Google now says source icons that stopped responding under Discover’s AI summaries were “a bug in a Discover experiment,” answering the test we covered Tuesday. Rajan Patel, Google’s VP of Engineering for Search, said on X Monday evening that the experiment is off and the taps work normally again, Search Engine Journal reported.
Damien Andell, who first flagged the problem on Oct. 23, checked again on Oct. 27 and said the experiment had been swapped for another, named “aio tap falls through to hero.” Neither Andell nor Google has explained what that new test does or where it runs. Patel’s reply also omitted what the original test was meant to measure, how long it ran, and how many people met unresponsive taps.
The label closed one test while a successor is already live, so the underlying question of how Discover routes readers from summaries to cited sites stays open.
Publishers should keep tapping the sources on their own Discover AI cards and log the dates alongside any referral changes.
Search Engine Journal (Matt G. Southern), published October 27, 2026.
