Google's AI Overviews Are Pushing Searchers Into AI Mode, "Show More" Button Dropped

Search Engine Roundtable first reported this on August 28, and Barry Schwartz then rounded it into his monthly webmaster report covering August's Google search news on September 1. The most notable item: AI Overviews are increasingly pushing searchers into AI Mode. For some queries, the AI Overview no longer needs a "Show more" click — it now expands to its full length automatically, and below it an "Ask anything" box, the entry point into AI Mode, loads already open, pushing the regular blue-link results further down the page. Google said "AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it's most useful," and added that the auto-expand stops once a user starts scrolling so it doesn't disrupt their reading position. AI Mode also gained link carousel cards for topics still developing.

Ranking volatility continued for a while after Google's August spam update, which ran from August 18 to August 21, and the report separately noted volatility spikes on August 5-6 and August 12-13.

AI Mode is now running on the Gemini 3.7 Flash model. Google added a feature that surfaces an AI Overview alongside stock price lookups, plus the ability to copy emojis shown inside AI Overviews. On the other hand, a test showing AI-generated images was paused after a trial run, and some users reported being asked to sign in. Separately, Google rolled out "google.com/goto" tracking parameters meant to protect its search results from third-party tools, and rank-tracking tools like SerpAPI have already shipped fixes in response.

On the publisher side, the button that lets users mark a publication as a preferred source was improved, subscriber requirements for setting up a Search Profile were eased, and users can now edit their profile handle directly. Search Console's generative AI performance report expanded in coverage, but the report also flagged a bug around August 12 that temporarily showed lower impressions and clicks, plus a separate issue where Crawl Stats was missing two days of data. Elsewhere, a favicon display bug was fixed, and PDF files are showing up less often in search results for reasons Google hasn't explained. The report also confirmed that the site reputation policy does not apply in the European Economic Area (EEA).

In Korea

Google's search share is relatively low in Korea, but the shift of AI Overviews toward funneling users into AI Mode instead of a click-through result is worth watching for any site with meaningful overseas traffic. Dropping the "Show More" button also means information is more likely to be consumed entirely inside AI Mode, with no click ever reaching the source site.