Google has announced five changes to how AI Mode, its conversational search experience, and AI Overviews show links to the open web. Search Engine Journal covered the announcement on October 15, which came from a Google blog post by Google product management VP Hema Budaraju. Two of the five items are tests, and Google’s own help pages do not yet reflect one of them.
The first change concerns inline links, the ones placed beside the sentence they support. Google says it has made “continued and substantial increases to the presence of inline links” and now positions them higher in more responses. The post gives no figure for the increase. Without a number, publishers cannot tell whether this is a nudge or a redesign.
The second change is a test. For task-style queries where official material is limited to a source or two, Google plans to place links to those sources at the very start of the response, with a note explaining why each one is useful. Search Engine Journal’s example shows airline refund links. Google has not said how many queries or users see the test, or when it might widen.
Third, the closing links on certain responses now carry thumbnails and a look Google calls more clickable. These are the related-article suggestions Google said in May it would add to cover other angles on a topic. A thumbnail gives a listed article a visual presence a plain text link lacked.
Fourth, the carousels for timely articles are expanding to additional regions and languages. They surface sites a user has chosen as Preferred Sources, a feature that lets people pick the sites they want to see more often. Google says use of Preferred Sources is now more than seven times its level at the start of the year. The post offers no user count and does not explain how the growth was measured, so treat the claim as unverified. It also does not name the new regions or languages.
Google’s Preferred Sources documentation ties eligibility across AI Mode and AI Overviews to a site being eligible for generative AI search features in Search Console. The same documentation describes an add-me button plus a deep link that readers can follow to add a site.
Fifth, a second test: in AI Mode video results, the creator or publisher name becomes clickable and leads to that party’s Search profile. Google launched Search profiles in June to collect a creator’s articles, videos, and social posts in one place. Search Engine Journal checked Google’s help page on October 15 and found it listed knowledge panels and Discover as places a profile can appear, not AI Mode. That page also says profiles were offered only in India, Canada, and the US for creators with 10,000 or more followers on one of four platforms: YouTube, Instagram, X, or TikTok.
The measurement angle deserves attention. Search Console reports one position for an entire AI Overview, and every link inside it shares that value. A link that climbs within the response therefore shows no change in reported position by itself. Publishers who want to know whether higher placement matters should compare clicks and referral visits from AI features against a baseline captured now, because position data will not reveal the shift. The announcement includes no independent measurement of click impact.
Sites that appear in these answers should do three things: record current referral levels from AI Mode and AI Overviews, confirm their eligibility for Preferred Sources, and check whether the carousel appears for the regions and languages they serve, since that expansion is starting now. The official-link section and the profile links are both tests with no stated timeline, so they warrant monitoring rather than planning.
Reported by Search Engine Journal (Matt G. Southern, October 15, 2026), based on a Google blog post by Hema Budaraju.
