Impact AI Content Protection on Website SEO and Discoverability

Question
1

Dear Sitely-Team,

I’ve noticed that Sitely recently introduced a feature to protect website content from AI usage. Could you please clarify what impact activating this protection option might have on my website’s discoverability in search engines (e.g. Google, Bing) and in AI-powered search systems like Google Gemini or ChatGPT Search? Specifically, I would like to know:

Does enabling the AI protection affect my site’s ranking or visibility in classic search engines?

Will my website be less likely to appear or be referenced in results delivered by AI-powered tools and chat-based search assistants?

Are there best practices or configuration tips you recommend to balance content protection and good discoverability?

Thank you in advance for your support and clarification!

Jasmin

2

The feature is designed to protect content that you don’t want scraped. We discuss this briefly in the launch blog post: Introducing Sitely 6

The feature is isolated to the individual image you choose to protect, it doesn’t affect the page broadly. Search engines don’t necessarily need that image to determine the page topic, but if you follow the website assistant tips, it will say that you need to have an image on the page that is representative of the search phrase you intend to capture. Just make that a different image.

3

Thank you for your feedback, Duncan.

4

Feature request: please make this protection available in gallery images, not just single free standing images.