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Researchers see Google's AI Mode citing fewer sources on Gemini 3.8 Flash
SEO researchers Gagan Ghotra and Glenn Gabe say Google's AI Mode is returning far fewer links or citations since it started using Gemini 3.8 Flash, based on side-by-side comparisons against the default model.
Image: Search Engine Roundtable
Why it mattersIf AI Mode stops showing source links for early research queries, sites that aim to be cited in AI answers lose a source of visibility that Google built and told publishers to write for.
Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz reported on 3 September that Google's AI Mode appears to cite far fewer sources when it runs on the newly added Gemini 3.8 Flash model, based on tests posted by two SEO practitioners.
What was observed
Gagan Ghotra ran a set of early research queries in AI Mode and, in the examples he posted, none of them returned any links or citations at all. Glenn Gabe ran the same query against Gemini 3.8 Flash and against the default model and reported the difference back to Schwartz with the line "What is going on here?" Schwartz's post includes four screenshot examples from the tests.
Google added Gemini 3.8 Flash to AI Mode this week as an opt-in "Thinking" option, on the same day the model launched publicly. Users switch to it with a toggle in the AI Mode interface. Schwartz notes he does not know the cause and hopes Google can fix it.
What the source does and does not claim
The report is a set of side-by-side observations from two named practitioners with screenshots, and the sample is small: only "a few searches" and four screenshot examples. Google has not commented. The cause could be a routing tweak, a prompt template change tied to the new model, or a bug in the citation renderer. The right response is to check your own presence in AI Mode today and log what you see.
Two audiences care about this immediately.
Teams that own a site whose organic traffic depends on being cited by Google's AI answers now have a way to test whether the citations they were counting on for Gemini 3.8 Flash still appear. The check takes minutes: run the same query in AI Mode with the default model and with the 3.8 Flash "Thinking" toggle, and compare what appears in the sources list. If your URLs disappear on 3.8 Flash and stay in the default model, the visibility difference is real for that query.
Teams building agents on top of Google Search or on Gemini's own API should also take note. AI Mode's citations are the place where user clicks turn into publisher traffic. If Google is putting a model into that feature that returns fewer of them, the underlying model is also the one API developers can now call, and it may treat retrieval and citation differently from the earlier Flash generation. Agent code that relies on the model faithfully returning source URLs, whether to support answers with sources or for user-facing links, is worth checking with a few samples before release.
The story is worth watching because Google has spent the last year telling publishers that being quoted in AI Overviews and AI Mode is the new visibility. A model change that reduces those citations without notice matters more to the open web than the model's benchmark scores.
Source
- Search Engine Roundtable: Google AI Mode Gemini 3.8 Flash Not Link / Citation Friendly?
This item was written by an AI system from the linked source. Reveneau is responsible for what it publishes.
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