Google officially rolls out links in AI Overviews to its own search results
After testing this for a month, Google officially rolled out this method to help searchers explore more topics.
A few weeks ago, we caught Google linking text within its AI Overviews to its own search results. Well, that became a new official feature within AI Overviews today.
- “To help people more easily explore topics and discover relevant websites, we’ve added links to some terms within AI Overviews when our systems determine it might be useful,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.
What it looks like. Here’s a screenshot we posted of this back then:
Clicking on those underlined links in the text of the AI Overview, both at the top and in the middle section, will take you back to a new Google search. The smaller link icons open the side-panel links, which go to publishers and external sites.
What Google said. Here’s the statement a Google spokesperson sent me:
- “To help people more easily explore topics and discover relevant websites, we’ve added links to some terms within AI Overviews when our systems determine it might be useful. Similar to our long-standing People also search for feature, our testing shows that people find this helpful. AI Overviews continue to have prominent links out to the web, which we’re also expanding.”
Why. Google said it is doing this to make it easier for searchers to explore topics. Google told me they have seen that people often end up manually searching for certain terms as a separate query from these AI Overviews. During testing, Google said users found it helpful to link directly to a relevant results page in those cases.
This helps reduce the need for searchers to enter a new query, instead they can just click on these links. This leads to a “much better search experience,” Google said.
Google’s systems prioritize linking to third-party websites within the AI Overview response when Google has a high confidence that those websites will help the user find the information they’re seeking, a Google spokesperson told me.
Where. Google said this new feature is available in English in the U.S., on both mobile and desktop.
Why we care. Publishers have been asking Google to send more traffic through Search. With this feature now launching, assume Google will send less traffic to you and more to its own results. Google says it’s about giving searchers what they want and making topics easier to explore. But for you as a publisher or site owner, that may not be good.
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