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Google AI Overviews Have More Links, But Not All Reach The Web via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

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Google AI Overviews Have More Links, But Not All Reach The Web via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google describes several link displays inside AI Overviews with different destinations. Here's how Search Console counts them and what two September posts show.

Not every link inside an AI Overview is the same. Google’s posts describe links placed next to the answer text, article suggestions at the end of a response, previews of online discussions with links to the thread, and, since January on mobile, a follow-up question that opens a conversation in AI Mode. In Search Console, clicking on a link to an external page in an AI Overview counts as a click, and a link that runs a new Google query doesn’t count as either a click or an impression.

This week, two posts describe what people are observing in that space. Peec AI shared a chart on September 21, showing the percentage of AI Overviews that contain an external link within the answer text, based on a daily average from August 25 to September 20. Earlier that same day, Gagan Ghotra shared a recording where he clicks on underlined text inside an AI Overview and is taken to an AI Mode conversation instead of a website. The first post highlights the presence of links, not clicks. The second demonstrates where one link led during a single search.

Google has updated the way links appear in its AI answers a few times, with each update describing a different display.

In August 2025, Robby Stein, VP of Product at Google Search, stated that the company’s main goal for AI Mode was to display more inline links, and it added link carousels on desktop.


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