AI Overviews citation cards with AI-written descriptions

Google has started showing short descriptions in AI Overviews citation cards that aren’t taken from your page at all: they are summaries written by AI. Brodie Clark spotted it, and Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable wrote it up on October 23, 2026. Google hasn’t announced anything, so for now this is an observed test or a gradual rollout. It does fit the direction Google has been taking with links in AI answers for months.

Below I go through what was spotted, how it relates to earlier tests of the citation layout, what it means for SEO and what is worth doing now, before Google says anything official.

What was spotted

Citation cards are the source boxes shown next to an AI Overviews answer: on the right on desktop, or below the answer. Until now they mostly showed the site name and the page title. Clark posted on X that a description now appears under the title, and that this text doesn’t exist in that form on the page. In his view the content is summarised from whatever Google considers most relevant to the query.

Schwartz sees the same thing on some of his test queries, but not all of them. With no official statement from Google, nobody knows how wide the test is, which markets it covers or whether it will stay.

This is different from a classic snippet in organic results. Google rewrites those too and doesn’t always use the meta description, but it usually picks and trims an existing passage. Here the description is generated: a model writes new text about your page.

Context: Google has been rebuilding AI links for months

The change is one more step in a series of citation layout tests that Search Engine Roundtable covered this year:

Late May to early June 2026: on mobile, in AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google tested a sliding carousel of links pinned to the bottom of the screen after a tap on a citation bubble, instead of a vertical list. A few days later more cards showed up in the side column of AI answers. Schwartz was sceptical at the time and thought it looked more like a bug than a feature.
September 29, 2026: Glenn Gabe ran into a test where citation cards sit below the answer on desktop and the right column disappears. It repeats tests from September 2025 and March 2026.
October 15, 2026: in an official post by Hema Budaraju (VP of Product, Search), Google said it is “continuously and significantly” increasing the number of links inside AI answers and showing them higher up more often. It is also testing a section with official sites at the top of the answer, and the related-article links at the end got thumbnails and a more clickable design.

So Google hasn’t settled on a pattern yet. Citation cards are a testing ground, and the AI-written description is just the latest variant.

Why it matters for SEO

You control less of what users see

In a classic result you could shape the description through the meta description and the opening of your text. In a citation card with an AI description your influence is only indirect: the description depends on the page content and on what the model finds relevant to the query. The same URL can get a different summary for different questions.

Risk of misrepresentation

A machine-written summary can oversimplify or distort what you said. In fields where wording matters (finance, health, law), that is a real reputational risk. There is no data yet on how often it happens, so I treat it as something to watch rather than a proven problem.

The reason to click may change

A good summary can make clicks better targeted, because users see why they should visit the page. It can also work the other way: if the description answers the question, there is no need to click. Nobody has data on which effect wins. I cover this mechanism in more depth in my posts on zero-click searches and the data on how AI answers affect traffic.

Measurement is limited

According to the Search Console documentation, a click on a link to an external page in an AI Overview counts as a regular click, and the whole AI Overview takes one position shared by every link in it. A link that only starts a new search (for example, moving into an AI Mode conversation) counts as neither a click nor an impression. The report also doesn’t tell you whether someone came from a citation card, a link in the text or the list at the end of the answer. You can’t measure the effect of AI descriptions in cards on its own.

What you can do now

Google hasn’t confirmed any way to “optimise for the AI description”. These steps pay off whether or not the test sticks:

Open each section with a clear answer. A model summarising the page then has unambiguous material, and you can more easily check whether the description matches your text. Whether that reduces misrepresentation is unknown, since Google hasn’t confirmed anything of the kind. My guide on writing content AI wants to cite has more tips.
Keep the title, headings and content consistent. The fewer conflicting signals a page gives, the more accurate the summary.
Check your key queries by hand. Search for the phrases your site gets cited for and see how the card describes it. Take screenshots, because the result can change.
Measure citations, not just rankings. I described how to turn that into KPIs in my post on new SEO KPIs for AI citations.
Don’t rebuild your site for a single test. Google changes the citation layout every few weeks.

What is still unknown

whether this is a test or a gradual rollout, and which markets and languages it covers,
what data the model uses (only the page content, or also the query and the conversation context),
whether the description affects CTR, and in which direction,
whether Google will give publishers any control over how the description reads.

Control over the use of your content as such already exists. Since August 31, 2026 you can exclude a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s generative features in Search Console (Settings → Search generative AI). The setting works per Search Console property, not per URL. A domain property covers the whole site, but a URL-prefix property (for example the /blog/ directory) inherits its parent’s setting and can override it, so you can cover a separate section of a site together with its subpages. Either way the control is all or nothing: it also removes citations, not just the description. Google says it doesn’t affect ranking in other parts of Search or model training, which Google-Extended in robots.txt handles separately. Over the wording of the card description itself you have no direct say.

Until Google says something, these are conclusions from a handful of observations. I’ll come back to the topic if a confirmation or data shows up.

Summary

AI-written descriptions in AI Overviews citation cards are, for now, an observed test, confirmed by two people and with no official documentation. They fit a wider trend: Google shows more links in AI answers but reshapes more and more of how it presents your page. So I write content that can be summarised faithfully, and I keep checking how Google presents it for the queries that matter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are citation cards in AI Overviews?

They are the source boxes shown next to an AI Overviews answer (on the right or below it). They show the pages Google based the answer on and link to them.

Has Google officially confirmed AI descriptions in citation cards?

No. Brodie Clark spotted the change, and Barry Schwartz sees it on some of his queries. Google has not announced it, so it may be a test.

Can I control how my page is described in a citation card?

You cannot control the wording. It is generated from the page content and the query, so your influence is indirect: clear structure and consistent content. In Search Console (Settings → Search generative AI) you can, however, exclude a site or a URL-prefix property, such as a single directory, from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's generative features.

Will I see traffic from citation cards in Search Console?

A click on a link to an external page in an AI Overview counts as a regular click, and the whole AI Overview shares one position. The report does not separate citation cards from other links in the answer, though.