Google plans one robots.txt setting for AI training. It is not live yet.

On October 30, 2026, Google announced that it plans to support a shared AI training control in robots.txt. John Mueller of Google posted the announcement on the Search Central blog.

What Google says

Site owners would set the shared control in robots.txt with a line Google calls a "policy token". The control would state broad preferences across participating AI providers.

The approach builds on work by the AIPREF working group at the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Google-Extended stays available for choices that apply to Google alone.

A site might opt out of training with the shared control and not mention Google-Extended. Google plans to treat that as a Google-Extended block.

Google writes: "We aim to support this new control along with other AI providers in 2027."

What the announcement leaves out

The announcement covers AI training only. It does not say whether the shared control affects Search indexing or AI Overviews.

It names no other AI provider as committed. Google says only that other providers can handle the control similarly.

Site owners cannot set the shared control until Google supports it.

Where this sits in the life of a Google change

In our experience, a Google change moves through the same steps, in this order:

• An idea, announced or published.
• A test.
• Months of debate across the industry.
• Questions answered on X, often by John Mueller.
• A change to how Google systems work.
• Penalties for sites that ignore the change.

This announcement is at the first step. Google has named the idea and a target year.

The penalty step may never come for this change. The shared control states a preference about AI training. The announcement mentions no penalty, and Google says Google-Extended is not a ranking signal in Search.

While a change moves through these steps, the old practice usually keeps working until Google changes it. Until the shared control is live, Google-Extended is the setting that counts.

What a site owner can do today

Google-Extended works now. Google describes it as a token that governs two uses of content Google crawls: training Gemini models and grounding Gemini answers.

Google also says Google-Extended "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search."

Google's announcement adds: "Websites that specifically allow Google-Extended are eligible to appear in responses and receive clicks via grounding in Gemini Apps."

Our AI Visibility Audit shows what ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity say about a business today.

Sources

• Google Search Central blog, John Mueller, October 30, 2026 (read November 4, 2026)
• Google Search Central, common crawlers (read November 4, 2026)