Google Is Testing an "Official Sites" Section at the Top of Its AI Answers. Make Sure Google Knows Which Site Is Yours.

On 15 October Google published a post called "More ways to connect with the web from Search". It listed five changes to the links inside AI Mode and AI Overviews, the AI answers that now sit at the top of many searches. Four are about showing more links, or showing them better. The fifth is new: a test of a section at the top of an answer that points to official websites.

Google's reasoning, in its own words: "Sometimes, there are only one or two official places on the web to complete a specific task." For a government form, that place is a government site. For booking a table, ordering from a local bakery or getting a quote from a plumber, the official place is the business's own website, if Google can tell which one that is.

The five changes

Google also said the number of people using Preferred Sources, the setting that lets you pick news sites you want to see more of, has grown more than seven times since January. It gave no starting number.

What Google did not say

The official-sites section is a test, and the post is short on detail. It does not say which searches trigger it, how many people see it, which countries it runs in, or how Google decides that a site is official. Trade press has guessed at task searches like renewing a document or filing a form. Google has not confirmed that.

Google has not published any figure on how these changes affect visits to websites either. The same week, news publishers were still reporting large traffic drops from AI answers. So read this as a direction, not a promise: for searches where the user needs to do something, Google wants the answer to send them to the place where it gets done.

Why a small business should care

A lot of small business searches are task searches. "Book a haircut near me", "order a birthday cake from [bakery name]", "[clinic name] appointment", "get a quote from [roofer name]". The answer people want is not a summary. It is the booking page.

Today many of those searches end somewhere else: a directory listing, a delivery app, a booking marketplace, an old Facebook page. Each of those takes a commission, a lead fee or the customer relationship. If Google starts pointing task searches at the official site, the business whose site clearly is the official place wins that click. A business whose own site is vague, out of date or missing the booking step does not.

Seven checks so Google knows your site is the official one

Google has not published the rules for this section, so none of this is a trick to get into it. These are the plain signals that already tell Google a site belongs to a business, and they help whatever form the answer takes:

1. Your Google Business Profile links to your own website. Not to a booking marketplace, a link-in-bio page or your Facebook page. If you use a booking tool, link to your site and put the booking on it. Our free Google Business Profile checklist covers this and 19 other items.
2. The name, address and phone match everywhere. The same spelling on your site, your Business Profile, your invoices and the main directories. "Smith & Sons Plumbing Ltd" on one and "Smiths Plumbers" on another makes Google guess.
3. One page for each thing a customer comes to do. Book, order, get a quote, pay an invoice, check opening hours. Each on its own page, on your own domain, with a title that says what it is. A PDF menu or a form hidden in a pop-up is hard for anyone, Google included, to point to.
4. Structured data says who you are. A LocalBusiness or Organization block in your site's code with your name, address, phone, logo, and links to your official social profiles. Our free local business schema generator writes it for you to paste in.
5. The task actually works on the page. If the booking form is broken on a phone, or the "order online" button goes to a dead link, being sent there does not help. Test each task page on a phone once a month.
6. Google can read the page. Check in Search Console that your key pages are indexed. Do not block Googlebot in robots.txt, and do not put opening hours or prices only inside an image.
7. Your About and Contact pages are real. A street address, a named owner or team, a company number where you have one. These are the details that separate the official site from a copy or a lead-generation page using your name.

What not to do

Do not build a second site or a pile of pages to "target" the new section. Google says it is looking for the one or two official places for a task. More copies of your business on the web make it harder, not easier, to tell which one is official. The same goes for directory listings: keep the ones you use accurate, and make sure they all point back to your site.

The short version

AI answers are learning to tell "read about it" searches from "get it done" searches. For the second kind, Google is now testing a way to send people straight to the official site. Make sure there is no doubt which site is yours, and that the thing people came to do works when they get there.

Sources

• Google, Hema Budaraju (VP, Product Management), More ways to connect with the web from Search, 15 October 2026. The five changes, the official-sites test and its wording, the Preferred Sources figure.
• PPC Land, Google pushes links higher in AI answers as Preferred Sources use rises 7x, 18 October 2026. Notes what the post leaves out: no test size, markets, query list or definition of "official", and no baseline for the 7x figure.
• Malay Mail, Google moves links higher in AI answers as news publishers report 40pc traffic plunge, 16 October 2026. Publisher traffic concerns reported the same week.
• DueClix Google Search Console, 18–24 October 2026: 2,916 impressions and 11 clicks, against 1,254 impressions and 4 clicks the week before.