Google AI Overviews Are Now Showing More Links: What This Means for SMEs

A few weeks ago we published a piece on Google's AI Overviews eating into organic traffic. The concern was real: AI Overviews answer questions directly on the search results page, which means fewer clicks for the websites whose content Google is summarising.

Here's the update: Google just made a change that shifts the picture somewhat.

Google has announced that AI Overviews on desktop will now show a hover link pop-up when users hover over content in the AI summary. You hover over a sentence, a popup appears showing the source websites. In AI Mode, link icons across both desktop and mobile are now more prominent, making citations more visible rather than buried.

This isn't a reversal of the AI Overviews strategy. But it is an acknowledgement that the original "AI answers everything, users go nowhere" experience created real problems for publishers, and that Google needs traffic to flow somewhere. For businesses with well-structured, authoritative content, this update is worth taking seriously.

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What Actually Changed

It helps to understand the before and after.

Before: AI Overviews surfaced a consolidated answer synthesised from multiple sources. Attribution links existed, but they were small, easy to miss, and many users never saw or clicked them. The practical effect was that content creators and businesses contributed to Google's answer without receiving meaningful referral traffic.

After: On desktop, users hovering over content within an AI Overview see a pop-up showing the source links explicitly. In AI Mode (Google's dedicated AI search interface), link icons are more prominent across both desktop and mobile, making it clearer to users that sources exist and where they can go.

In practical terms: if your content gets cited inside an AI Overview, the pathway to a click on your website has improved. Not guaranteed, but meaningfully improved.

This matters because it creates a new incentive. Getting cited in AI Overviews was previously a mixed blessing, because your content contributed to an answer that kept users on Google. Now there's a clearer upside to being cited. The hover link pop-up effectively functions like a mini-recommendation for your site.

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What This Doesn't Solve

Let's be honest about the limits of this update.

For broad informational queries, AI Overviews will still answer the question for the majority of users without requiring a click. "How does GST work in Singapore," "what are the PDPA rules on employee data," "when should I hire an accountant": these questions can now be answered completely on the search results page, and most users asking them won't click through even if the hover popup is right there.

The update helps most with queries where:

• The answer is nuanced and the user wants more depth than a paragraph summary provides
• The source carries credibility that matters to the user (a healthcare clinic, a law firm, a local specialist in their sector)
• The user is at a commercial decision stage, comparing options or evaluating providers

That third category is where SMEs should focus their attention. Which brings us to what to actually do.

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Who Gets Cited in AI Overviews?

Before talking tactics, it's worth understanding what gets cited in the first place.

Getting into an AI Overview is not random. It correlates with the same quality signals Google uses for traditional ranking, just processed differently. The factors that matter most:

Authoritative, specific content. Generic advice ("consider your marketing goals") is less likely to be cited than specific, verifiable claims. Content that makes clear, substantiated points with real detail is more citable than content that hedges everything.

E-E-A-T signals. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Google's AI citation systems apply the same quality assessments as its ranking algorithm. Content with clear authorship, demonstrable expertise, and a credible publishing source performs better. An article by a named marketing professional at a Singapore agency carries more weight than an unsigned generic blog post.

Structured content. AI systems parse well-organised content more effectively. Clear H2 and H3 headings, short paragraphs, and a logical flow that answers a specific question before expanding make your content more consumable by citation engines.

Schema markup. Structured data signals explicitly tell Google what kind of content you're providing. FAQ schema, HowTo schema, and LocalBusiness schema all help Google's systems understand your content in a way that makes it easier to surface as a citation.

Answering a defined question directly. AI Overviews are triggered by specific queries. Pages that directly answer a clearly defined question perform better than pages that orbit a topic without landing on it.

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Four Actions SMEs Should Take Now

1. Add FAQ schema to your service and blog pages

FAQ schema is one of the most direct, implementable things you can do to signal to Google that your content answers specific questions. If you have service pages for SEO, web design, Google Ads, or social media marketing, and they include FAQs, mark them up with structured data.

Your web developer can implement this, or if you're on WordPress, Yoast SEO and Rank Math both support FAQ schema without custom code. This takes hours to implement, not weeks.

2. Shift content focus toward bottom-of-funnel and comparison queries

AI Overviews are most disruptive for top-of-funnel informational queries. They are least disruptive, and most useful for your business, at the commercial intent stage.

"Best digital marketing agency Singapore," "SEO vs Google Ads for F&B businesses," "how much does a website cost in Singapore": these are queries where users are evaluating options. AI Overviews are less likely to fully resolve these queries, and more likely to surface your content as a cited source for users who want specifics.

Build comparison content, service-specific pages, and pricing guides. These are the queries that drive real business conversations, and they're where this update creates the most opportunity.

3. Make your expertise visible

If your blog content doesn't have clear author attribution with relevant credentials, add it. If your About page doesn't explain who your team is and why you're qualified to be writing about what you're writing about, that's worth addressing.

For SMEs in regulated industries like healthcare, legal, finance, and education, this is particularly important. Users searching for sensitive information in these sectors need to trust the source, and Google's citation systems reflect that preference.

4. Keep investing in traditional SEO

Here's the nuance that tends to get lost in these conversations.

Google's AI Overviews remain primarily a feature for broad informational queries. For navigational searches ("Magnified Technologies Singapore"), local queries ("digital marketing agency near me," "best SEO agency Tanjong Pagar"), and transactional queries ("hire SEO agency Singapore"), traditional organic results still dominate what users see.

Google holds around 90% of Singapore's search market. The people searching for your business, your services, or your expertise are overwhelmingly using Google. Traditional SEO for the queries that actually convert remains as important as it was.

The businesses that do well in 2026 will run both tracks simultaneously: content that's citable in AI Overviews for awareness and authority, and traditional SEO for the queries that drive leads and sales.

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The Part Worth Being Realistic About

We wrote a cautionary piece when AI Overviews first started affecting traffic, and the concern hasn't gone away.

This update adjusts the dial, it doesn't reverse the trend. Google's fundamental interest is in keeping users engaged on its own platform. AI Overviews serve that interest. The hover link popup is a concession to publishers, but the long-term direction of AI search is still toward Google answering more questions without requiring a click.

What this update confirms is that there will always be some traffic pathway for high-quality, specifically structured content. Google needs sources to cite, and it needs those sources to be credible so users trust the answers.

The businesses that get cited regularly in AI Overviews won't be the ones that spent months trying to "optimise for AI Overviews." They'll be the ones that consistently produced the most credible, most specific, best-structured content in their category.

That's a strategy that works regardless of how Google's interface continues to evolve.

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If you're trying to figure out how to build a content and SEO strategy that holds up through these changes, Magnified works with SMEs on search strategy and content. We'd rather give you an honest view of what makes sense for your business than sell you on a tactic that might be obsolete next quarter.

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This article references Google's February 2026 update to AI Overviews (hover link pop-ups on desktop, more prominent link icons in AI Mode). Features and behaviour are subject to change as Google continues to develop its AI search products.