Signal Observatory

· 12 min

Google moves links up in AI Mode and lets ads in

Google moved links higher in AI answers without click data, tested ads in AI Mode for Personal Intelligence users, and gave Google Ads channel priorities.

AIGoogle & Search
AI28%GOOGLE & SEARCH28%PPC24%ANALYTICS13%BRANDS7%
Topic radarSelect a topic to filter the archive. The radar shows how this issue's words divide across the topics.

Signal readout

Topic mix

  • AI: 28%
  • Google & Search: 28%
  • PPC: 24%
  • Analytics: 13%
  • Brands: 7%
  • AI28%
  • Google & Search28%
  • PPC24%
  • Analytics13%
  • Brands7%

Share of the issue's words about each topic, counted section by section.

Why it matters

A link that moves higher inside an AI answer does not change its reported position in Search Console. To see whether it changed anything, compare clicks on the landing pages that appear in AI answers before and after 15 October, not positions.

The short answer

What
More and higher links in AI Mode and AI Overviews, an ads test in AI Mode for Personal Intelligence users, channel prioritization and budget allocation in Google Ads, a paper on what ChatGPT cites, Meta's new commercial terms, and a correction on ChatGPT's missing tags.
Why
Because the places where a page can be seen in AI answers moved, paid placements moved into a surface that had none, and the usual stand-ins for measuring AI citations proved weak.
Who
Sites that want to be cited in AI answers, advertisers running Search, Performance Max and Demand Gen, and anyone who tracks AI citations.
Where
Google Search, AI Mode and AI Overviews, Google Ads, ChatGPT, and every site whose business uses Meta products.
When
15–18 October 2026. Google's link changes and channel controls were announced on 14–15 October; the ads test was reported on 16–17 October; Meta's terms take effect on 30 October.
How we know
Google's blog and Search Help; the Google Ads & Commerce blog and Help Center; Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal and PPC Land; an arXiv preprint; Meta's terms; Nieman Lab and MobileSyrup reports; Adobe's and Profound's data.

In plain words

Google's AI answers now show more links to websites, and puts them higher, but Google won't say how many people click them. In one corner of AI Mode that has had no ads since it launched, it is now testing them. Advertisers got a new dial: instead of turning places like YouTube or partner sites fully on or off, they can say which matter more and how much of the budget the others may use. And researchers found that being high on Google does not tell you much about whether ChatGPT will quote you.

Two changes this week point the same way. Google gave links more room inside its AI answers, and it started testing ads in a part of AI Mode it had kept free of them. Neither came with a number that a site owner could check.

More links, higher up, and no click data

On 15 October Google said it had increased the number of inline links in AI Mode and AI Overviews and that they will appear higher in responses more often. It is also testing a section at the top of some AI responses that highlights links to official sites. News carousels are expanding to more locations and languages, which Google did not name, and "related article" links get image thumbnails.

We've made continued and substantial increases to the presence of inline links in our AI experiences.

Hema Budaraju, VP, Product Management, Google, 15 October 2026

The one number Google gave is about Preferred Sources, the setting that lets a user pick news sites to see more often: its use "has grown by more than 7x since the start of the year". Google gave no click data, and Search Engine Roundtable's headline said as much. Search Engine Journal pointed out the reporting gap: in Search Console every link in an AI Overview takes the AI Overview's position, so a link that moves higher inside the answer reports the same position as before.

A separate test makes creator and publisher names on AI Mode video results clickable. The links lead first to a Google Search profile page.

Ads in AI Mode, for users who connect Gmail and Photos

Google is testing ads in AI Mode for users of Personal Intelligence, the feature that connects Gmail and Google Photos to AI Mode, and those ads can be personalised with information from the connected apps. The Keyword reported the test on 17 October and noted, citing Search Engine Land, that the experience had been ad-free at launch. Sensitive categories are excluded, and no advertiser controls or wider rollout have been announced.

Ads will not be based directly on your Gmail inbox or your Google Photos library.

Google Search Help, read on 18 October 2026

The same page says that summaries and inferences drawn from that information "may be used to show you ads". For organic results the arithmetic is simple: every ad that enters a personalised AI answer competes for the same space as the sources it cites.

PPC: channels get priorities instead of switches

On 14 October Google Ads announced channel prioritization and budget allocation, rolling out progressively from 15 October for Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen. Instead of turning a network on or off, an advertiser sets each channel to High or Low priority. Google spends on High-priority channels first, within the target when tCPA or tROAS is used, and sends what is left to Low-priority ones. In Search campaigns, Google Search, Search partners and the Display Network are set separately; in Performance Max and Demand Gen, Google's own surfaces are grouped together.

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Say goodbye to all-or-nothing channel targeting.

Tal Akabas, Director of Product Management, Google Ads, 14 October 2026
SettingWhat Google says
DefaultAll channels start at High priority
Low-priority capA daily share of the budget, kept "on a best-effort basis"
Google's example5% of a $1,000 average daily budget aims at $50 a day or less
0% allocationNo spend on that channel
Not supportedBudget allocation in Demand Gen; manager accounts; the API and Editor (coming soon)
February 2027Search campaigns with Display Expansion move to the new system

The criticism from practitioners is about the default. When every channel starts at High, Display no longer gets the lower priority it used to have inside Search campaigns, so an advertiser who wants Search to win has to lower Display and cap it. Google's own advice for keeping today's behaviour after the February 2027 migration is to set the Display Network to Low with a 50% allocation, and it warns that the migration may shift spend. Display will also stop serving on Search campaigns that bid for Target Impression Share.

PPC: ChatGPT ads can target by email and phone

On 16 October MobileSyrup reported on a 404 Media investigation, in which 404 Media ran two ads of its own: ChatGPT advertisers can target users with email addresses, phone numbers and unique Android phone identifiers, alongside "context hints" based on topics and keywords. OpenAI told 404 Media that the data is deleted after 24 hours and that users can only be included when a list has more than 25,000 of them. The ads-personalisation opt-out still allows ads based on the current chat.

For anyone uploading customer lists, consent and data-processing terms come before the first campaign.

Correction: ChatGPT's missing tags were a bug

On Thursday we wrote that ChatGPT links had lost their utm_source tag and referrer after GPT-6, and that no source could say whether the change was intended. It was not. Cedric Huesler of Adobe, whose data the story was built on, says OpenAI confirmed a bug to him on 14 October and began rolling out a fix early on 15 October. By 9 a.m. Pacific that day, tagged ChatGPT clicks were back to about 95–100% of the same hour a week earlier across thousands of domains.

Relieved. It was a bug. ChatGPT is tagging its links with utm_source=chatgpt(.)com again.

Cedric Huesler, Adobe, 15 October 2026, via Search Engine Roundtable

OpenAI's release notes do not mention it, so the confirmation is second-hand. Profound adds that attribution already lost will not come back. The advice from Thursday stands with an end date: annotate 8–15 October in every report that compares AI referrals across that period, and read a drop in ChatGPT visits with a matching rise in direct traffic as one event, not two.

What ChatGPT cites is not what Google ranks

A preprint submitted to arXiv on 11 October, by researchers at the National University of Singapore and Xi'an Jiaotong University, ran 80 questions, 40 in English and 40 in Chinese, 20 times each on GPT-5.3 Instant and GPT-5.5 Instant between 29 March and 29 July 2026. It then checked whether Google's organic results and OpenAI's own API with web search found the same pages ChatGPT cited. Search Engine Journal covered it on 18 October. The paper has not been peer-reviewed.

MeasuredGPT-5.3 InstantGPT-5.5 Instant
Cited pages found by Google and the API together28.3%26.2%
Cited pages found by Google alone9.4%6.4%
Cited sites found by Google and the API together50.3%48.7%
Pages retrieved, cited or not, that appeared in only 1 of 20 runs40.8%44.5%
Searches in English only, for Chinese questions (runs with visible searches)67.0%69.6%

In none of the observed GPT-5.3 or GPT-5.5 runs did ChatGPT search with the user's exact wording; GPT-5.2 Instant did in 5.5% of runs. Two lessons follow for citation share. A Google ranking says little about a ChatGPT citation, at page level least of all. And a single run says little about anything: four in ten pages ChatGPT retrieved appeared in only one of twenty runs. Measure repeatedly, and expect the picture to change when the model does.

Meta's terms reach every business site

Meta's revised Commercial Terms take effect on 30 October 2026. They let Meta use automated software, and "test credentials", on domains associated with any business that uses Meta products, and use the content to develop and improve its products; Search Engine Journal and PPC Land read the clause as covering AI training. The terms do not mention robots.txt, and continued use counts as acceptance. Nieman Lab reported on 15 October that three legal experts saw room to argue that this covers news sites.

content owners can still manage how their content is accessed by using robots.txt.

A Meta spokesperson, in an email to Nieman Lab, via Search Engine Journal

The write-ups disagree on what robots.txt can still separate. Search Engine Journal says Meta documents one token for training, Meta-ExternalAgent, and another for search, Meta-WebIndexer; PPC Land says Meta-ExternalAgent covers both, so a site cannot allow indexing while refusing training. Until Meta settles it in writing, check which Meta agents your robots.txt names, and check whether your business accepted the terms by using Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp.

Also this week

  • The Indexing API lost its approval form. On 16 October Google updated three Indexing API pages and removed the "requires additional approval" wording; the changelog says only that the quota page now reflects current limits and drops an outdated form. The quota page still lists 200 publish requests a day, and the limit to JobPosting and BroadcastEvent pages still stands. Whether approval is still needed, Google did not say.
  • Volatility without an update. On 16 October Search Engine Roundtable reported a spike in tracker volatility and in forum complaints about traffic. Google confirmed nothing; the Search Status Dashboard's last entry is the spam update that ended on 8 October. With rank trackers fed altered results, as we reported on Monday, a chart alone proves little.
  • Google Ads API v26. Released on 14 October; according to PPC Land it adds read-only Search Lift reporting with 15 new metrics, and the API now ships two releases a month. Tools built on the API need to keep up.
  • Universal Cart. From 15 October US shoppers can keep items from many stores in one cart in Search, including AI Mode, and in the Gemini app, with price-drop and restock alerts.
  • Google pays for news in AI features. Google said on 15 October that its News AI pilot covers more than 400 publications; Reach, publisher of the Daily Express, signed, and its chief executive called the deal a template while pressing OpenAI over scraping.
  • Bing tests a "Read more" link at the end of organic snippets, reported on 16 October. Microsoft has not confirmed it.
  • Lead form scoring in Google Ads. Advertisers can now mark which answers to a custom question count as qualified, up to 12 per question.

Questions people ask

Did Google add more links to AI Mode and AI Overviews?

Yes. On 15 October 2026 Google said it had increased inline links and that they will appear higher more often, and it is testing a section of official-site links at the top of some responses. Google published no click data.

Are there ads in AI Mode?

Google is testing personalised ads in AI Mode for users of Personal Intelligence, who connect Gmail and Google Photos. Google says the ads are not based directly on the inbox or the photo library, and sensitive categories are excluded.

What is channel prioritization in Google Ads?

A control announced on 14 October 2026 that replaces on/off network targeting: each channel is set to High or Low priority, and Low-priority channels can get a daily share of the budget. All channels start at High.

Was the ChatGPT UTM problem fixed?

According to Cedric Huesler of Adobe, OpenAI confirmed a bug on 14 October 2026 and began rolling out a fix on 15 October. Reports covering 8–15 October will undercount ChatGPT visits. OpenAI has not commented publicly.

Does ranking in Google predict ChatGPT citations?

Weakly. An arXiv preprint found that Google's organic results contained 6.4–9.4% of the pages ChatGPT cited, and that about four in ten pages it retrieved appeared in only one of 20 runs.

Sources

Every claim above is dated and linked. Where a number comes from a measurement rather than an announcement, whoever measured it is named.

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On this topic

What changed in classic search?

Term
Canonical URLhreflangCrawl BudgetCore Web VitalsTopical Authority
Read
Poisoned SERPs and a finished spam updateAn expectation is not an agreement
Check
AI Search Audit Lite, on GitHubPatternScope

Every day Search Console beside the assistants' answers. How the product works

Author

Olexandrauthor

15+ years in marketing and SEO. Dozens of products, mostly the US market. Research and measurement.

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