Google AI Overviews are showing far more links to outside sites, but some lead to AI Mode
A third party report says the share of Google AI Overviews with a link inside the answer jumped from near zero to around 26% in mid September 2026. The change could send more AI referral traffic to apartment websites, but some of those underlined links open an AI Mode chat instead of a real site, so measurement is murky.
What happened
On September 21, 2026, Malte Landwehr of Peec AI, a company that tracks AI search, posted a chart on X claiming Google has "massively increased the number of external links within AI Overview answers." His data shows the share of AI Overviews that contain an external link inside the answer text going from near zero on August 25 to about 26.2% by September 20, with a sharp jump starting around September 11. Search Engine Roundtable summarized the post on September 23, and Search Engine Journal and Shopifreaks followed up with their own write ups the same week.
AI Overviews are the AI generated answers that often appear at the very top of Google results. Until this change, those answers rarely linked out inside the paragraph itself; links were mostly tucked into a small sources panel. The new behavior puts clickable links right in the body of the answer, similar to how a human writer would cite a source.
There are two important wrinkles. First, this is a third party report, not a Google announcement. Peec AI did not disclose how many queries it looked at, which countries, which devices, or how it decided what counts as an "embedded" link. Search Engine Journal called this out directly. Second, on September 21 SEO consultant Gagan Ghotra posted a video showing that some of the underlined text inside an AI Overview does not go to a webpage at all. Instead, clicking it opens an AI Mode conversation inside Google. In other words, some of those new "links" keep the user on Google rather than send them to a property website.
Why it matters for apartment marketers
AI Overviews already show up for a lot of renter research questions, from "best neighborhoods in Charlotte for young professionals" to "pet friendly apartments near downtown Austin." If roughly a quarter of those answers now carry an inline link, there is a real chance for a property website, a neighborhood guide page, or a floor plan page to be the thing a renter clicks on from inside the AI answer. That is a bigger window for referral traffic than apartment marketers have had from AI Overviews so far.
The catch is the AI Mode behavior. If a renter clicks underlined text and lands in a Google chat instead of your site, you may not get the visit, and Search Console cannot cleanly show you what happened. Search Engine Journal notes it is not clear whether Search Console counts these as clicks or treats them as query refinements, which produce no measurable impressions. So the upside is real, but the measurement picture is still foggy.
What to do this week
- Pull your Search Console performance data for the last 30 days and compare clicks and impressions since September 11 against the four weeks before. Watch for sudden impression gains with flat clicks, which can be a sign of AI Overview appearances that are not converting to visits.
- Audit the top three pages renters land on from Google (community home, floor plans, neighborhood or FAQ pages). Make sure each one answers common renter questions in short, direct sentences that an AI could lift as a citation.
- Add or refresh a plain language FAQ on each community site covering rent range, pet policy, parking, utilities included, and lease length. These are the exact facts AI Overviews tend to pull.
- Check how your property name appears in AI Overviews and in Google AI Mode for the queries you care about. If you are not cited at all, see which sites are and consider getting mentions on those (local news, apartment guides, neighborhood blogs).
- Set up a monthly check for your top 10 renter intent queries so you can spot shifts in whether AI Overviews are showing, who they cite, and whether your site is one of the inline links.
What we do not know yet
Google has not confirmed the change or explained it. We do not know if the 26.2% figure holds up across different query types, devices, or regions, and we do not know how often an underlined link opens AI Mode versus a real website. We also do not have clear guidance from Google on how Search Console will report these interactions. Expect the picture to keep shifting over the next few weeks.