Google bug: Some AI Overviews currently missing external links

Just saw an interesting update: apparently some Google AI Overviews are currently showing without links to external websites.

Google has confirmed it’s a bug and they’re working on a fix, but not all queries are affected.

If this issue persists for a while, it could temporarily reduce visibility and clicks even further, since CTR from AI Overviews is already much lower than from normal search results.


Curious if anyone here has already seen this in the wild or tracked traffic changes because of it?

But those links are rarely clicked as well. This surely bad signal to blogs/website owner. Hope so they fix it soon.

Yeah, I saw that too. Sounds like a temporary Google glitch, those AI Overviews sometimes just mess up. CTR is already low there, so it might hit traffic a bit, but hopefully they fix it soon. Nothing to panic about, just monitor and adjust if it drags on