What Google's new AI Mode links mean for brand websites

Google is testing a section at the top of AI Mode and AI Overviews answers that lists the one or two official websites for a task, announced on 15 October 2026 with four other link changes. For brands, the page that handles returns, bookings or warranty claims is now a candidate for the first link in Google’s AI answer.

Key takeaways

• Google announced five link changes to AI Mode and AI Overviews on 15 October 2026, in a post by Hema Budaraju, VP of product management for Search.
• Inline links now appear higher in AI responses more often, and Google says it has made “continued and substantial increases” to how many appear, without giving a figure.
• Google is testing a dedicated section at the top of some responses for tasks with only one or two official websites, each link shown with context on why it helps.
• Use of Google’s Preferred Sources feature has grown more than seven times since the start of 2026, and news carousels that favour those sources are rolling out to more locations and languages.
• Creator and publisher names on AI Mode video results became clickable in a test that started the week of 15 October, linking to Google Search profiles.

Five link changes, two of them tests

Budaraju’s post on Google’s blog lists the changes in order. Two are live, one is rolling out and two are tests, which changes how much a marketing team should do about each.

Google calls the official websites section an extension of how it already puts a site “front and center” when someone is looking for that site. The difference is that the link would sit above an AI-written answer, with a line of context from Google on why the page is useful, which Google writes and you don’t control.

Which brand pages count as official?

Google hasn’t defined it. Its example is a task where “there are only one or two official places on the web” to complete it or get the exact information, which describes government services well and brand journeys almost as well. A shopper asking how to return a jacket, register a bike warranty or book a car service has one right answer, the brand’s own page.

Two things follow for brand teams. If the official page for a task is hard for Google to identify, say because the returns policy lives in a PDF and the warranty form sits behind a log-in, a retailer’s help page or a forum thread may answer the task instead. And if a brand runs several near-identical pages for one task across regional sites, help centres and campaign microsites, Google has to choose between them, and the one it picks may not be the one the team maintains.

Our view at Manual Focus is that every brand should treat its top ten customer tasks as search products, each with one owned, crawlable, plainly titled page that states the answer in its first paragraph, because those pages are the most likely candidates for Google’s official section and the least contested queries a brand has. Earlier this month we covered how AI Overviews reached 82% of tracked brand searches, and this test goes one step further by putting a brand’s own task page above Google’s summary of it.

Do Preferred Sources matter to brands?

They matter to any brand that publishes news, research or regular editorial. Google’s Preferred Sources documentation says a reader who picks your site will see your content more often in Top Stories and may see it with a preferred badge in AI Mode and AI Overviews, as long as your site is included in Search generative AI features in Search Console. Only whole domains and subdomains qualify, so a blog at a /blog/ path is out unless the whole domain is chosen.

Google offers a button, a scripted flow and a plain deep link to ask readers to choose you. For a brand with a loyal readership, such as a cycling brand whose race reports and product tests have a following, a newsletter line with that link costs nothing. The carousels expanding now favour exactly those sources, and a reader who opts in is a durable signal that no ranking update removes. It fits the argument we made in The citation moved off the page, that the brands AI answers name are the ones people already ask for.

What changes for video and creators?

The creator test links names on AI Mode video results to Search profiles, which Google launched on 4 June 2026, initially in the US. A brand whose YouTube channel or creator partners show up in AI Mode video results now has a second page of its own to keep current. Search Engine Journal found that Google’s help page listed profiles in the US, Canada and India only on 15 October, so UK teams can’t claim one yet and should watch the test rather than act on it.

Five things to change this month

1. List your top customer tasks. Pull the ten most common support and brand-plus-task searches, such as returns, delivery, warranty, sizing and booking, from Search Console and your help desk.
2. Give each task one official page. Consolidate duplicates, move answers out of PDFs and log-in walls, and open each page with a direct answer. Our site audit and refresh playbook sets out how to run that review.
3. Check AI Mode for those tasks every fortnight. Record which page Google links, whether an official section appears and whose site wins when it isn’t yours.
4. Ask your readers to choose you. If you publish editorial, add Google’s Preferred Sources link to your newsletter and article footers, and confirm your domain appears in the generative AI features report in Search Console.
5. Annotate 15 October in analytics. Inline links now sit higher in answers, and Search Console won’t show that as a position change, so a dated note is the only way to tie any shift in organic clicks to it. The Bing Topics Portfolio gives you query-level citation data that Google doesn’t yet offer.

Open questions

Google gave no numbers for its inline link increase and no evidence that the changes raise clicks, so treat the announcement as a statement of intent. The official websites section has no launch date, market list or eligibility rules, and Google says it will keep refining these features “based on what works best”, which leaves room for the test to end. The carousel expansion names no countries, so UK availability is unconfirmed. Google also hasn’t said how it decides which pages count as official, whether structured data plays a part, or whether a brand can be passed over for a large retailer selling the same product. Its own guidance says no special markup is needed to appear in AI features, and nothing in this announcement says otherwise.

Further reading

• AI Overviews hit 82% of tracked brand searches in September, on why brand searches now start with Google’s summary
• The citation moved off the page, on what makes a brand the source AI answers name
• What Bing’s Topics Portfolio means for AI search content plans, for query-level AI citation data
• Site audit and refresh, a playbook for cleaning up the pages Google has to choose between
• What Google’s Lens data in Search Console means for SEO teams, on reading Google’s newer AI reports

Our services page explains how we help brand and content teams prepare their sites for AI search.

I run marketing for [brand], [one line on what you sell] at [website], selling
mainly in [market].

Google is testing an "official websites" section at the top of AI Mode and AI
Overviews for tasks where only one or two official sites can help, such as a
return, a warranty claim or a booking. I want to know which of our customer
tasks could trigger it.

Attached are:
- a Search Console Performance export of queries for the last 3 months
- our help-desk ticket counts by tag or category for the same period

Find the ten customer tasks people search for or contact us about most (for
example returns, delivery, warranty, sizing, booking, account help). Group
queries and tickets by task, not by wording.

Give me a table with the columns: Task | Example searches | Monthly searches
(from Search Console) | Tickets in the period | The URL on our site that
currently answers it (or "none found").

Rank by combined demand. If a query or tag could belong to more than one task,
say which you chose and why. Don't estimate any number you can't see in the
files; mark it "not in data" instead.

Here are our ten most common customer tasks and the URL we think answers each
one: [paste the table from the first prompt].

For each task, check our site at [website] and tell me:
1. How many pages answer this task. List every URL you find, including help
   centre, regional and campaign pages.
2. Whether the answer is on a crawlable HTML page, or stuck in a PDF, behind a
   login, or inside an app.
3. Whether the page title says plainly what the page does.
4. Whether the first paragraph answers the question directly.

Then, for each task, recommend the single page that should be the official
one, list which duplicates to merge or redirect into it, and draft a new
opening paragraph (under 60 words) that answers the task in plain language.

Give the audit as one table with a row per task, followed by the drafted
paragraphs. Flag anything you couldn't open or check rather than guessing.

Set this up as a routine that runs every other Monday morning.

Our ten customer tasks, and the official page for each, are: [paste the task
and URL list].

For each task, search Google in AI Mode from a UK location, using the
plainest phrasing a customer would use (for example "[brand] returns").
Record:
- which page or pages the AI answer links to, and in what order
- whether an "official websites" section appears at the top
- if our official page isn't the first link, whose site is

Give me a table with the columns: Date | Task | Search used | First link |
Our page linked? (yes/no, and position) | Official section shown? (yes/no) |
Competitor or retailer that outranked us.

Compare it with the previous run and list anything that changed at the top.
If AI Mode wouldn't load or showed no AI answer for a search, say so in that
row rather than leaving it blank.