TLDR
Google is testing a 'Dive deeper' button inside its Discover feed that opens an AI-generated topic overview rather than loading a publisher's article. Discover already drives more than two-thirds of Google's mobile referrals to news sites, and AI Overviews correlate with a 58 per cent drop in click-through rates.
What the button does
On 18 September 2026, Google began testing a button labelled "Dive deeper" inside its Discover feed. Tapping it opens a short AI-generated topic overview, complete with links to related stories, community reactions and original reporting, without loading any individual publisher's page.[1]
Robby Stein, Google's vice president of product for Search, said the experiment starts on videos and that Google plans to try multiple designs in the weeks ahead. By tapping "Dive deeper," you'll see a short topic overview with prominent links to related stories, community reactions & original reporting.[1]
What the code flags reveal
Damien Andell, co-founder of the Discover analytics service 1492.vision, found four hidden code flags inside the Google app indicating the test extends well beyond video. The flags show "Dive deeper" covers both video and article cards and operates through two separate entry points: an expand option and an inline trigger.[2]
Andell's discovery came on 19 September 2026, one day after Stein's announcement. That architecture, two entry points across both card types, points to broad surface coverage rather than a narrow pilot.
Why publishers are alarmed
Discover has quietly become the primary pipeline between Google and news audiences. Analysis of more than 400 news publishers by NewzDash CEO John Shehata shows Google Discover's share of mobile traffic to news organisations rose to 67.51 per cent by the fourth quarter of 2025, while traditional web search's share fell from 51.10 per cent in 2023 to just 27.42 per cent over the same period.[4]
Inserting an AI summary layer into that dominant channel compounds an already deteriorating picture. Ahrefs re-ran its click-through study using December 2025 data, and Ryan Law, Ahrefs' director of content marketing, said: We found that the presence of an AI Overview now correlates with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page.[5]
Nicola Agius, SEO and Discover director at Reach plc, called "Dive deeper" Google's latest attack on publisher traffic. Headlines are truncated and featured images are teeny, hardly an ideal setup for driving CTR.[3] No opt-out mechanism exists, and Google has not committed to sharing traffic data with affected publishers.
What Australian publishers should check now
With Discover supplying more than two-thirds of Google's mobile news referrals, any further suppression of tap-throughs inside that feed will register quickly in Search Console. Australian publishers should pull their Discover performance report and set a baseline for impressions, clicks and CTR before the wider rollout lands.
Structured data, particularly NewsArticle schema with headline, datePublished and image fields fully populated, gives the crawler the clearest signal about what an article covers and when it was published. Those fields feed the linked sources Google surfaces inside the AI overview, which is at present the most reliable way a publisher's URL appears at all when a reader taps "Dive deeper." Google has not announced a timeline for moving the experiment beyond its initial test group.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What does Google's 'Dive deeper' button do in the Discover feed?
Can publishers opt out of the 'Dive deeper' AI overview feature?
How much traffic do publishers stand to lose?
What should publishers do right now?
Zara Kincaid writes about artificial intelligence and search. Her focus is what happens to businesses when the front page of the internet stops being a list of links and starts being an answer.
