A judge threw out the AI Overviews traffic lawsuits. Your controls are the only lever left.

On 1 October 2026 a judge settled one question every business with a website has been quietly hoping someone else would win.

Judge Amit Mehta dismissed the antitrust suit Penske Media brought against Google over AI Overviews, and a similar one from Chegg, according to Press Gazette's Charlotte Tobitt.

The line doing the work, as Press Gazette quotes it: "An expectation is not an agreement."

I have spent most of this year telling NovaTechRay readers that AI answers change where clicks go.

This ruling says nobody has to give those clicks back.

1. What the publishers argued

Penske's case, per PPC Land's write-up of 2 October, rested on reciprocal dealing, with tying and monopoly maintenance alongside it.

The idea was simple. Publishers let Google crawl for free. In return they expected traffic. AI Overviews kept the crawling and cut the traffic.

The judge found no deal underneath that expectation.

Press Gazette reports he found the publishers failed to show any agreement in which Google promised to send a specific amount of traffic, or any traffic at all.

2. What I could not check

Here is the complication.

I could not read the order. Everything above comes from two reports, and on one point they disagree.

Press Gazette describes the dismissal as without prejudice. PPC Land says it was without leave to amend.

Those are different outcomes. One leaves room to come back with a new complaint. The other closes that route in this court.

So I am not telling you the fight is over. I am telling you this round is.

3. What the judge said anyway

The ruling did not pretend nothing was lost.

PPC Land quotes Mehta acknowledging "the knock-on consequences to journalists, educators, and other online creators" whose content Google repurposes without compensation.

And then he dismissed the case.

That pairing is the useful part for a business owner. A court can agree you were harmed and still find no contract.

If the clicks are not owed, the only person who decides what Google's AI features take from your pages is you.

4. The controls you already have

Most businesses never touch these. They should at least know they exist.

Preview controls. Google's AI features documentation, last updated 10 December 2025, says to limit what is shown from your pages in Search, including AI features, you use nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex.

data-nosnippet is the precise one. It hides a single section of a page and leaves the rest eligible.

The Search Console toggle. Search Engine Journal's Matt G. Southern reported on 6 June 2026 that Google began testing a Search Console opt-out covering AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI Overviews in Discover.

He reported that Google said it would not be used as a ranking signal for regular results, that it is domain-level for now, and that testing started in one market with a wider rollout planned.

Note the gap. Google's documentation page is dated before that toggle existed, so the two do not describe each other.

Google-Extended. The same Google page says this token is for limiting training and grounding in some of Google's other systems. It is not the control for AI features in Search.

robots.txt for Googlebot. Google's page says this is the control for how your site is crawled for Search. Blocking Googlebot to escape AI Overviews takes you out of Search with it.

5. Why most businesses should leave the door open

This is the part where I disagree with the publishers' instinct.

Opting out is usually wrong.

A publisher sells the reading of a page. If the summary answers the question, the visit is gone, and so is the ad revenue.

A dentist, a hotel or a coffee roaster sells something else. The page exists so the business gets named, chosen and booked.

An AI Overview that names you and sends nobody to your site can still send someone to your door.

So NovaTechRay's default advice runs the other way: be quotable, be accurate, be easy to cite.

The research on what AI Overviews cost in clicks is real, and it lands hardest on pages whose only product is the information.

6. When a business should use the controls

There are honest cases for pulling a lever.

A page that is the product. A paid guide, a pricing calculator, a detailed itinerary you sell. data-nosnippet on that section is reasonable.

A page that is out of date. If an old offer keeps being quoted, fix or remove the page. Hiding it from snippets only treats the symptom.

A section you do not want paraphrased. Medical, legal or safety wording where a summary could change the meaning.

Everything else should stay eligible.

7. Measure before you decide

You cannot choose sensibly without numbers, and Google gives you fewer than you want.

Our post on the Search Console generative AI report covers what it counts and what it leaves out. SEJ's June report makes the same complaint: impressions, without the click data you would need to judge the trade.

Read the report, check which pages appear, then decide page by page.

We wrote last month about the market where publishers got an opt-out and payment for AI impressions. That was a negotiated deal. This week's ruling shows what happens without one.

If you also publish short-form video, VALORAE Media's post on which platform gets you into AI answers covers the other half of the same question.

8. What to watch next

Three things would change the advice above.

The order itself. If it is published and says the case can be refiled, the fight continues, and publishers will keep testing theories other than reciprocal dealing.

The Search Console toggle reaching more sites. SEJ reported in June that testing began in one market with a wider rollout planned, and that page-level controls were planned for early 2027. Page-level control would make the data-nosnippet logic above far easier to run.

Click data in the generative AI report. Without clicks, nobody can price the trade between being summarised and being visited. If Google adds them, measure first and revisit every opt-out.

Until any of those land, the default holds: stay eligible, be accurate, be easy to cite.

The short version

• Judge Amit Mehta dismissed the Penske Media and Chegg suits over AI Overviews on 1 October 2026.
• His point, per Press Gazette: expecting traffic for content is not an agreement.
• Reports disagree on whether the case can be refiled. The order is the authority, not me.
• Preview controls (nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, noindex) limit what AI features show.
• A Search Console opt-out has been in testing since June, per SEJ.
• Most businesses should stay eligible and work on being named.
• Use the controls only for pages that are the product, or wording that must not be paraphrased.

NovaTechRay works on getting businesses named in AI answers at novatechray.com.