Some AI Overview citation cards now show AI-written summaries

Sites cited in Google's AI Overviews may now see an AI-generated summary on their citation card, in wording that isn't copied from the page, Search Engine Roundtable reported on 23 October 2026. It saw the summaries on some of its test queries, not all, and says Google seems to be testing or rolling them out.

What changed

A citation card is one of the boxes beside an AI Overview, on its right or underneath it, linking to a page the overview cites. Search Engine Roundtable says those cards can now carry a short description written by AI. The report started from a screenshot posted on X, whose author noted that the card's wording wasn't on the page in that form: Google had summarised the page around what it judged most relevant to the query. The outlet's own test queries turned up the same kind of summary on some searches. It cites no statement from Google, and doesn't say which countries or languages the summaries appear in.

Google's documentation already ties ordinary snippets to the search being made. Its page on controlling snippets says they're picked to preview the part of a page that best fits each search, mostly from the page's own content and sometimes from the meta description: "This means that Google Search might show different snippets for different searches." The nosnippet rule stops a snippet showing, max-snippet caps its length and data-nosnippet keeps chosen passages out.

Google's page on AI features and your website sets the entry bar: a page has to be in Google's index, and allowed a snippet in Search, before it can be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. It lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex as the controls for limiting what Search shows from your pages. Google's help page for AI Overviews lists South Africa among the countries where all users get them, with English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Southern Sotho and Tswana among the languages, and warns that AI responses may include mistakes.

What it means for South African businesses

For South African sites, this means the line under your link in an AI Overview may end up in Google's words instead of yours. The report doesn't name South Africa, so the only way to know whether the summaries have reached local results is to search from here and look. AI Overviews already show to South African searchers, so any page cited in one has a card that could change.

Accuracy is the risk we'd watch. A card that misstates a call-out fee, a filing deadline or a practice's hours hurts the business even when the page itself is right, and Google's help page admits AI responses can get things wrong. Accounting practices, medical rooms and anyone whose pages carry dates, prices or rules should look first.

The reaction we'd steer you away from is switching snippets off. On our reading of Google's AI features page, a page carrying nosnippet would also lose its place as a supporting link, since the bar is being allowed a snippet. That swaps a summary you don't control for no card. Neither the report nor Google's documentation says whether the snippet controls change these card summaries. Our post on robots.txt and AI covers a similar trap with Googlebot.

Where we'd put the effort is pages that say what they offer in plain words near the top. Google's AI features page already asks for important content to be available as text. Every AI search optimisation plan we sell includes reworking pages with plain answers, and you can start on yours this week.

What to do now

1. Search Google from South Africa for a handful of questions your customers ask, and look for AI Overviews that cite your site. Screenshot each citation card for your pages with the query and date, then compare its text with the page and its meta description to see whether it's quoted or newly written.
2. Where a card gets a fact about your business wrong, click the thumbs down icon at the bottom of the overview, choose Report a problem and say exactly what's inaccurate. If the mistake traces back to unclear or outdated wording on your page, fix that too.
3. On each page that came up, check that prices, areas served, hours or deadlines sit in plain text near the top, and aren't only inside an image or a PDF. Give each page its own meta description, as Google's snippet documentation asks. For more pages than you can rework yourself, see our SEO packages and prices.
4. Open the source of each page you want cited and search it for nosnippet. If it's in a meta tag on a page nobody meant to hide from snippets, ask your developer to take nosnippet out of that tag, leaving the tag's other rules and any data-nosnippet attributes as they are, then check the page with URL Inspection in Search Console, which shows the HTML Googlebot received. Google's AI features page says recrawling can take several days or even several months.
5. In Search Console's Performance report, on the Web search type, save this month's clicks and impressions for the pages you checked. Google counts AI Overview appearances there, so you'll have a baseline when you look at the cards again next month.

Sources

• Google AI Overview Citation Cards With AI-Generated Summary Snippets, Search Engine Roundtable, 23 October 2026
• AI features and your website, Google Search Central, 10 December 2025
• Control your snippets in search results, Google Search Central, 20 April 2026
• Find information in faster & easier ways with AI Overviews in Google Search, Google Search Help, no date shown