Google Plans Support for Shared Robots.txt AI Training Control

Google announced on October 30, 2026 that it plans to support a shared AI training control in robots.txt, giving website owners a single way to express training preferences across multiple AI providers. The commitment arrived alongside same-day announcements from Microsoft and OpenAI. The plan was laid out in a Google Search Central Blog post by John Mueller, a Google Search Advocate.

The control is based on work from the AI Preferences working group at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and builds on Google-Extended, the AI training control Google says it has offered since 2023. Instead of managing separate instructions for every AI developer, website owners will be able to use a shared policy token within robots.txt to set broad preferences across participating AI providers.

When a website uses the token to opt out of training and has not explicitly specified Google-Extended, Google plans to interpret that as if the publisher had disallowed Google-Extended. Other AI providers can handle the signal similarly, so owners can opt out across all participating providers at once or pick and choose. According to the…