Last Updated on August 29, 2026
Google has confirmed that its AI Overview now expands into a full AI answer by default on some searches, with the follow-up question box already open. The ordinary search results start further down the page.
Search Engine Roundtable reported the change on 28 August 2026, after it was first spotted by SEO practitioner Chris Long the day before. Google confirmed the behaviour in a statement.
“For some queries, AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it’s most useful for people. Our research has shown that with this dynamic experience, users find Search more helpful and engage deeper in follow-up exploration.”
Google spokesperson, quoted by Search Engine Roundtable, 28 August 2026
Robby Stein of Google added on X that if you have already started scrolling, the expansion stops so you do not lose your place.
What actually changed
| Before | Now, on some queries |
|---|---|
| The AI Overview loaded as a short snippet | The AI answer loads in full |
| You clicked “Show more” to see the rest | No click required |
| The “Ask anything” box came later | The “Ask anything” box is open by default |
| Ordinary results sat closer to the top | Ordinary results sit further down |
Read Google’s wording carefully, because the qualifiers are doing real work. Google said “some queries” and “may dynamically expand”. This is not every search. Stein described it as something Google is still testing and tuning, and Google has not published a breakdown by country. So we are not going to tell you this is live on every UK search today. Go and check your own.
Why this matters if you run a business
The mechanism is what matters, not the pixel count. Google has spent two years moving from a page that sends people somewhere to a page that answers them where they stand. Removing the “Show more” click is a small change on its own. As a direction of travel, it is the whole story.
Your website was never the destination. It was the answer Google borrowed. The difference now is that the borrowing happens in full, in view, before anyone has scrolled. We have been tracking this pattern in our UK search engine statistics, including how the click itself has been shrinking.
The mistake most businesses are about to make
The instinct is to publish more. More blog posts, more pages, more words, on the theory that volume buys you back the visibility you lost.
That is the wrong lever. If AI is answering the question, more answers do not help you. Being the source of the answer does.
The second mistake is quieter and more expensive. Businesses see search traffic soften and start buying ads to plug the gap, without fixing the reason they were not cited in the first place. That is paying rent on a problem you could own.
Stop competing for the click. Start being the source.
This is a Start problem before it is a Build or Scale problem. If an AI answer cannot establish who you are, where you operate and what you charge, no amount of content or ad spend will fix it.
When we looked at what AI actually cites when it recommends a UK local business, the pattern was not clever. It was boring, checkable facts in places machines can read. Your own site does most of the work. Google Business Profile does a lot of the rest.
FOUR CHECKS, THIS WEEK
1. Search your own service and town. On a phone, signed out. See what loads before the results do.
2. Ask an AI assistant to recommend a business like yours. If it does not name you, that is your baseline, not a verdict.
3. Check the facts a machine needs. Trading name, address, phone, opening hours, service area and prices, written in plain text on your own site and matching your Google Business Profile.
4. Write the answer, not the article. One page per real question a customer asks, answered in the first two sentences.
None of that requires a budget. It requires an hour and a willingness to look. If you want a starting point, we keep a list of free tools for checking your AI visibility.
The takeaway
Google did not remove your customers. It removed a click that you were never in control of anyway.
The businesses that will be fine are the ones whose facts are correct, public and easy for a machine to repeat. That was true before this change and it will be true after the next one. Fix the structure, then worry about the scale.
