External links in Google AI Overviews jump from near zero to over 25%
Peec AI data shared by Malte Landwehr shows a sharp rise in outbound linking inside AI Overviews.
Malte Landwehr of Peec AI posted data on X showing the share of Google AI Overviews containing external links climbed from close to 0% to over 25%. Barry Schwartz covered the finding at Search Engine Roundtable on 23 September 2026. Schwartz disclosed a small investment in Peec AI.
Landwehr wrote that Google "massively increased the number of external links within AI Overview answers." Schwartz added that the shift runs counter to the pattern he has been reporting, where Google links out less often.
We think this is about clicks, and eventually ads
Google spent the first year of AI Overviews absorbing answers into the surface. A move back toward outbound links changes what the surface trains users to do. Users who click sources are users who click, and a click-shaped habit is the prerequisite for an ad-shaped one.
ChatGPT followed a comparable arc. Citations arrived first. The ads product followed. We think the AI Overviews link expansion sits on the same road, though Google has not said so.
Before you act on it
Check your own AI Overview citations before you treat the aggregate as your reality. Peec AI's number is one vendor's sample across their tracked queries, and your category may move differently. Pull the AI Overviews you appear in, count the outbound links, and compare against what you saw a month ago.
If outbound linking is genuinely rising in your queries, the work is the same work: be the source the Overview has reason to send people to. That means the page answers the question better than the Overview summary does, not that it is rewritten to look like one.