TL;DR
- Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, said on X on 25 August 2026 that link carousels for developing topics are now live in AI Mode, after running in AI Overviews since May.
- The carousel is a horizontal row of article cards placed between sections of an AI response. Stein's example showed three cards, each with an image, a headline, a source and a publication date.
- Google says Preferred Sources can be highlighted inside the carousel, and said last week that more than 600,000 unique sources have been selected, up from more than 345,000 in May.
- Google says the carousel appears for only some searches, has not said whether it will expand to more query types, and Search Console currently has no filter to isolate it.
Google's link carousels for developing topics are now live in AI Mode. Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search, announced it on X on 25 August 2026 in one line: "Now live in AI Mode (already in AI Overviews): link carousels for developing topics." For some searches about a topic that is still unfolding, Google can show a horizontal row of article links between sections of the AI generated response.
It is worth separating this from the Preferred Sources news of the previous week, because the two sit on the same thread and blur together easily. That earlier story was about a control: the embeddable button a publisher can place on its own pages so readers can add that publisher as a Preferred Source, alongside Google's figure of more than 600,000 unique sources now selected, up from more than 345,000 in May. What Stein announced on 25 August is a placement, not a control. The carousel had been running inside AI Overviews since May, and it has now arrived in AI Mode, which is Google's other main generative Search experience. Search Engine Journal covered the announcement and what it changes, and the summary below follows that reporting.
What Robby Stein announced on 25 August 2026
Stein's post is short and does two things. It states that link carousels for developing topics are live in AI Mode, and it notes in parentheses that the same format was already available in AI Overviews. He also gave the reasoning: the goal with AI Search, he wrote, is to make it easy to connect with original coverage and a range of perspectives. In the fuller version of the post quoted by Search Engine Land, he added that asking about something trending will surface links to relevant articles and webpages, including a user's own Preferred Sources, front and centre.
That is the whole artifact. There is no accompanying blog post with rollout percentages, no list of countries, no query volume, and no before and after data. Anything beyond the wording above is either background from Google's May announcement or inference, and this article labels which is which.
The background matters because it explains why the AI Mode arrival is a separate event at all. Google first introduced the developing topic carousel in May, as part of an update aimed at connecting AI Search users with original reporting and a range of perspectives. Google said at the time that some developing topic searches would show initial context followed by a prominent carousel of timely articles. The May announcement did not give a separate availability date for the carousel inside AI Mode, so the format sat in one surface and not the other until Stein's post closed that gap.
What the carousel looks like inside a response
The example Stein shared was a query about recently discovered gold bars in Belgium. In that screenshot, three article cards appear near the top of the response, and each card carries an image, a headline, a source name and a publication date. The cards sit in a horizontal row, so the format is a scrollable strip rather than a stacked list.
Two details in that description are doing more work than they look. The first is the publication date on the card, which is the signal that the format is built for stories where recency is the point rather than for evergreen questions. The second is the source name, which means the publisher's brand is visible on the card itself rather than buried in a link target a reader has to hover over to see.
Position is described in the source as between sections of the AI generated response, with the specific example showing the cards near the top. Google has not published a rule for where the strip lands in a given answer, so treating "near the top" as guaranteed would overstate what the screenshot shows. One example is one example.
How this differs from the small citations attached to generated text
AI Mode already links out. The familiar mechanism is the small citation attached to a passage of generated text, which a reader has to notice and open. The carousel is a different kind of placement: a larger visual block of article cards with images and headlines, given its own row inside the answer.
Search Engine Journal's read of that difference is that the larger visual placement may increase clicks or make impressions more visible than the smaller inline citations do. The word to hold on to there is "may". No click through figure, no lift percentage and no publisher outcome has been published for this format, so the honest position is that the placement is bigger and what that produces is unmeasured in public.
Search Engine Land, covering the same announcement, framed it as making AI Mode results more click friendly and expected it to lead to more clicks than AI Mode produced before, while cautioning that clicks will not return to pre AI Search levels. That is an expectation stated by a trade publication, not a measurement released by Google, and it should be read that way. The same report described the format as being like top stories in shape, which is a comparison drawn by a trade publication and not a label Google has used for it.
Where Preferred Sources fit
Google has said that Preferred Sources can be highlighted within the carousel. Preferred Sources is the setting that lets a searcher tell Google which publications they want to see more of, and Stein's post explicitly mentions that a user's Preferred Sources can appear in the strip of links.
For a publisher, that connects two things that were previously separate lines of work. Getting a reader to select you as a Preferred Source is an audience task, closer to newsletter subscription than to ranking. The carousel is where that selection can now show up inside a generative answer. Google's own scale figure for the setting, more than 600,000 unique sources selected as of last week and more than 345,000 in May, is the only public number attached to any of this, and it counts sources, not impressions or clicks.
What Google has not said is how a Preferred Source is weighted against a non selected source inside the same carousel, or whether selection changes eligibility at all versus only ordering. That is unstated.
There is no ranking guidance in this announcement
This is the part most likely to be filled in with invention elsewhere, so it is worth being blunt. Google did not publish criteria for appearing in the developing topic carousel. There is no stated requirement about publication speed, article structure, schema, image dimensions, site authority or anything else.
Anyone can reason about what a carousel of timely article cards probably needs, an image, a clear headline and a real publication date, because those are the fields the card displays. That reasoning is not guidance and should not be sold as a checklist for getting in. The source does not say what makes a page eligible, and treating a card layout as a ranking specification would be a guess dressed as a fact.
What Google has not said
The clearest way to hold the limits is to line up each obvious question against what has actually been stated. The table below does that, and every entry is drawn from the announcement or from Google's May introduction of the format.
| Question | What has actually been said |
|---|---|
| Where is the carousel live? | AI Mode, announced 25 August 2026 by Robby Stein, and AI Overviews since May, when Google introduced the format. |
| Does it appear for every developing topic query? | No. Google says the carousel appears for only some searches, so there is no guarantee for any given story. |
| Can Preferred Sources appear in it? | Yes. Google says Preferred Sources can be highlighted within the carousel. |
| Will it expand to more query types? | Not stated. Google has not said, and says it continues to test different link designs inside AI experiences. |
| Can its performance be isolated in Search Console? | No. AI Mode links can generate impressions and clicks, but there is currently no filter for this particular carousel. |
The measurement gap in Search Console
AI Mode links can generate Search Console impressions and clicks, so traffic arriving through the carousel is not invisible in aggregate. What is missing is separation. There is currently no filter that isolates this particular carousel, which means a publisher cannot split carousel performance out from the rest of its Search Console data.
The practical consequence is that a publisher who starts appearing in the strip will see the result folded into totals that also contain classic blue links, AI Overviews citations and other AI Mode links. Attributing a change in a line chart to this format would be an assumption, not a reading. Search Engine Land makes the related point that Google does not report click data in Search Console's generative AI reporting, which is another reason to be careful about any confident before and after claim.
Until a filter exists, the defensible move is to record the date of the change, 25 August 2026, as an annotation on a reporting timeline, and to resist attributing later movement to it without a way to test the attribution. That is analysis by Relevant Audience, not Google guidance.
What this means for Thai marketers
The following is Relevant Audience's reasoning, clearly separated from what the source states. The announcement names no market and gives no language detail. Nothing in it says whether the developing topic carousel appears for Thai language queries, in Thailand, or on Thai news topics. Anyone claiming a Thailand specific rollout is going beyond the evidence.
With that said, there is a distinction worth watching. A brand newsroom in Bangkok that publishes commentary weeks after an event is not writing for a format whose cards display a publication date. A publisher that covers a developing story while it is developing is. That difference in cadence, rather than any ranking tactic, is what separates the two in a placement built around timeliness, and it is a content operations question more than a technical one. Teams thinking about how AI surfaces treat their material can start from Relevant Audience's generative engine optimisation service, and the underlying publishing cadence question belongs with content marketing.
The other point for a Thai team is measurement discipline. Because Search Console has no filter for the carousel, a monthly report that credits a traffic change to it would be asserting something the tooling cannot show. Reporting the placement's existence, its date and its limits is accurate. Reporting its effect is not, at least not yet.
FAQ on the developing topic link carousel
What exactly changed on 25 August 2026?
Link carousels for developing topics became available in AI Mode, having already been available in AI Overviews, according to a post on X by Robby Stein, VP of Product for Google Search. Nothing about the AI Overviews version was described as changing, and the format itself was introduced by Google in May.
How do I get my article into the carousel?
The source does not say, and no eligibility criteria have been published. Google gave no requirements about speed of publication, article structure or markup for this placement, so any step by step method offered for getting into the carousel is speculation rather than guidance.
Will this send more traffic to publishers?
No traffic figure, click through rate or publisher outcome has been published for this format. Search Engine Journal notes that the larger visual placement may increase clicks or make impressions more visible, and Search Engine Land expects the format to be more click friendly than AI Mode was before, but both are expectations rather than measured results.
Does the carousel appear for Thai language queries?
That is not stated anywhere in the announcement, which names no market and gives no language detail. Google says only that the carousel appears for some searches on developing topics, without specifying regions or languages.
Can I track carousel performance in Search Console?
Not separately. AI Mode links can generate Search Console impressions and clicks, but there is currently no filter for isolating this particular carousel, so its performance stays mixed in with everything else the property receives.
