When an AI Overview cites your page, the citation card next to it has been one of the few places where your own words still appear: your title and a snippet of your text. That may be changing. On October 23, 2026, Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google appears to be testing AI-generated summaries inside the citation cards of AI Overviews.
What was spotted
- Who: SEO consultant Brodie Clark noticed it and shared screenshots on X: Google’s AI Overviews were “summarising content in the citations”.
- What: the description under a cited page is no longer the page’s meta description or a passage from it. Clark noted that the text does not appear word for word on the cited page: it is written by Google based on what it considers most relevant to the query.
- Scope: Barry Schwartz saw it on some test queries but not all, which points to a test or a gradual rollout. Google has not commented.
Why it matters
For years, titles and meta descriptions were the way a site pitched itself in search results. Google already rewrites many of them in classic results, but the citation card in an AI Overview is often the only thing standing between a reader and the click. If Google writes that text too, three things follow:
- Less control over the pitch. A summary tuned to the query may not mention what makes your page worth visiting.
- Answers without the click. A good AI summary in the card can satisfy the reader, who never visits the source.
- Accuracy risk. An AI summary can misrepresent a page, and the site has no direct way to correct it.
What you can still control
- Write the answer clearly on the page. Google summarizes what it finds. A clear, specific answer near the top of the page makes an accurate summary more likely.
- Give a reason to click in the content itself. Original data, tools, examples and detail that do not fit in two lines are what a summary cannot replace.
- Keep your titles strong. The title is still yours in most cards. Preview it with our SERP Snippet Preview.
- Use the snippet controls if you need them. The
max-snippetrobots setting anddata-nosnippetlimit what Google can show from a page, but they also limit how it appears in search, so use them carefully. - Track what AI says about you. Run our free AI Visibility Checker and compare the best AI visibility tools to monitor it over time.
For the bigger picture, read about the new links in AI Mode and AI Overviews and how to measure AI referral traffic.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
What are AI Overview citation cards?
The cards next to or below an AI Overview that link to the pages Google used as sources, usually with a title, site name and short description.
Is Google writing the descriptions with AI?
It appears to be testing it. On October 23, 2026, SEOs reported citation cards with AI-written summaries that do not appear word for word on the cited page.
Can I stop Google from rewriting my snippet?
Not fully. You can limit snippets with max-snippet or data-nosnippet, but that also limits how your page appears in search.
Does this affect classic search results?
The test reported is in AI Overview citation cards. Google already rewrites many titles and descriptions in classic results.