Google faces UK push to put AI assistants on Android, Chrome choice screens

Google's proposed compliance with UK regulators to display a choice screen for AI assistants and search providers when users first set up an Android phone or launch Chrome marks a concrete shift toward mandatory multi‑search options on its platforms. For website owners, this means that the default traffic funnel from Android devices and Chrome browsers will diversify, potentially reducing the share of visits that automatically flow to Google Search and its integrated AI assistant. Sites that rely heavily on organic search referrals may see a dip in click‑through rates as users experiment with alternative providers presented at onboarding. Moreover, the new choice screen could expose sites to increased bot traffic from competing AI services that scrape search results to train models, raising the need for tighter bot detection. **Actionable tips:** 1. Update your llms.txt file to explicitly list permitted AI assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Bing Chat) and disallow unknown crawlers, ensuring only authorized bots can index your content. 2. Deploy real‑time bot monitoring tools that flag spikes in traffic from non‑Google user‑agents, enabling you to block or rate‑limit suspicious AI‑driven scrapers. 3. Optimize your site’s schema and structured data to improve visibility across all search providers, so you capture traffic regardless of which option users select on the new choice screen.