Google’s AI Mode now includes 82 percent fewer source links than it did three weeks earlier, according to a study Evertune published on September 23, 2026. The drop started before Google’s own explanation for it did. For a small law firm, the lesson isn’t to chase fewer links harder, it’s to stop counting on links at all.
What did Evertune’s study actually find?
Evertune tracked AI Mode responses from August 11 to September 3, 2026. In that window, the average response went from 19.7 citation URLs plus 5.0 plain links, about 24.7 sources total, down to just 3.8 sources. The share of responses that included any plain citation link fell from 84 percent down to 6 percent. That’s not a tweak. That’s a channel closing.
Where do the surviving links actually send people?
Here’s the part that matters more than the headline number. Of the few sources AI Mode still shows, 3.5 out of 3.8 are google.com/goto redirect links, not direct links to the original site. Even when a firm gets cited, the click doesn’t go straight to the firm’s website. It goes to Google first.
Is Google’s bug explanation the real story?
Google has publicly attributed the citation drop to a Gemini 3.8 Flash model bug. Evertune’s own timeline raises a fair question about that. The decline started in mid-August, three weeks before the bug explanation surfaced, and it lines up almost exactly with Google’s late-August rollout of goto redirect wrappers around search result links. A bug is possible. So is a redesign that quietly reduced outbound links and got a convenient explanation after the fact. We’d want more transparency before taking Google’s account at face value.
How does AI Mode compare to Gemini and AI Overviews?
The severity is specific to AI Mode. Over the same three weeks, Gemini’s citation count fell about 30 percent, and Google’s AI Overviews fell about 15 percent. Both declined. Neither came close to AI Mode’s 82 percent collapse. If this were purely a model bug, you’d expect a more uniform drop across Google’s own AI products. The gap suggests AI Mode’s product changes, not a shared model issue, are doing most of the work.
What should a small law firm take from this?
Evertune’s own recommendation is the useful part here: stop counting outbound links from AI answers, and start tracking whether your firm gets named inside the answer text itself. A link was never a guaranteed click. Now it’s a shrinking, Google-controlled funnel that mostly routes through Google’s own redirect anyway. Being named directly in an AI’s answer doesn’t depend on whether Google decides to show a link that day.
- Track citation and mention rates over time, not a single snapshot.
- Make sure AI crawlers can actually access and read your site’s content.
- Prioritize being recommended and named by the AI’s own words over counting outbound clicks.
This is exactly why we talk about Citation Share: how often AI assistants name a firm by name in their answers, not how many links trickle through to a website. If AI Mode’s own link count can fall 82 percent in three weeks, any strategy built on counting those links was never stable ground to build on.
FAQ
What is Citation Share?
Citation Share is the percentage of AI-assistant answers in a firm’s market that name the firm directly, with or without a clickable link attached.
Does this affect my firm’s Google rankings?
Evertune’s study covers AI Mode’s citation behavior, not traditional organic rankings. If you want a read on your own site’s traffic, impressions, and ranking positions, that’s a separate, search-console-level check.
Is this article legal advice?
No. This is informational marketing commentary based on a published third-party study, not legal advice for your firm or jurisdiction.
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