Google puts links up front in AI Mode: what changes for SEO and GEO?

Google is making links more prominent in its AI-powered search experiences (AI Mode and AI Overviews). According to Google's 15 October 2026 announcement (by Hema Budaraju, Search product team), links inside AI answers will appear more often and higher up, and a test of a dedicated "official websites" section has started. For businesses that want clicks to their own site, this is a development worth watching from both an SEO and a GEO point of view.

An inline link, in Google's words, is a link embedded in a word or phrase in an AI response, letting readers go deeper into a topic the moment they are reading about it.

What did Google announce?

• More inline links: Google writes that it has made "continued and substantial increases" to the presence of inline links in its AI experiences. Links will be shown higher up and more often.
• Official-site section (test): when only one or two official places on the web can complete a task or give exact information, those links will be surfaced in a dedicated section at the top of a response, with context on why each is useful. Google calls it a test.
• News carousels: carousels for timely articles are rolling out to additional locations and languages.
• "Preferred Sources": the number of people using the feature has grown by more than 7x since the start of the year. The figure is Google's own claim, with no base number given.
• Creator and publisher profiles (test): in AI Mode, creator names on video results link to their Search profiles.

What does it mean for SEO and GEO?

Google names no technical requirement for these features and does not say when or how widely they will appear in Turkey. What follows is our interpretation, not Google's advice.

• If the official-site section works as described, a business's name, website and Google Business Profile details should match each other.
• A sentence at the top of a page that answers the question directly gives AI answers a clear passage to cite.
• A short FAQ section repeats the same information in question-and-answer form.

Frequently asked questions

Source: Google, "More ways to connect with the web from Search".