Google's AI answers are showing more links now
Google went from almost no outside links in its AI answers to more than a quarter of them carrying one. Patrick Stox's reaction: "more links that no one will click on."
Read the whole week in one goThe spam update really landed over the weekend
Getting into AI answers
Google's AI answers now link out far more often
Google has sharply increased the number of links to outside websites inside AI Overviews (the AI written answer at the top of results). Malte Landwehr says Google massively increased the number of external links within these answers, and Connor Showler says direct links now appear in over 25% of answers.
Oh look, more links that no one will click on.
Who this affects: Anyone whose pages get used as a source in Google's AI answers.
- Our take: check Search Console clicks weekly for any change.
Some AI answer links now open more AI, not your site
Barry Schwartz reports that some links in Google's AI Overviews now send people into AI Mode (Google's chat style search) instead of out to a web page. Glenn Gabe called it "a new form of AI Inception." If this spreads, a link that used to bring a visitor could just keep them inside Google.
Who this affects: Everyone with a website that gets traffic from Google search.
- Do nothing yet, this is a sighting, not a rollout.
Do not do this
Spammers are flooding search with Google's own AI notebooks
Public Gemini Notebooks (shared pages from Google's AI notebook tool) are being spammed and are now showing up in Google's results, with up to 12,000 of these pages indexed. Glenn Gabe says the spam runs "from peptides to discount codes to porn to apps" and cannot believe Google has not removed the directory yet.
Can't believe Google hasn't removed this directory yet from the SERPs
Who this affects: Anyone competing for search results where this junk is appearing.
- Do nothing, the person who found it expects Google to remove them.
- Our take: search your main keywords to see if junk pages appear.