AI Overviews in Google Search now display more links than before, but not every link sends a user to an external website. Some open a follow-up conversation inside Google’s own AI Mode; others surface discussion previews or subscription content. For publishers tracking traffic from Search Console, the distinction matters: Google counts only clicks on links to external pages, not taps that trigger a new Google query, according to Google’s Search Console documentation.
What Types of Links Now Appear Inside an AI Overview?
Based on Google’s own product announcements through May 2026, there are at least five distinct link formats that can appear inside AI Overviews and AI Mode responses:
- Article suggestions at the end of AI responses, linking to in-depth articles or analyses on facets of the query topic (announced May 6, 2026, by Hema Budaraju, VP of Product Management for Search, via blog.google)
- News subscription links, labeled so users can identify content from outlets they pay for; Google’s early testing found people were significantly more likely to click links that carried a subscription label
- Community perspective previews, showing excerpts from public discussions or social media with clickable links to the original thread or community page
- Inline links within the answer text, where hovering on desktop shows a site name or page title preview in a pop-up (announced May 6, 2026, by Hema Budaraju, VP of Product Management for Search)
- Follow-up question links (available on mobile globally since January 27, 2026), which open a back-and-forth conversation in AI Mode rather than navigate to any external website
That last format is drawing scrutiny this week. On September 21, 2026, researcher Gagan Ghotra shared a recording showing a click on underlined text inside an AI Overview that opened AI Mode rather than a publisher page, as reported by Search Engine Journal. The same day, Peec AI published a chart tracking the percentage of AI Overviews that include at least one external link within the answer text, based on daily averages from August 25 to September 20, 2026.
The two observations measure different things: Peec AI tracks whether a link is present; Ghotra’s recording demonstrates where one specific link led during a single search. Neither answers how often each link type is tapped across all users.
How Does Search Console Count Clicks from AI Overviews?
According to Google’s Search Console help documentation, a click is counted when a user follows a link to an external page. A link that triggers a new Google query (for example, opening a follow-up conversation in AI Mode) does not count as a click or an impression (the metric for how often a link to your site appears in search results).
This creates a measurement gap. A page can appear frequently inside AI Overviews and still register zero Search Console clicks if the links users actually interact with lead back into Google’s interface rather than outward to the web. Publishers comparing AI impression counts against referral traffic in analytics tools may find the two numbers tell different stories.
How Google Has Expanded AI Overview Links Since August 2025
The link formats inside AI Overviews have evolved through four announced updates over roughly nine months:
- August 2025: Stein stated the primary goal for AI Mode was to surface more inline links, and Google added link carousels on desktop.
- January 27, 2026: Stein announced users can ask a follow-up question directly from an AI Overview, calling it “one fluid experience with prominent links to continue exploring,” available on mobile globally.
- February 17, 2026: Stein described a hover interaction on desktop where groups of links appear in a pop-up with more descriptive icons. Google’s internal testing found the new interface “more engaging, making it easier to get to great content across the web.”
- May 6, 2026: Budaraju detailed five updates, including article suggestions, subscription labels, community previews, additional inline links, and hover-preview functionality on desktop.
None of these announcements included specific click-through rates or aggregate data on how often each link type is used. The May 6 post does not specify which markets have received the inline-link changes or when global rollout will be complete.
New Search Console Reports Now Track AI Visibility Separately
In June 2026, Google launched dedicated Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, announced via developers.google.com. These reports show how often URLs from a site appeared inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by pages, countries, devices, and date ranges as granular as hourly. A separate view for Discover’s generative AI features is included as well.
The reports are rolling out to a subset of websites while Google gathers feedback before broader availability. The underlying impression data is also included in the standard overall performance report, but the new view isolates it from organic web results to allow direct comparison.
What This Means for AI-Search Visibility
Here is the simplest way to think about it: a link inside an AI Overview is not automatically a door to your website. Some links are doors (external clicks). Some are windows, showing a preview but keeping the user inside Google. Some are hallways that loop back into more AI conversation. Which type a link belongs to determines whether your content is driving visits or simply being displayed inside Google’s interface.
In practice, a site owner seeing high impressions in the new Generative AI performance reports alongside flat or declining referral traffic should ask what link format their content most often appears in. If the primary appearance is the follow-up-question format or a community preview, Search Console will record the impression but no click, even if users interacted with the result.
The subscription-label finding from Google’s early testing adds a second layer to consider. If labeled subscription links generate meaningfully higher clicks than unlabeled inline links, then format and context may influence user behavior inside AI Overviews more than content quality or query relevance alone. This is an editorial signal, not just a ranking one: the same content, presented in different link formats, likely produces different traffic outcomes.
One significant unknown remains. Google has not published aggregate data on the share of AI Overview link interactions that lead to external sites versus those that stay inside Google’s ecosystem. Until that data exists, impressions in the Generative AI performance reports are best treated as visibility signals, not as reliable traffic proxies.
What to Check Before Assuming AI Overviews Are Driving Traffic
- Access the new Generative AI performance reports in Search Console if your site has been included in the rollout; check impression volume by page.
- Compare AI impressions against actual Search Console clicks; a large gap suggests users are staying inside Google’s interface.
- Identify which link format your content typically appears in: inline, end-of-response suggestion, subscription label, or community preview.
- If your brand publishes news content, explore the publisher form Google has provided to enable subscription labeling for logged-in readers.
- Use third-party tools such as Peec AI to track trends in external-link presence across AI Overviews over time, separate from your own site’s data.
- Remember that clicks on links leading to AI Mode conversations are not captured as external clicks in Search Console and will not appear in your referral traffic.
The gap between AI Overview impressions and web traffic is likely to narrow as Google expands access to the Generative AI performance reports and as third-party measurement matures. Whether Google will eventually publish aggregate data on the ratio of external to in-ecosystem link clicks remains an open question. For now, the most reliable signal available is the one Search Console already enforces: a click that reaches your site, and a click that stays inside Google, are counted differently because they are different events.
Sources: Search Engine Journal, September 21, 2026; blog.google (Hema Budaraju, May 6, 2026); support.google.com Search Console help documentation; developers.google.com, June 2026.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance from the sources cited above and checked against them before publishing. The "What this means for AI-search visibility" section is Hingewise's editorial analysis, built on the frameworks and positions we use in our GEO work. How we work: Editorial policy.