Morpheus made Neo choose between a red pill and a blue pill.

Gemini users can now make a similar call: live Google results, or what the model already knows.

Blue pill, no citations: Google added a Search Google option to Gemini’s web app. For each prompt, users can:

• Force a Google search, say for recent events
• Skip it when they don’t need live results

Until now, Gemini made that call itself. With Search off, it has no web sources to cite, so your content can’t earn a citation there.

Your fans get a shortcut: Google is testing a Source preferences button in AI Mode’s citations sidebar.

It lets searchers add or remove preferred sources (the sites they’ve chosen to favor) without leaving the answer.

AI Mode has supported preferred sources since May, so ask loyal readers to add your site.

AI Overviews go undercover: On desktop, some now show up without their label, like knowledge-panel-style answers for shows and movies. Mobile still labels them.

SE Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz suspects a bug. The missing labels may also explain why Semrush reports a drop in AI Overviews.

Tracker showing the same drop? Check the results page yourself before you report it.

Ask YouTube cuts the line: YouTube is testing answers from its AI chatbot at the top of regular search results.

The test reaches some signed-in US desktop users searching in English. Answers can show up on open-ended, how-to and skill-based questions.

If how-to searches feed your channel, an AI answer may now sit above your videos, so watch your YouTube search traffic.

Whichever pill searchers take, your own data is the best reality check.