TL;DR
- Chris Long spotted the behaviour first, posting an example on X on 27 August 2026 and writing that Google is revealing the AI Mode prompt box by default for some queries.
- Before this, Google loaded only a snippet of the AI Overview and the searcher had to click Show more to see the full response.
- A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Roundtable that AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where Google's systems determine it is most useful for people.
- Barry Schwartz said he was able to replicate the behaviour, and no timeline, geography, query list or share of queries was given.
- No traffic figure was published, so a click drop measured in Search Console cannot be attributed to this change alone.
Google is now pushing searchers from an AI Overview straight into AI Mode by default for some queries, without anyone clicking the "Show more" button. Search Engine Roundtable reported the change on 28 August 2026 and said Google confirmed it. In the treatment being described, the AI Overview loads a much fuller answer of the kind AI Mode produces, the follow-up "Ask anything" box is already open, and the ten blue links are pushed much further down the page.
That is the whole of the confirmed news, and it is worth being strict about the size of it before anyone builds a strategy on top. This is a change to how one Google surface renders for an unspecified set of queries. It is not a documented rollout, there is no published list of affected queries, no share of queries, no country, no date range, and no traffic number. Barry Schwartz, who wrote the report on Search Engine Roundtable, said he was able to replicate the behaviour himself.
Who saw it first and what Google said
The behaviour was first spotted by Chris Long, who posted an example on X on 27 August 2026. In that post Long wrote that Google is now revealing the AI Mode prompt box by default for some queries, and added that this is how Google continues to push AI Mode as the default search experience. Search Engine Roundtable picked it up the following day, 28 August 2026, and asked Google about it.
A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Roundtable: "For some queries, AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it's most useful for people." Read the sentence closely, because it is doing a lot of work. It confirms the behaviour exists. It attaches it to "some queries" and to "topics" rather than to a list. And it grounds the trigger in Google's own judgement of usefulness, which is not a criterion anyone outside Google can audit or predict.
What actually changed on the page
Previously, Google loaded a snippet of the AI Overview, and a searcher who wanted the full response had to click "Show more" to open it. That click was a small but real filter. Some people clicked it and stayed in the AI answer, and some did not click it and carried on down the page to the organic results.
In the expanded treatment, that filter is gone for the affected queries. The fuller answer is there on arrival, and the "Ask anything" box sits open underneath it, inviting a follow-up question inside Google rather than a click out to a site. Both of those consume vertical space, which is why the ten blue links end up lower. The mechanism is layout, not ranking. Nothing in the report says any site's position changed.
What "confirmed" means in this story
Precision matters here because the word gets stretched. What exists is a statement from a Google spokesperson to one publication. There is no post on the Search Central blog, no help centre documentation, no entry in a product update log, and no rollout announcement of the kind Google publishes when it wants site owners to act. The statement confirms that AI Overviews may dynamically expand for some queries, and it stops there.
So the honest description for a client deck is that Google acknowledged the behaviour to a trade publication after an SEO spotted it. That is meaningfully different from a documented launch, and the difference matters if you are deciding how much budget to move. A behaviour Google has acknowledged but not documented can also change again without anyone announcing that either.
Two kinds of publisher, two different problems
The impact of this depends on where your clicks were coming from in the first place, and the two cases are not the same.
If your traffic already arrived from links inside or beneath an AI Overview, the expansion is arguably neutral to positive on the surface. A fuller answer is a longer answer, and a longer answer has more room for the citations and source links that AI answers carry. Whether that translates into clicks is not something the report addresses, and no click data was given, so treat this as a structural observation rather than a forecast.
If your traffic comes from the ten blue links, the picture is simpler and worse. Your listing has not moved in the ranking, but it has moved on the screen. Position three is still position three in Search Console while sitting below a full-page AI answer and an open prompt box. That gap between reported position and actual visibility is the single most important thing to understand about this change, and it is the reason position-only reporting has been getting less useful for two years.
There is a third case worth naming because it is common in Thailand: sites whose demand is transactional and local. A query that ends in a phone call, a LINE message or a map pin behaves differently from a query that ends in reading. The report says nothing about query types, so this is reasoning about your own funnel, not a finding.
What you can actually measure in your own Search Console
You cannot see AI Overview expansion in Search Console. There is no dimension for it, and Google has published none. What you can see is the shape of the damage if there is any, and the shape has a signature.
- Impressions flat or rising while clicks fall on the same set of queries. That combination says you are still being shown and less often chosen.
- Average position flat while click-through rate falls. Rank did not move, so something above your listing did.
- The gap widening on informational queries faster than on navigational or branded ones, since branded demand rarely gets answered away.
- Page-level splits rather than site-level totals, because a site average hides the specific templates that are exposed.
Pull sixteen months so you have a year-over-year comparison, split by query and by page, and write down what you find before you interpret it. The measurement is worth doing even though it cannot prove anything, which brings us to the honest limitation.
Why that measurement cannot isolate this change
Everything that could produce that signature is happening at once. AI Overviews were already appearing on more queries. AI Mode exists as its own surface. Ranking systems keep updating on their own schedule. Seasonality moves demand. Competitors publish. Your own site changes. A drop in click-through rate at a stable position is consistent with this expansion, and it is equally consistent with four other things that happened in the same window.
Google published no timeline, no geography and no percentage of queries, so there is no dated boundary you could use as a before and after. Without that boundary, an attribution claim is a story, not a measurement. Say so out loud in the report. A client who is told "clicks fell 18 percent and we cannot attribute that to one cause" trusts the next analysis more than a client who is handed a confident answer that later falls apart.
What you can do instead is describe the direction and act on the part that is robust to being wrong about the cause. That part is not hard to identify.
Being the source the answer quotes
The durable position in a search results page that answers more and links less is being the thing the answer is built from. When an AI answer expands, it needs more material, and material comes from pages that state things clearly enough to be lifted.
The properties that make a page quotable are boring and testable. It answers the question in the first sentence rather than the fourth paragraph. It attaches a date and an actor to each claim, so a lifted sentence still makes sense on its own. It puts numbers in a table rather than burying them in prose. It says what is not known. None of that is a trick, and all of it also makes the page better for a human who landed on it, which is the test that keeps the work honest. This is the substance of generative engine optimisation once you strip the acronym off it, and it is the same discipline behind AI SEO work generally.
The second durable move is demand that does not route through a general query at all. Branded search, an email list, a LINE audience, returning direct traffic. None of those get intercepted by a fuller AI Overview, because none of them start with a question typed into Google. This is not a new idea and it has never been more relevant.
The third is coverage outside Google. If assistants beyond Google Search are quoting sources, being present and citable in those answers matters for the same reason, and the work of getting cited by ChatGPT and other assistants overlaps heavily with the work described above. What does not overlap is anything that depends on a specific SERP layout, because layouts are exactly what keeps changing.
Before and after, as reported
This table compares how Search Engine Roundtable described the AI Overview before this behaviour and in the expanded treatment, on 28 August 2026. It covers only what the report stated.
| Element | Previous behaviour | Expanded treatment |
|---|---|---|
| AI answer on load | A snippet of the AI Overview | A much fuller answer, of the kind AI Mode gives |
| Show more button | Required to see the full response | Not needed; the fuller answer loads by default |
| Ask anything box | Not open by default | Already open |
| Ten blue links | Higher on the page | Pushed much further down |
| Which queries | Not applicable | Some queries; Google did not say which or how many |
What this means for Thai marketers
Nobody has published Thai data on this, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. Search Engine Roundtable gave no geography at all, so whether the expanded treatment appears on Thai-language queries in Thailand is unknown from the source. The first useful step is not analysis, it is observation: run twenty of your own commercial and informational queries in Thai and in English, on mobile, and record what the page looks like. Screenshot it. That log is worth more in three months than any estimate you could make today.
The second step is to fix what your reporting is telling clients. If a monthly deck leads with average position, it is quietly overstating your visibility on every query where an AI answer sits above you. Reporting that pairs position with click-through rate and impressions, and that annotates known Google changes with dates, survives this shift. Reporting that treats position as visibility does not. That is a reporting discipline question, and it belongs in how you scope SEO work in Thailand from the start rather than a slide you add after the numbers dip.
The third is a budget conversation held early rather than late. If a large share of a client's organic traffic comes from informational queries with no transaction attached, that traffic is the most exposed to a surface that answers questions in place. Saying that plainly in August is a strategy discussion. Saying it in December, after the number has already moved, is an excuse.
Frequently asked questions
Which queries get the expanded AI Overview?
Google did not say. The spokesperson statement to Search Engine Roundtable refers to some queries and to topics where Google's systems determine it is most useful for people, with no list, no category, no share of queries and no way for a site owner to check which of their queries are affected.
Did Google announce this on the Search Central blog?
No. What exists is a statement from a Google spokesperson given to Search Engine Roundtable for its 28 August 2026 report, not a Search Central blog post, help centre page or documented rollout, which is why no timeline or geography accompanies it.
Does this remove the ten blue links from the page?
No. Search Engine Roundtable described the organic results as being pushed much further down the page by the fuller AI answer and the open "Ask anything" box, not as being removed, and the report says nothing about any change to ranking.
How much traffic will this cost a publisher?
No traffic figure was published, so any number attached to this story is an estimate rather than a reported fact. The report covers what the page looks like and who confirmed it, and contains no click, impression or revenue data of any kind.
Can Search Console show whether a query got the expanded treatment?
No. Search Console has no dimension for AI Overview presence or expansion, so the closest available evidence is indirect: impressions holding steady while clicks and click-through rate fall at an unchanged average position, which is consistent with this change but cannot be attributed to it alone.
Where to take this next
If you want to know how exposed a specific site is, the work is query-level rather than site-level: which pages depend on informational demand, which of those queries return an AI answer today, and what the click-through rate has done at a stable position. If that is a question you would rather hand to someone, our team in Bangkok can run it with you.
