Google adds more links to AI Mode and AI Overviews: how to prepare

Google is changing how links to websites appear in its AI search features. In an October 15, 2026 post on its Search blog (opens in a new tab), the company set out five updates to AI Mode and AI Overviews. They affect where source links sit in a response, which sites get highlighted and how creators are credited.

None of the five comes with a new tag or file to implement. The useful work is confirming your site is eligible, making your key pages the obvious destination for the tasks people associate with you, and measuring what happens.

The five changes

Change	Status, according to Google	Most relevant to
Inline links appear more often and higher up in AI responses	Launching	Any site cited in AI answers
A section at the top of a response for official websites, with a note on why each link is useful	Test planned	Brands and organizations whose site is the official place to complete a task
Carousels of timely articles, which also highlight a person’s Preferred Sources	Rolling out to more locations and languages	News publishers
Related-article links at the end of some responses get thumbnails and a more prominent design	Being updated	Publishers with in-depth coverage
Creator and publisher names on video results link to their Search profiles in AI Mode	Test started the week of October 15	Video creators and publishers

Google also said the number of people using Preferred Sources has grown more than sevenfold since the start of 2026. The post does not include any data on how these changes affect clicks to websites.

What this means for visibility

Our read: links placed earlier in a response should be seen by more people, so being one of the cited sources matters more than it did. Whether that produces more visits is something you will have to measure on your own site.

The official-sites section deserves attention from brands. If Google singles out the official page for a task, such as signing in, booking, applying or getting support, that page needs to be crawlable, indexable and clearly titled.

Treat both tests with caution. Google may change them or decide not to launch them widely.

Eligibility has not changed

Google’s guide to AI features for site owners (opens in a new tab) says the bar for being linked from AI Overviews or AI Mode is the ordinary one: the page has to be in Google’s index and allowed to show a snippet. There are no extra technical requirements, no special structured data and no AI-specific files to create. The fundamentals it lists include allowing crawling in robots.txt and at your content delivery network (CDN), linking to important pages internally, and keeping key content in text form.

One setting can override all of that. Search Console has a Search generative AI control (opens in a new tab) under Settings, available to every site worldwide since August 31, 2026. The default is to include your site. If a property is set to exclude, its links and content will not appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode or generative AI features in Discover. Child properties inherit the setting from a parent property unless someone overrides it, and Google says a change generally takes a few days to apply.

Extra steps for publishers and creators

Preferred Sources

The expanded news carousels highlight a reader’s Preferred Sources. Google’s preferred sources guide (opens in a new tab) explains how to add a button or link that lets readers choose your site. The feature works for a whole domain or a subdomain, not for a folder or a single page. To show as a preferred source in AI Mode and AI Overviews, your site must also be included in Search generative AI features.

Search profiles

Google’s Search profile badge documentation (opens in a new tab), added on September 16, 2026, describes a Search profile as a single place on Google that brings together your content from your website and social platforms. If you publish video, claim and complete your profile now, since the new test links creator names to it.

Measure before and after

Search Console’s generative AI performance reports (opens in a new tab), introduced in June 2026 and available to all sites since August 31, show impressions by page, country, device and date for generative AI features in Search and Discover. Use them to compare the weeks before and after October 15.

For a view outside Google, Bing Webmaster Tools added a beta Topics Portfolio view to its AI Performance report (opens in a new tab) on October 13, 2026. It groups the queries behind AI answers that cite your site into themes, and lists queries where other sites are cited and yours is not. Microsoft says to treat the numbers as directional.

Next steps

1. In Search Console, open Settings, then Search generative AI, for each property. Confirm the setting and check whether child properties inherit it.
2. In the generative AI performance report, compare impressions by page for the weeks before October 15 with the weeks since.
3. List the main tasks people come to your brand to do. Check that each destination page is indexed, can show a snippet and has a clear title.
4. News publishers: check that your site appears in Google’s source preferences tool, then add the Preferred Sources button.
5. Video creators: claim your Search profile and add the badge to your site.
6. Watch for Google to confirm whether the official-sites section and creator links move from test to launch.