Google tests AI-written summaries in AI Overview citation cards

A citation inside a Google AI Overview used to carry a line from your own page. That line now sometimes comes from Google.

Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable reports a change in how the small citation card works. The card no longer has to carry a line from the page it points at. Google writes a short summary of the page instead. The summary is picked for the query. Schwartz dated his post 23 October 2026.

Who found it, and what they saw

The behaviour was spotted by Brodie Clark on X. Clark wrote that he had not seen Google do this in citation cards before. He said: "The text doesn't appear exactly like this on the page. It is being summarised based on the information that Google thinks is most relevant to the query."

Schwartz says he saw the same thing on some of his test queries. He did not see it on all of them. Google has not confirmed the change. So this is still a test rather than an announced product change.

What the citation card used to be

Until now, the small card on the right of an AI Overview carried a short excerpt from the page. The excerpt was the publisher's own words. Google chose which sentence to show. A publisher could read the card and find that sentence on their own page.

In the new behaviour the card still names the publisher. It still links to the page. But the text underneath is written by Google. There is no sentence to find. The publisher learns what Google thinks the page is about. They do not learn what Google quoted.

What this changes for a team tracking AI citations

Teams who track how a brand shows up in AI search measure two things. One is whether the brand is cited. The other is which line was picked. The first is not affected by this change. The card still points at the publisher. The second is harder. There is no line to pick, because Google wrote it.

A page is still worth writing clearly. Google is summarising it. But a sentence written to be the pulled quote may now be ignored. The summary next to the brand may use words the publisher never used. On a product page that may read fine. On a page where the exact wording matters, Google may change the message. A safety claim, a price, a legal line or a date can all shift in the summary.

Tracking tools that pull the citation card text should now say which they got. A summary is not an excerpt. The two should not be reported in the same column.

Source

Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz. Discovery credited to Brodie Clark on X.