Google announced updates to its artificial intelligence (AI) search features on Thursday, expanding news carousels globally and placing website links higher in generated responses.
Users of AI Overviews and AI Mode should see more links embedded within answers. Google is changing their placement so readers encounter them earlier.
News carousels are beginning to reach additional countries and languages. These displays highlight timely reporting and coverage from publishers users have chosen through Google’s Preferred Sources feature.
Links at the end of some generated answers are getting image thumbnails and a revised design. Google said the aim is to make them “more engaging and prominent”.
Hema Budaraju, Google’s vice-president of product management, outlined the changes in a company blog post. She described further tests alongside the broader rollout.
One test places links to official websites in a dedicated section at the top of an AI response. Explanatory text tells users why each page is relevant.
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Another makes creator and publisher names clickable on video results in AI Mode. Those links lead to Google Search profiles containing information about their wider work.
Google introduced AI Overviews in May 2024 to generate summaries within search results. AI Mode provides a separate interface for more detailed questions and responses.
Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told investors during the company’s second-quarter 2025 results announcement that AI Overviews had exceeded two billion monthly users. He said it reached more than 200 countries.
Publishers have warned that generated answers can satisfy readers without sending them to the websites supplying the information.
Analytics company Chartbeat reported a roughly 40% decline in Google traffic to news publishers between July 2025 and July 2026.
In France, the Alliance de la presse d’information générale (APIG) referred the issue to the competition authority on August 11. The newspaper group argues that Google’s use of publisher content in AI search breaches commitments made in 2022.
APIG contends that Google introduced the features without prior transparent negotiations or dedicated remuneration for the new uses of news content.
