AI Overviews Still Showed in Two US Desktop Checks

You have probably seen the post saying Google is killing AI Overviews. Check a live search before you rebuild a forecast around it.

AEO Sherpa ran two US desktop searches through the SerpApi Google engine at 09:03 and 09:04 UTC on October 31, 2026, and both returned an AI Overview. One was for "how does compound interest work". The other was for "what is the best wii u game", a query like the one a user said had lost its box.

Two desktop pulls tell us nothing about mobile, the Google app or Google's plans. They do show AI Overviews have not been switched off in US desktop results. My read is that you should measure your own exposure before you react to a rumor with no source.

It started with one post on X on October 30, 2026. Jun Song wrote that "Rumors say Google is finally killing that terribly dumb AI Overview model at the top of search results." He added that the box hurt Google's ad click rates and burned through a massive amount of compute.

Other accounts repeated it as a leak. @omgsidewalks wrote that "Leaks from Google say they're ending their AI overviews due to the high compute cost and the ad revenue drop that cost them billions in valuation." Fav (@favwontmiss) posted a similar claim the next morning. Neither links to a source.

Some small accounts say they saw the box disappear, a few on Android and one on a video game query. Two other voices read the situation differently. SEO consultant Marie Haynes wrote that "Google sees AI Mode, AI overviews and traditional Search as one unified product." Killed by Google offered a third theory, writing that "Folks, AI mode isn't going away. It's almost certainly a temporary change through the midterm elections." That post is about AI Mode, a different surface.

What the desktop results show

The compound interest search returned an AI Overview with references that included Investopedia, U.S. Bank, Fidelity and the CFPB. The Wii U search returned one citing Metacritic, Reddit, Wikipedia and Nintendo Life. Both ran in US English on desktop.

That result does not reproduce what the small accounts saw on their own phones, apps and queries. It narrows the claim. A blanket shutdown of US desktop AI Overviews was not in effect at 09:03 UTC on October 31.

The traffic complaint

The practitioner worry is a different one. On r/SEO, one site owner reports that traffic "suddenly dropped by about 90%" on October 26, while "Average position is still top 5." They suspect lost AI Overview citations but say they "can't confirm that from GSC alone."

A commenter pointed to the Search Console Generative AI performance report, "if available," and wrote that "Lost citations could explain it, but I would not call that confirmed yet." The poster dates the drop to October 26, four days before the rumor post.

One thread is not a trend, and I would not read it as one. I track AI Overviews every week for clients across several industries. What shows up changes by query and device, and a missing box on a single query tells me little. If your clicks fell, read the daily clicks and impressions in Search Console since October 26 and open the Generative AI report where you have it. Query sampling shows what appears now. The daily numbers show when the loss began, which a shutdown rumor never will.