Google 更新 AI 搜尋並承諾把流量送回網站？數據顯示情況並不簡單

Google has announced more inline links in AI Mode and AI Overviews. For brands, the lesson of this update is that being mentioned by AI is only the starting point. The next fight is over being named in the key positions, with a line that explains why your link is worth clicking.

1. What actually changed

On October 15, 2026 (US time), Hema Budaraju, Google's VP of Product for Search, published the blog post. Broken down, it covers five changes:

More inline links, placed higher up. Google says it has "continued to significantly" increase inline links (links embedded in the answer text) and now places them in the upper part of the answer more often. It did not say by how much.
Testing an "official pages" section (in testing). When a task can only be completed through one or two official entry points on the web, the top of the answer will list those links separately, each with a one-line note on why it is useful. Google's example is looking up how to get a refund from an airline. No launch date was announced.

Figure 1: The "official pages" section Google is testing. For an airline refund query, the top of the answer first lists two official links, the refund form and the refund rules, each with a note on what it is for. Figure 1 | Source: Google's official blog (blog.google), 2026-10-15

The timely news carousel expands (rolling out now). The carousel will cover more countries and languages, though no list was given, and it will give priority to the Preferred Sources a user has set. Google says the number of people using Preferred Sources has grown more than 7x since the start of the year, but it did not give the base number.

Figure 2: The timely news carousel inside an AI Overview, with image cards, publish times and outlet names, giving priority to the user's preferred sources. Figure 2 | Source: Google's official blog (blog.google), 2026-10-15

Related-article links at the end of the answer stand out more. The "Dive Deeper" area now includes image thumbnails and is designed to be easier to click.

Figure 3: The Dive Deeper area at the end of an answer. Each further-reading item carries the outlet name, a summary and a thumbnail. Figure 3 | Source: Google's official blog (blog.google), 2026-10-15

Creator names on AI Mode video results become clickable (testing starts this week). Clicking takes you to the creator's Google Search profile page, not to the creator's own website.

The same day, Nick Fox, who heads Google Search, added on X that more than 400 publishers have joined Google's News AI licensing pilot, and Google pays for that content.

This update has a history. In May 2026, Google already made a round of five link changes: placing links right next to the relevant text, link previews on hover on desktop, labels for subscription content, first-hand perspectives from forums and social media with the community name shown, and further reading at the end of the answer. From June to August, Search Console rolled out a generative AI performance report and added a switch to opt out of AI features, which opened worldwide on August 31. So the October update is a continuation in the same direction, not a change of course.

2. Five counter-intuitive conclusions

1. More links does not mean the traffic is back, and for now there is no way to prove it

Pew Research analyzed the real browsing records of 900 US adults. When a page showed an AI summary, users clicked a traditional search result in only 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary. The share who clicked a source cited inside the summary was just 1%. Ahrefs redid the study with December 2025 data and found that when an AI Overview appears, the click-through rate of the number-one page is about 58% lower.

Google's attitude deserves more attention. Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable headlined his post with Google updating links "again" while still not sharing click data. He quoted Google's reply: "We will gradually introduce more metrics." Today the AI report in Search Console shows impressions only, with no clicks.

There is evidence pointing the other way. A Seer Interactive report from April 2026 shows that for queries with an AI Overview, organic click-through rate recovered from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026. Veteran SEO Gianluca Fiorelli said on X that inline links "do bring clicks," far better than the citation markers that are almost invisible.

Conclusion: Where a link sits matters more than how many links there are. Moving inline links higher means the gap between sources named in the first few paragraphs of an answer and every other source will widen further.

2. The official-pages section rewards pages that get the job done, not big brands

According to Dageno's preliminary data, in September 2026 official websites already appeared in 77%–99% of AI answers on most platforms. In other words, getting your official site seen by AI has not been hard for a while. What is scarce is being recognized by Google as the endpoint for a task, placed alone at the top, with a line explaining why.

This is good for official websites, but there will be fewer winners. Queries such as "how to get a refund" or "how to apply" used to send traffic to plenty of third-party guides. That traffic may now be captured outright by one or two official links. The reverse also holds: if an official site's task pages are badly structured and vaguely worded, even a well-known brand may not be selected.

3. Inside Google's AI, Reddit is not a bit player, and it is being used more and more

Dageno's preliminary data shows that in September 2026, Reddit links were associated with 38.6% of Google AI Overview answers and 27.7% of AI Mode answers; for ChatGPT it was about 1.4%, Grok about 1.7%, and Copilot only 0.04%. In AI Mode, the share of Reddit links that, once present, were actually used in the body text or footnotes rose from 72.2% in April to 89.9% in September. Multiplying link rate by adoption rate, Reddit's penetration in September was roughly 25% in AI Mode and roughly 15% in AI Overviews, and under 1% in ChatGPT, Grok and Perplexity.

This matches Google's May update, which explicitly set out to show first-hand perspectives from forums inside answers and to label the community name. The same dataset shows another pattern: around August 14, 2026, ChatGPT's Reddit link rate dropped sharply in four industry markets at the same time. We suspect an adjustment on the platform side.

Conclusion: There is no single "AI search." Platforms differ widely in how they pick sources, and the rules can change overnight.

4. User choices are starting to shape who gets seen

Use of Preferred Sources has grown more than 7x, the news carousel gives those sources priority, and subscription labels were added in May. This means a publisher's direct relationship with its readers is starting to convert into visibility inside AI search.

That is good news for publishers with loyal readers. For new outlets and long-tail writers, the bar has risen: readers who do not know you yet will not set you as a preferred source. Add the 400-plus publishers with paid licensing deals, and the gap between the top outlets and everyone else may widen further.

5. Some of the links that "go back to the web" go back to Google itself

Clicking a creator name leads to the creator's Google Search profile page. Both Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land called this out. According to the help page cited by Search Engine Journal, Search profiles are currently open only to creators in the United States, Canada and India, and require at least 10,000 followers on YouTube, Instagram, X or TikTok. Seer also notes that links inside AI answers sometimes only lead to a new Google search.

Figure 4: Left: a clickable creator name shown under an AI Mode video result. Right: an example of the Google Search profile page it opens (two frames from the same demo video). Figure 4 | Source: frames from Google's official blog demo video, 2026-10-15

3. What this means for GEO: upsides and risks

Upsides:

Being cited pays off more directly. With inline links moved higher, being named in the first few paragraphs of an answer can bring clicks directly, not just brand exposure.
Official task pages get a dedicated slot. Clearly structured service, pricing, documentation and after-sales pages have a chance to be placed at the top of the answer.
Opinion content gets more entry points. The news carousel and Dive Deeper leave room for in-depth reporting and original analysis.
More monitoring tools than before. Search Console at least shows AI impression data, and it can be broken down by page and by country.

Risks:

Fewer winners. The official section holds only one or two links, so lower-ranked sources get squeezed out further.
Results cannot be fully attributed. Without AI click data, teams will struggle to prove to management that the investment paid off.
The features themselves are not stable. The official section and creator names are still in testing. They may be adjusted or withdrawn, and rollout speed differs by region.
Law and regulation are still moving. In December 2025 the European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into Google's use of publisher content for AI summaries, and it is still under way. On September 30, 2026, a US court dismissed the lawsuits brought by Penske and Chegg; the judge acknowledged the harm to publishers but held that antitrust law is not the tool to solve this problem.
Opting out has a cost too. Sites that opt out of AI features will no longer get the impressions and traffic those features bring.

4. What brands can do now

Map out task-type queries. List the things users most often come to get done, such as pricing, booking, refunds, after-sales support and developer documentation. Make sure each one has a clear official page whose title and content match that task directly. Only then can AI write the line "why this link is useful."
Analyze source structure platform by platform. On Google's side, community discussion is common, so it is worth watching how users talk about your category in communities. The goal is genuine participation, not spam. ChatGPT picks sources by completely different logic, so the same playbook cannot simply be reused.
Write paragraphs worth citing inline. Specific data, first-hand experience and clear opinions are far more likely to get an AI link than generic introductions.
Look at impressions and clicks separately. Judge by combining Search Console's AI impression data, overall web clicks and your own landing-page analytics, rather than click-through rate alone. A falling click-through rate may simply mean you are being cited more often.
Publishers can actively cultivate preferred-source status. Encourage readers to set you as a preferred source, and weigh carefully the pros and cons of opting out of AI features.
Test regularly in your target markets. Features in testing behave differently across countries and languages, so it is best to recheck once a month in the target language and the target region.

5. Open questions

How does Google decide which pages count as "official"? If it gets it wrong, is there an appeal channel for third parties?
How many clicks does moving inline links higher actually bring? Will Search Console ever list AI clicks separately?
Which countries and languages has the news carousel expanded to? Is the Chinese-language market included?
What is the base number behind the "7x growth" in Preferred Sources?
Will the share of community content such as Reddit in Google's AI answers be diluted by the official section and the news carousel, or keep rising?
Will the outcome of the EU investigation change how AI answers display links?