Google moves links higher in AI Mode and says Preferred Sources use has grown sevenfold

Google has announced five changes to how links appear in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Substantially more inline links will be shown, and shown higher in responses. A dedicated section at the top is planned for official-site links, with context on why each is useful. Timely-article carousels are expanding to more locations and languages and will surface Preferred Sources. End-of-response related-article links are getting thumbnails and a more clickable design. And Google is testing clickable creator and publisher names.

Alongside this, Google said use of Preferred Sources has grown more than sevenfold since the start of the year. Preferred Sources is the setting that lets a reader tell Google which publications they want to see more of in results.

Why this matters. Two things follow for anyone publishing into AI search. The citation slot is moving to inline position within the answer, which rewards content where a single passage answers a single question cleanly and can be lifted without surrounding context. Long, well-argued pieces that build to a conclusion are harder to cite than pieces that state the answer and then explain it.

The second is more actionable. If Preferred Sources use has grown sevenfold and Google is now surfacing those sources more prominently, then asking readers to set a publication as a preferred source stops being a gimmick and becomes a reasonable thing to ask once. It is a one-off action by the reader that changes what they see from then on, and it is one of the few levers a niche publisher has that does not depend on outranking anyone.