September 21, 2026
Discover leads not to a site but to an AI summary: Google tests the Dive deeper button
The Dive deeper button opens an AI summary instead of the publisher's article: Google's test has been running since 18 September, for now on video cards.
UK publisher Reach plc reported a 55% year-on-year drop in referrals from Google.
The report came out on 22 July 2026, while revenue for the same period fell 9,0%. Nicola Agius, Reach's director of SEO and Discover, publicly criticized the design of Google's new button.
For news sites, Discover remains the main traffic tap: in August 2025, the feed delivered two thirds of all Google referrals to 2000 news sites. Google is now testing the removal of the referral itself.
What the button shows instead of the article
A summary instead of a link. Robby Stein, who leads Search product at Google, announced the test on 18 September 2026. When readers click “Dive deeper,” they get a short topic summary with links to related stories, community reactions, and original reporting. The button does not lead to the publisher's page or the video creator's page. Below the summary is an English notice that the text was generated by AI and may contain errors.
The test is broader than announced. Damien Andell, co-founder of 1492.vision, activated the button and found 4 config flags in the code. The flags cover regular articles as well as videos, in two display variants: “expand” and “inline”.
Google has shown summaries in Discover for several years. On 15 July 2025, the company rolled them out in the US on iOS and Android for trending topics, as a launch rather than a test. The share of news searches that end without a click to a site rose from 56% in May 2024 to nearly 69% in May 2025. By December 2025, views from Discover had fallen 15% from December 2024. In June 2026, Google folded 14 outlets into one summary about Jennifer Lopez appearing at Ariana Grande's concert and sent almost no referrals to the originals.
How to remove your site from AI summaries
A site owner can exclude their content from Google's generative features. The toggle is in Search Console: Settings → “Search generative AI”; the exclusion takes effect in 1–2 days. It blocks AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover summaries at once. In regular search, opting out does not act as a ranking signal, but the site loses impressions and referrals from AI features. Google announced the toggle on 3 June 2026, then rolled it out to all sites worldwide on 31 August.
Google promises to test several button design variants over the coming weeks.
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