Google makes five changes to surface links in AI mode and AI Overviews

On October 15, Google announced five adjustments to how links are shown in its AI mode and AI Overviews. The changes include more frequent in‑text links near the top of responses, image thumbnails for "Dive Deeper" links, an expanded breaking‑news carousel with preferred sources (now 7‑fold higher usage), a test frame that places one or two official sites at the very top of answers, and clickable creator and publisher names in video results. The top‑site frame and video name clicks are still in testing, with target countries not disclosed. The same day Google also made its new Gemini 4 Argon model available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the Gemini app and Search AI mode.

Separately, Cloudflare launched a Web Search API for AI agents on October 2, letting developers call real‑time web searches through a single endpoint using partner rates from Ceramic.ai, Exa and Linkup. The company also reported that a pilot with OpenAI has added hundreds of millions of previously unknown pages to OpenAI’s search index, passing metadata but not full text.