Google Is Putting More Website Links in Its AI Answers. Will One Be Yours?

AI answers created a problem for every business with a website: people stopped clicking through to it. When Google puts a written answer at the top of the results, many searchers read it and never visit a site. The clearest evidence so far comes from a randomized experiment run in January and February 2026 by researchers at the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University, who tracked 1,065 US desktop Chrome users: AI Overviews cut organic clicks to outside websites by 38% on the searches where they appeared, and the share of searches ending with no click at all rose from 54% to 72% ¹. Removing the AI Overviews did not change how satisfied people said they were with their searches ¹. For a business, every one of those searchers is a customer who heard about it on Google and never reached its booking page.

Google's fix is to move the links to where people actually read. On 15 October 2026 it announced "continued and substantial increases" in the links shown inside AI Overviews, the AI-written summaries at the top of search results, and AI Mode, its chat-style search tab, with those links now placed higher in the answer more often to make sure key sources are "easily clickable right when you need them" ². It is also testing a dedicated section at the top of a response for cases where there are "only one or two official places on the web" to complete a task or get the exact information someone needs ². The shift started before the announcement: Search Engine Journal reported a chart from the analytics company Peec AI showing the share of AI Overviews with an outside link inside the answer text climbing from near zero to 26.2% by 20 September 2026, while noting the chart does not disclose its sample size or markets ³. For a business, the question has changed. It is no longer whether AI answers will steal its clicks. It is whether its own website will be the link Google puts in front of the customer.

This matters most for local businesses, because customers now ask AI for recommendations directly. BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found that use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45% in a year, making AI the third most popular source of business recommendations ⁴. An AI answer that names a restaurant, a villa or a clinic is only half the job. The link beside that name is the step between being mentioned and being booked. A mention with no link, or with a link to someone else's page, sends the customer back to searching, where a directory or a competitor is waiting.

The test of an official websites section raises the stakes further. Google has not said which searches it will cover ². But for a question about one specific business, its menu, its booking page, its prices, its opening hours, the official place on the web is that business's own website. If the site is out of date, says little, or does not make clear who runs it and what it offers, Google has every reason to send that click to a booking platform, a review site or a directory instead. The business still gets found. Someone else gets the visit, the customer's details and, on some platforms, a commission.

Google is clear that there is no trick to this. To appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet, and Google states there are "no additional requirements" and no special markup to add ⁵. What Google lists instead is the ordinary groundwork done properly: pages Google can crawl, important content in text rather than locked in images, structured data that matches what the page actually says, and Business Profile information kept up to date ⁵. Structured data is a small block of code that labels facts such as a business's name, address and logo, and Google says it can help it "disambiguate your organization in search results", in other words tell one business apart from another with a similar name ⁶. None of that is new. What is new is that Google now rewards it with a link placed higher in the answer.

Those clicks are worth having. Google reports that when people click through from a results page with AI Overviews, "these clicks are higher quality", meaning visitors are more likely to spend more time on the site ⁵. That is Google's own claim, but independent data points the same way. Seer Interactive's 2026 analysis of 53 accounts found that being cited in an AI Overview delivers 120% more organic clicks per impression than not being cited on the same results page, though still 38% fewer than informational searches with no AI Overview at all ⁷. Seer is careful to call that a correlation, since stronger brands are also more likely to be cited ⁷. Either way, the business named and linked in the answer takes the clicks that are left, and someone who reaches a website from an AI answer has usually compared options already. A visitor who lands on a page that answers their question is a short step from a booking, a call or an inquiry.

The problem is that nobody inside a typical business is watching this happen. Google's generative AI report in Search Console, its free tool for site owners, shows impressions but not clicks ³, a gap covered in why Google shows AI impressions but not the clicks. So no report tells an owner that the AI answer named their business and linked to a directory, or that the hours on the website and the Google profile disagree. The cost shows up only as bookings that went elsewhere. And every week a competitor's page is the one Google treats as the answer, that lead gets harder to win back.

So, will one of Google's new AI links lead to a business's own website? Only if Google can see that the website is the right page: indexed, current, clear about who the business is and consistent with its Google profile. If it is not, the link goes to whoever is. For most businesses the answer is yes, act now, while Google is still testing the new layout and before a competitor's page becomes the one it trusts. The tie-break rule is simple: if the website and the Google profile disagree about hours, prices or services, fix that first, because an AI answer cannot confidently recommend facts that contradict each other.

At Italian DesAIgns, we do this work through our search engine optimization (SEO) service. Our Local SEO Audit shows where your business appears on Google and where it does not, with the three changes that would move it up fastest, walked through with a Google-certified specialist. Local SEO Setup puts your Google Business Profile and website pages in order so Google shows you in local results and on the map. The AI Search Visibility Pack fixes the data and structure AI assistants read and rewrites your content so they can quote it, and Full Search Visibility runs all of it as one plan. For the wider picture, see why Google's top ranking no longer predicts who its AI Overviews cite, and follow each change as it lands in our insights archive. To see where your website stands today, our free AI visibility check scores a single page out of 100 on its metadata, heading structure, structured data and crawler access, and one of our specialists walks you through the full breakdown in a free, no-obligation consultation.