If there’s one thing people have been unhappy about with AI Overviews, it’s the loss of traffic and clicks. While a lot of people have shifted their focus to AI visibility, there’s still a desire to get traffic and clicks back.
Google heard it and they’ve offered a solution — link previews.
Link previews serve as another visibility point in AI Overviews, but also a new opportunity for people to click and visit pages appearing in AI Overviews.
So, are these links the key to traffic recovery?
Are link previews the key to improving organic traffic problems?
Google claims this new link UI in AI Overviews is ‘more engaging.’ Is this a significant step towards solving the traffic problem, or is it a minor tweak the industry is getting overly excited about?
Well, the new link UI in AI Overviews can be considered a minor tweak or, a positive micro-optimization. It will not reverse the rise of zero-click behavior but it can reduce some click friction. Hover cards (link previews) can:
- Make citations more visible
- Reduce the effort required to find the source
- Potentially increase curiosity clicks
- Improve click-through rate for cited domains
- Increase variance between cited vs non-cited brands
- Reward strong authority sites
However, the fundamental dynamic remains that if an AI summary satisfies the query intent, many users will not click — regardless of link formatting.
Do these links/hover cards change how you approach optimizing for AI Overviews?
It does not fundamentally change how you optimize content, but it increases the importance of AI SEO. The core principles remain the same. Content still needs to be:
- Clearly structured and easy to extract
- Directly aligned with search intent
- Contextually authoritative within its topic
- Supported by strong credibility and entity signals
These SEO fundamentals do not shift because of a UI update but changes the reward dynamic.
If hover cards increase click-through rates for cited domains, then inclusion in an AI Overview becomes more economically valuable. Being cited is no longer just brand exposure — it becomes a stronger traffic opportunity.
This has several implications:
- Greater upside for cited domains
- Larger performance gap between cited and non-cited brands
- Higher opportunity cost for ignoring AI SEO
- Stronger compounding effects for authoritative sites
In other words, the update does not introduce a new optimization framework. It reinforces the existing one and raises the stakes.
Will these links appease SEOs, or should it just be accepted that search has to shift?
This update appears to be an attempt to recover some of the clicks and traffic that AI Overviews reduced. However, search behavior has already evolved, and it’s unlikely that Google can fully restore the traffic patterns publishers once relied on. Users now expect immediate, AI-generated answers, and their behavior reflects that expectation.
Historically, Google has optimized for user experience rather than publisher traffic. While hover link cards may improve click-through for cited domains, they cannot fully reverse the structural shift toward zero-click or AI-first search.
For marketers, this reinforces the need for an omnichannel approach. Relying solely on Google search or attempting to recover previous traffic levels carries opportunity costs. Visibility in AI Overviews is valuable, but it should be complemented by other channels such as social, email, and emerging AI discovery platforms.
In short, while Google may incrementally improve traffic for cited sites, the reality is that search has already shifted. Marketers should focus on adapting to this new landscape rather than expecting a return to the old click-through dynamics.
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