Google is testing a version of AI Overviews on desktop that stacks citation cards at the bottom of the answer instead of displaying them in the right-side panel — at least the third time the company has tried this layout since September 2025.

Glenn Gabe, an SEO consultant, spotted the test and posted screenshots on X on September 28, 2026. "I'm in an AIO test where the citations are stacked at the bottom of the answer on desktop. The right side citation bar is gone. And you can click show all to see a full list of citations at the bottom," he wrote.

This is a limited experiment, not a confirmed rollout — Google has not commented publicly on the test. The company ran similar variations at least twice before: once in March 2026, and before that in September 2025, when Search Engine Roundtable first documented citation cards appearing beneath the AI Overview summary.

How the new layout works

In the test version, the right-side citation panel disappears entirely. The AI Overview answer carries inline link icons that users can hover over, as they normally can. But the full citation cards only appear after a user clicks a "show more" button at the bottom of the response.

That extra click matters. In the standard desktop layout, the right-side citation cards are visible immediately, before any expansion. Users can hover inline links to preview cards, or expand the panel to see the full list of sources. In the tested variant, a user who never clicks "show more" sees only the small link icons inside the AI-generated text — no card previews at all.

There is one caveat: Google can automatically expand AI Overview elements, as it has done elsewhere, such as with AI Mode responses. If Google auto-expands the bottom citations, the visibility gap shrinks. Whether it does so in this test is not yet clear.

Gabe's take on the layout was largely positive. "I sort of like it actually. Inline links you can hover over (like you normally can), but then a larger citation area at the bottom. Hmm... those links look much more enticing down there," he wrote.

Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz offered a more cautious read, noting that without a click — or an automatic expansion — the tested layout leaves no visible citation cards, just the link icons in the response. He suggested a possible middle ground: showing citation cards both on the right side and at the bottom.

Why the placement question keeps returning

For publishers, the citation panel is the primary visible gateway from an AI Overview to their pages. Moving it from a persistent right rail to a collapsed section at the bottom changes how many impressions a source card receives before any user action. The repeated tests — September 2025, March 2026, and now this one — signal Google continues to treat citation placement as an open design question rather than a settled one.

The bottom-stacked layout does have potential upsides. Once expanded, the citation area spans a wider space than the narrow right rail, which could make source links more prominent and, as Gabe observed, "more enticing" to users who bother to expand them. The inline hover behavior remains intact in the test, preserving one path to source previews.

What remains unknown is how the two layouts compare on actual click-through behavior. Google has not published data on citation engagement in AI Overviews, and interface tests of this kind typically run on a small fraction of queries without announcement.

For sites that rely heavily on AI Overview referral traffic — news publishers, health and finance content, and other informational verticals where AI Overviews appear frequently — the practical question is simple: whether sources get seen by default or only after a deliberate click.

Watch whether this test expands to more users in the coming weeks, whether Google auto-expands the bottom citation list, and whether the company makes any statement about which layout it intends to standardize.