Type “what is the best game on switch 2” into Google and the first blue link may be nowhere in sight — buried beneath a slab of machine-written text, a follow-up prompt box, and whatever else the company has decided deserves your attention first.
This is Google’s new behavior. The company has begun automatically expanding the AI summaries that sit atop the results page for certain queries, a shift first reported by Search Engine Roundtable.
What changed, exactly
Previously, an AI Overview served up a portion of its answer alongside a “Show more” button. Want the rest? Click. Want links instead? Don’t click.
Once the new behavior triggers, that decision is made for you. The complete AI Overview appears at the top, an “Ask anything” box sits beneath it, and the link list follows after that. Expect to do a fair amount of scrolling.
Good luck reproducing it
For anyone attempting to nail down the specifics, here’s the maddening bit: what qualifies a query for an auto-expanding AI Overview remains unclear.
During testing, most searches initially triggered the behavior. Then it disappeared. Subsequent attempts largely produced the familiar layout — the opening portion of the answer plus the “Show more” button right where it has always lived.
The query that reliably surfaces the auto-expanding version most often is “what is the best game on switch 2”. Even so, results have varied from search to search and browser to browser.
In other words, no switch was thrown for everybody simultaneously. Something more selective is at work, and Google is not laying out the rules.
Google’s explanation
“For some queries, AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it’s most useful for people,” Google spokesperson Jennifer Kutz said in a statement. “Our research has shown that with this dynamic experience, users find Search more helpful and engage deeper in follow-up exploration.”
Pay attention to how that’s worded. Deeper engagement in follow-up exploration describes users putting more questions to Google — a different outcome entirely from users finding what they came for. With the “Ask anything” box parked immediately below the expanded summary, the intent is hard to overlook.
Kutz added that “If users have already begun scrolling to view content below the AI Overview, we cancel expansion so that the user doesn’t lose their reading position.”
That concession is real, and it counts for something. Few things are more irritating than a page that reflows beneath your thumb mid-scroll. The catch is that it only saves you if your scroll beats the expansion.
Why this one is worth watching
Each earlier move in this direction preserved at least a fig leaf of user control. The “Show more” button was the bargain: Google led with its summary, and you chose how much to read before reaching the actual web.
Auto-expansion reclaims that choice. And since Google declines to specify which queries qualify, there’s no telling in advance whether your results page will be a list of links or an essay with the links stashed underneath.
Want the old layout dependably? For now, the practical trick is to begin scrolling the instant the page loads, ahead of the expansion. Per Google’s own account, doing so cancels it.