How to Get Clicks From AI Overviews and AI Mode Now That Google Is Adding More Links
If you want to know how to get clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode, the answer is to be a page Google has a specific reason to send someone to, like the official place to finish a task, the source behind a claim the answer makes, or a site the searcher already told Google they like. Google made room for more of those links on October 15, though the click rates people have measured so far are low enough that I'd plan for a small number of good clicks and not a return of the old traffic.
That's the quick answer. The longer one gets into which links Google added, which of them a brand can earn, and which ones mostly help publishers and creators.
The short version
Google is adding more inline links to AI answers, moving them higher, and testing a section at the top of some answers for the one or two official pages that handle a task.
Clicks inside AI summaries have been tiny so far. Pew found people clicked a link inside the summary on 1% of visits where one appeared.
The new spot most brands can win is that official-page section, and you win it by being the clear, findable place where a task gets done.
You'll have to measure this yourself, because Search Console's AI reports still don't show clicks.
What Google changed on October 15
Hema Budaraju, a VP of product management at Google, laid out the changes on the Keyword blog (Google). Barry Schwartz has a good rundown at Search Engine Land too (Search Engine Land). There are five pieces to it.
Number one is inline links, the ones embedded in words and phrases inside the answer. Google says it has made "continued and substantial increases" to how often they show up, and that they'll appear higher in responses more often. Google didn't attach a number to that. The closest outside number I've seen is a Peec AI chart that Search Engine Journal wrote up, showing the share of AI Overviews with an external link in the answer text sitting near zero through early September and then climbing to 26.2% by September 20 (Search Engine Journal).
Two, Google is testing a dedicated section at the top of some responses for cases where there are only one or two official places on the web to do a task or get a specific piece of information, with a line of context about why each link is useful. For brands this is the one I'd pay attention to, and I'll come back to it.
Three, the links at the end of some answers (the "dive deeper" area) are getting image thumbnails and a more clickable design.
Four, the news carousels for timely queries are rolling out to more countries and languages, and they highlight Preferred Sources. Google says the number of people using Preferred Sources has grown by more than 7x since the start of the year (Google).
Then last, Google is testing clickable creator and publisher names on video results in AI Mode. Those names go to the creator's Search profile, which is a page on Google instead of the creator's own site. To get a Search profile you need at least 10,000 followers on YouTube, Instagram, X or TikTok, and it's only available in the US, Canada and India right now (Google Search Help).
How often people click links in AI answers
So Google is putting more links in front of people. The question is whether anybody clicks them, and the data we have so far isn't encouraging.
Pew looked at the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025, which came to 68,879 Google searches. When an AI summary showed up, people clicked a regular search result on 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary. They clicked a link inside the summary itself on 1% of visits. People were also more likely to end their browsing session entirely after a page with a summary, 26% versus 16% (Pew Research Center). I covered the 8% versus 15% split in The Click That Didn't Happen, and it's still the behavioral data I lean on.
Ahrefs came at it from the other side, using aggregated Search Console data on 300,000 keywords. For keywords with an AI Overview, the position one click-through rate went from 7.3% in December 2023 to 1.6% in December 2025. Ahrefs estimated it would have been around 3.7% without the AI Overview, so they put the AI Overview effect at about 58% fewer clicks for the top result, about 51% for position two and about 19% for position ten (Ahrefs).
How often people click when Google answers
Two independent measurements of clicks on searches with an AI summary. Toggle between them.
Now, both of those studies were done before this round of link changes, and it's possible bigger, higher, thumbnail-style links pull more clicks. I don't know. Schwartz is skeptical, and he points out that Search Console's AI performance reports still don't include click data, so none of us can check Google's work from the outside (Search Engine Land). My guess is the inline link numbers move a little and the official-page section moves a lot for the narrow set of searches it shows up on, because someone looking for the page to pay a bill or file a claim still has to go to that page.
Which of the new links a brand can earn
This is where the five changes split up. A couple of them are open to almost any brand, and a couple are mostly for news publishers and creators. Click through the diagram below for each one.
Five new link spots in Google's AI answers
Tap a part of the answer to see what it is, who can earn it and what I'd do.
Source: Google, Oct 15, 2026; Search profile rules from Google Search Help. The mock-up is my illustration, not a screenshot.
The official-page section is the big one for brands. Think about the searches where the person needs to end up on a specific page, like how to return something, how to cancel, where to log in, how to book, what the warranty covers, where the spec sheet lives. Google says this section is for when there are only one or two official places on the web for the task, so the job is to make sure your page is plainly that place. If your returns process lives in a PDF linked from a footer, or your pricing is split across three pages that disagree with each other, I'd expect Google to have a harder time picking you, and I'd expect it to pick a retailer or a Reddit thread instead.
Inline links attach to specific claims in the answer. I think the pages that earn them are the ones that state a specific fact in a plain sentence that's easy to quote, like a price, a spec, a policy or a date, near the top of the page. That's a hunch based on how inline links get placed in the answers I've looked at, so take it as a hunch.
The dive deeper links are the old "more results" idea with pictures. A relevant image at the top of the page probably helps here. I can't prove that, it's just what the new design suggests.
Preferred Sources and the news carousels are mostly a publisher play. If your brand runs a real newsroom or a blog that covers timely topics, it's worth asking readers to add you as a preferred source. For most brand sites it isn't going to matter much.
Search profiles are for creators. If you have a founder or an in-house expert with a real following on YouTube, a profile could matter for AI Mode video answers, though the click lands on Google's profile page before it gets anywhere near your site.
How to get clicks from AI Overviews (what I'd do this quarter)
Number one, list your task pages and fix them. Pull your branded queries out of Search Console, find the ones that are about doing something (log in, return, cancel, book, pay, find a document), and make sure each one has a single, current page with a clear title that matches how people phrase the task. This is boring work, and I think it's where this update pays off for a brand.
Two, put the facts in sentences. Write prices, specs, policies, eligibility rules, hours and whatever else buyers ask about as plain statements on a page Google can crawl. I'd push this down to the product and support pages and not just the homepage.
Three, look at what Google says when people search for you. I wrote about this in AI Overviews on Branded Searches, and it's a quick way to see whether Google is sending people to your official page or to somebody else's page about you.
Then last, measure it on your own terms. Watch landing-page clicks and impressions for those task pages in Search Console, check how AI-referred visits show up in your analytics (a lot of them land as direct, which I went through in How to Track ChatGPT Traffic), and keep tracking AI Mode as its own thing, because it cites different pages than AI Overviews (How to Show Up in Google AI Mode).
If you want a quick read on where you stand, run through this:
Is your site ready for the new links?
Six questions. Answer for your brand's site, then see what to fix first.
Answer all six to see your score.
Where the click fits now
I still think being named inside the answer is the main thing to measure, and the click is a bonus that comes from a smaller group of people who are further along. The AI Verdict Study and the follow-up on where AI engines go to decide about your brand are about that first part, how the engines decide what to say about you. This update is about the second part. For the searches where somebody has to go do something, Google is building a lane straight to the official page, and it would be a shame to lose that lane because your returns page is a PDF.
A lot of Explainable is about how AI systems decide which sources to trust, and the official-page section looks to me like Google building a piece of that into the interface.
If you want help figuring out which of your pages are in good shape for this, the free Quick Check is a good place to start. I'd also love to hear what you're seeing. If you've noticed clicks coming in from the new inline links or the top-of-answer section, tell me, especially if it doesn't match what I've guessed here.
Jarred Smith is the author of Explainable: Why AI Recommends Some Brands & Ignores Others, an Amazon bestseller on AEO, GEO, and SEO. He's a marketing leader with nearly 20 years of experience across healthcare, public media, retail, and environmental services. Find him at jarredsmith.com.