first?
Google's own announcement describes a phased rollout to a subset of sites and does not give a regulatory reason. Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable both reported that the rollout started in the UK and linked it to the CMA's June 2026 conduct requirements, which oblige Google to give publishers transparency metrics within nine months. That link is trade press inference rather than a Google statement, so treat it as the likely explanation rather than a confirmed one.
What do the new Search Console AI reports actually show?
Impressions inside generative AI features on Search, meaning AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus generative AI features in Discover. You get impressions, the pages that appeared, countries, devices for Search, and dates with granularity down to hourly. You do not currently get clicks, click-through rate, or query data. So it answers the question "was I shown" and not the question "did anyone come".
Do the fair ranking rules cover AI Overviews?
Yes. The CMA's decision states that the fair ranking requirement applies to organic search results and AI Overviews, but not to sponsored search results. That is a notable scope choice, because it treats the AI answer as part of the ranked surface rather than as a separate product.
Is there anything I need to do to comply?
No. The conduct requirements bind Google, not you. There is nothing for a UK business to comply with, no filing, no registration and no certificate. If somebody offers to make your site CMA compliant for search, they are describing a service that has no basis in the decisions.
Will any of this bring my traffic back?
There is no evidence that it will, and I would not plan on it. The CMA's requirements are about fairness, transparency and publisher control. None of them reverses the shift in how people search or how Google answers. The measured response is to keep your site readable to search engines and AI systems, watch the new impressions data as it becomes available, and treat any promise of recovered traffic with suspicion.
Sources
Every fact above comes from the linked primary decision or announcement, or from named trade press where I have said so. None of it describes results for a Stagg Studios client. Regulatory timelines move, so check the GOV.UK case page for the current position before acting on a date.
- CMA via GOV.UK, CMA secures fairer deal for publishers and improves Google search services in UK (3 June 2026)
- CMA via GOV.UK, Further CMA action to secure a fairer deal for businesses and improve Google search services in UK (17 June 2026)
- CMA via GOV.UK, Google search fair ranking conduct requirement (2026)
- CMA via GOV.UK, Google's general search and search advertising services, case page (2026)
- Google Search Central, Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (June 2026)
- Search Engine Land, Google Search Console AI performance reports and controls to block your content in AI responses (2026)
- Search Engine Land, Google Search Console to show AI Mode performance but you won't be able to break it out (2025)
- Press Gazette, CMA says Google rankings must be fairer and more transparent (2026)
What I would do about it, and what it costs
Here is the part worth sitting with. For about two years, the honest answer to "how am I doing in AI search" was that nobody could tell you, including the people charging for the answer. The data did not exist. That is now changing, in the UK first, because a regulator forced it. The businesses that start recording the numbers this month will have a year of history by next summer. The ones that wait will start from zero, and the numbers are not backdated.
What I would put in place is unglamorous. A baseline of your AI impressions from the first month the report reaches you. A check that nothing on your side is blocking the crawlers that feed those answers. The handful of pages that actually carry your AI impressions marked up properly so the information on them can be read correctly. Then the same checks re-run every month, because the standards move and your site changes.
I cannot promise you a ranking, a citation or a customer, and I would not trust anyone who does. What I can do is make sure your site is readable, that you are not accidentally opted out of anything, and that somebody is actually reading the new reports rather than letting them fill up unwatched.
That is £100 a month. First month free, no contract, and you deal with me rather than an account manager. Start here, or send me a note and I will tell you what your site is currently missing.