Update 1 – 8:05 PM on September 3, 2026 local time in NY, Googler Robby Stein confirmed on X this isn’t working as intended. Robby wrote – “Hey — thanks for flagging. This isn’t working as intended, and we’ll roll out a fix soon.” in a reply to post from Barry Schwartz.
Update 2 – As of 7 AM on September 4, 2026 local time in NY, Google is showing links in AI Mode answer when it’s generated by Gemini 3.8 Flash. Seems like Google has fully fixed this issue and I’m glad 😀 that links are back!!
On 2 Sep 2026, Google introduced their latest version of Gemini Flash model series – Gemini 3.8 Flash and same day Google pushed this model in AI Mode too, available as a selector in models list.
Whenever there is a new model from Google, I’ve been running tests to figure out what exactly changed in the answer. Like when Google released 3.7 Flash I noticed this and posted on X. While doing similar testing for 3.8 Flash today I noticed that it’s not showing citations at all for some top of the funnel kind of queries, which is really weird and I guess it might be a bug for now.
But anyway I think having citations even for these TOFU queries is really important so that users can explore relevant web sources, if and when interested or in case they don’t find AI Mode response much helpful.
Less citations is bit of surprising thing because even recent Googler Roby Stein on X said “yes, definitely an area of continued focus!” in a reply to Barry Schwartz.
Let’s see if this is just a bug for sure or it’s going to be new normals where Google in AI Mode not going to show much citations for top of the funnel kind of queries.
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