How to keep your business out of AI search results

How to limit your AI visibility

AI tools are changing how people discover information. But not every business wants to be found that way.

For some, visibility isn’t the goal. It’s control.

You might be dealing with:

• Sensitive or regulated information
• Copyrighted or proprietary content
• High-stakes legal or reputational risks
• Private client services that rely on confidentiality

If that’s you, here’s what you need to know about limiting your exposure. 'Staying invisible' requires just as much strategy as being seen.

How AI tools gather your content

Most AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini rely on:

• Search engine indexes (like Google and Bing)
• Publicly available websites
• Third-party sources like Wikipedia, LinkedIn or review platforms

If your content is out there, it can be crawled, scraped or summarised, whether you like it or not.

So while AI tools don’t usually steal content, they do reuse and summarise it. If you’re not careful, your business could be misrepresented, overshared or exposed in ways you didn’t expect.

How to reduce your AI visibility

There’s no single off-switch, but there are several tools you can use to limit how your content is accessed and shared.

1. Use robots.txt to block crawlers

Search engines and AI scrapers respect robots.txt - a file that tells them which parts of your site to ignore.

• You can block specific tools (e.g. GPTBot, Common Crawl, CCBot)
• You can exclude entire folders (e.g. /client-area/, /knowledge-base/)
• Your developer or SEO team can implement this easily

Note: this won’t remove your content if it’s already indexed, it just stops future access.

2. Add meta tags to discourage indexing

If you don’t want certain pages to appear in search results at all, you can add noindex or nosnippet tags. These signal that:

• A page shouldn’t be included in search
• The content shouldn’t be summarised or shown as a preview

This is useful for gated content, legal pages, or anything sensitive.

3. Control what’s public in the first place

This might seem obvious, but often private or premium content is accidentally made public.

• Check PDF uploads, case studies, and resource hubs
• Review old blog posts that contain client-specific detail
• Keep private content behind logins, and limit how it’s linked

If it’s indexed, it can be found - by humans and AI.

4. Monitor what’s being shown

Try asking AI tools about your business, team or services.

• Are they pulling from accurate sources?
• Are you happy with the level of detail being shared?
• Is anything being exposed that shouldn’t be?

If the answer is no, you can take action - either by adjusting the content, or restricting how it’s accessed.

AI visibility is a choice, not a default

For many businesses, more visibility is a good thing. But for others, being exposed can come with risk.

We help clients make smart, strategic decisions, whether that means optimising for visibility, or limiting exposure where it matters most.

The important thing is that it’s a conscious choice, not a consequence of being overlooked.