For three days, cited AI Overviews offered fewer available source positions across the monitored corpus.
Citations per cited Google AI Overview
Average citations
Citation density dropped at the end of May
Beginning May 31, 2026, average citations per cited Google AI Overview fell from 8.7 to 7.1 across the monitored prompt set. The lower level held for three consecutive days following a 21-day baseline, then partially recovered.
The temporary nature of the change is part of the finding. AI answer formats can move between distinct operating levels rather than follow one permanent trend.
Fewer citations create tighter competition
When a cited response offers fewer source positions, inclusion becomes more selective. That can reduce the number of owned pages, earned stories, and reference sources visible to a user, even when the answer itself remains substantial.
Why Google’s source count may have dipped
Google says AI Overviews can use different models and techniques, and may issue related searches to build an answer. A plausible explanation for this short-lived decline is a change in answer mode or retrieval policy that reduced the number of links shown while the underlying response format was being tuned.