What the CMA's AI choice screen plan means for UK marketers

On 23 September 2026 the Competition and Markets Authority proposed that Google offer UK Android and Chrome users a choice of search service at set-up and every year after, with AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity eligible. If the plan goes through, UK marketers will need to be cited by those assistants as well as ranked by Google.

What the CMA proposed

The CMA published strengthened proposals for its user choice conduct requirement, one of the rules it can impose on Google since it designated Google with strategic market status in general search in October 2025. Under the revised plan Google would have to do three things.

• Show a search choice screen when someone sets up an Android phone or opens Chrome for the first time, then prompt them every year to choose their default.
• Let AI assistants onto those screens where they meet the eligibility criteria, including technical and security requirements.
• Make every provider on the screen credit publisher content clearly, so people can reach the source and see where an answer came from.

The consultation document goes further than the press release. It extends the screen to Chrome on desktop, mobile and tablet, including Windows and iOS, wherever Google Search is the default, and it has Google list providers in a fully random order that people must scroll through before they choose. When more than twelve providers qualify, Google shows the five most popular and seven picked at random. An assistant only qualifies if it handles the full range of general search tasks, searches the web for current information, and links clearly to the content behind its answers.

CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell said the regulator is responding to AI assistants “which people are increasingly using as their search service, but aren’t included on Google’s choice screens.” Google had argued against annual prompts and proposed a permanent setting instead, according to The Next Web. The consultation closes on 9 October and the CMA expects to decide by the end of the year.

Why it matters for UK marketing teams

Most people search wherever their phone or browser sends them, and in the UK that has meant Google by default for as long as most marketing plans have existed. The CMA would leave Google on the list, but it would make Google ask the question again every year on every covered phone and browser, with ChatGPT and Perplexity potentially sitting next to it.

You shouldn’t plan for a rush away from Google, because the CMA’s own user research points the other way. Thinks Insight & Strategy ran 80 user tests and found that people rushed the screens, skimmed the information and mostly picked the service they already used. When people noticed the AI assistants they slowed down and read the options, and some of them switched, so expect a slow drift led by early adopters.

Attribution is where this touches your numbers. An assistant only gets onto the screen if it credits and links to its sources, so when a UK user who has switched asks a question, the page the assistant quotes gets a visit as well as a mention. We looked at how far AI citations have already drifted from Google rankings in The citation moved off the page, and a regulator requiring those links would widen that gap.

Our view at Manual Focus is that this won’t move UK search share much in 2027, but it will reward the brands AI assistants can already quote easily. If your paid search plan assumes every UK search starts on Google, write that down as an assumption and review it each quarter.

What to do before the 9 October deadline

1. Find out where you’re cited now. Put your 20 most commercially important buyer questions into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude, and note which brands each one cites and links to, so you have a baseline to measure against.
2. Measure AI referrals. Segment traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com and claude.ai in your analytics, so you can see the drift when it comes.
3. Check the assistants can read your site. Review robots.txt and your CDN’s bot rules for AI crawlers, and make sure your key pages render as plain HTML.
4. Rewrite your top pages to answer first. Give the direct answer in the opening paragraph, with specific numbers and sources a model can check. The SEO cluster generator playbook shows how to do this across a whole topic.
5. Respond to the consultation if it affects you. Publishers and brands with a view on attribution can email searchsms@cma.gov.uk before 5pm on 9 October 2026.

What we don’t know yet

The CMA can still change the proposal before its final decision, and it hasn’t set an implementation date. Nobody knows yet which assistants will pass the eligibility tests, which Google would apply every six months under the CMA’s rules. The user research was qualitative, so it tells you how people behave on the screens rather than how many will switch. The CMA also expects Google to show the annual prompt as part of major Chrome and Android updates, so the timing will vary from device to device.

If you want help working out what this means for your own search and content plans, that’s the work we do.

I run marketing for [brand], [one line on what you sell], at [website], selling
mainly in the UK.

Here is our product or service range and the questions our sales and service
teams hear most often: [paste or attach].

Step 1: Write the 20 most commercially important questions a buyer would ask
an AI assistant before choosing a supplier like us, in the buyer's own words.
List them and explain in one line why each one matters commercially.

Step 2: For each question, check the answer in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini,
Copilot and Claude. If you can't reach one of these yourself, tell me which,
and I will paste its answers in for you to log.

Give me a table with the columns: Date | Question | Assistant | Brands cited,
in order | Brands linked to | Are we cited? (yes/no) | Are we linked?
(yes/no) | Which of our pages is linked, if any.

Finish with a summary: for each assistant, how many of the 20 questions cite
us, and which competitors are cited most. Don't guess at any answer you
couldn't see; mark it "not checked". I will re-run this every quarter, so keep
the format identical.

Our website is [website]. Below are our robots.txt file and a list of our most
important page URLs: [paste robots.txt and the URL list].

1. Read the robots.txt and tell me which AI crawlers it allows and which it
   blocks, quoting the exact lines that do it.
2. For each URL, check whether the main content is in the HTML itself or only
   appears once JavaScript runs, and whether the page loads for you at all.

Give me two tables:
- AI crawlers: Crawler | Allowed or blocked | Line in robots.txt
- Key pages: URL | Loads? (yes/no) | Main content in plain HTML? (yes/no/
  partly) | Notes

We may also have bot rules set in our CDN, which you can't see. List what I
should check there, and say clearly anything you couldn't open or test rather
than assuming it works.

Here are our [number] most commercially important pages, with their URL,
the question each one should answer, and the current page text: [paste or
attach].

For each page, draft a new opening paragraph (under 80 words) that gives the
direct answer to its question in the first sentence, then supports it with the
specific numbers and sources already on the page, so an AI assistant could
quote it and check it.

Give me, for each page: URL | Question it answers | Current opening paragraph
| New opening paragraph | Numbers and sources used, and where on the page
they came from.

Use only facts that are in the page text I've given you. If the page has no
number or source to support the answer, say so instead of inventing one, and
flag it as a gap for us to fill.