Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable reports that every link in the Google AI Mode flight answers he tried pointed to Google Flights. He ran the checks over the weekend for several destinations, covering domestic US routes and international ones. In his words, 100 percent of the available links went to Google’s own flight product.
Natzir (@natzir9) flagged the same pattern on October 30. His post said that asking AI Mode for flights returns Google Flights, and nothing else. Schwartz says he has dozens of screenshots and shared one of them.
These are informal tests, not a study. Neither person has published a query list, a count of prompts, a location setup, or a method for repeating the runs. Both results agree, which makes the pattern worth checking, but two sets of manual observations cannot show how often it happens across all users or flight queries.
Schwartz also tied the finding to Europe, suggesting regulators enforcing the Digital Markets Act would take an interest. That is his commentary. The source describes no regulator action, complaint, or inquiry, and Google has not been quoted in the report.
Analysis: what it means for travel publishers and OTAs
If the pattern holds, an AI Mode answer to a flight question sends no click to an online travel agency, an airline, or a travel blog from the links shown. That matters because flight queries are commercial, and a link slot that goes only to Google’s own product removes a path that publishers used to earn through classic results. The source does not measure traffic loss, so treat that as a risk to test, not a result.
The report leaves open whether other travel prompts, such as hotels or itineraries, behave the same way.
Analysis: how to run your own spot checks
Build a small fixed list of flight prompts that mirror your actual audience: a few domestic routes, a few international ones, and a few written the way your customers phrase them. Run each one on the same day, from the same location, and save a screenshot of every response with the date.
Record three things for each answer: which domains are linked, whether your brand is mentioned without a link, and whether the result changes when you repeat the prompt. Repeat the set weekly.
For travel teams, the practical move this quarter is to compare that log against Search Console data for flight-related landing pages, and to shift effort toward queries where AI Mode still links to outside sources.
Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz, with a post by Natzir on X dated October 30, 2026.
