Google may be testing the removal of the citations card that sits beside AI Overviews on desktop, Search Engine Roundtable reported on Oct. 29. The card normally shows two or three clickable source domains. Brodie Clark said it has largely disappeared across many test queries, calling the change “brutal for websites.”
Barry Schwartz could not reproduce it after a day of trying, and he saw the card sometimes load late, which could point to a bug instead of a test. He asked Google’s Rajan Patel which it is and had no reply yet. He also recalled that Google has tested placing the card below the overview.
This follows our Oct. 26 item on a different test, AI-written descriptions inside those same citation cards. Both changes target the one spot where AI Overviews hand out visits.
Schwartz cites AI Overviews on over 80 percent of searches, so a missing card would hit a large share of queries. Publishers should check Search Console impressions on AI Overview queries in recent days before blaming content.
Reported by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable on Oct. 29, 2026, based on observations by Brodie Clark.
