Google Tests a Thinner Citations Panel on AI Overviews

Google is testing a thinner design for the citations panel that appears alongside AI Overviews — the strip of source links that currently sits to the side of the AI-generated summary.

What was spotted

The test was first flagged by Khushal Bherwani on X, who posted: "Google AI reference left side panel with different style." The redesigned panel is visibly narrower than the current default width, condensing the citation links into less on-page space. Screenshots posted alongside the report show the standard panel next to the narrower test variant, with the link list itself unchanged — only the column width and the space given to each entry has shrunk.

This is the kind of interface test Google runs constantly and rarely confirms individually. AI Overviews have gone through several visible layout changes since launch, from how many citation links are shown by default to how they're grouped, without Google publishing a changelog for any of them. A narrower panel fits that pattern: a small percentage of users see it, engagement is measured, and it either rolls out wider or gets shelved with no public announcement either way.

Why it matters

A narrower citations panel means less visual weight for the links AI Overviews already surface, which could translate into fewer clicks through to the source sites — on top of the click-through decline publishers are already dealing with from AI Overviews generally. Making citations less prominent, even as a side effect of a layout test, cuts against the interests of the sites being cited in the first place.

Citation visibility has been a recurring point of friction between Google and publishers throughout 2026. In May, Google began highlighting links from subscribed publications inside AI Overviews for users with an active News Showcase or publisher subscription — a change that made some citations more prominent rather than less, but only for a subset of sources and a subset of users. Read together, the two changes show Google actively iterating on how much weight citation links carry in the AI Overview interface, in both directions, rather than moving toward one fixed design.

This is a live test, not a confirmed global rollout, and Google hasn't issued a statement on the design change. Worth keeping an eye on your GSC "Web" search appearance data for AI Overview citation impressions if this rolls out more broadly — a thinner panel is the kind of change that could show up as an impressions or click-through dip on pages that rank as AI Overview sources, without triggering an obvious algorithm-update signal elsewhere in Search Console.

What to watch for

If you want to check whether your own site's AI Overview citations are affected by a layout test like this, the practical signal is a click-through rate change on queries where GSC shows impressions but the query itself doesn't correspond to a normal top-10 ranking — a common fingerprint of AI Overview-only visibility. A sudden CTR drop on that segment, with impressions holding steady, is more consistent with an interface change than a ranking change.

Sources

• Khushal Bherwani on X — original spot with before/after screenshots
• Nieman Lab: Google highlights links from subscribed publications in new AI Overviews update — May 2026 citation-prominence change, for context on Google's pattern of AI Overview citation UI iteration