Google’s Experiment Gone Wrong: Disabled Discover Clicks Spark Major Confusion

Ever had that moment when you tap a source link on your Google Discover AI summary card expecting a shiny feed of articles—and nada, nothing happens? Well, turns out this hiccup wasn’t some rogue glitch but a “bug in a Discover experiment,” as Google’s Rajan Patel candidly put it. Imagine running a high-stakes experiment on a tool millions rely on—only to realize you accidentally turned off the tap that connects readers to their sources. Talk about an oversight! Damien Andell first flagged this odd behavior on October 23, revealing how the source taps stopped leading users to the underlying articles. By the next day, Google switched gears and pulled the plug on that experiment, replacing it with a cryptically named follow-up that’s left the community scratching their heads. For us content creators and digital marketers, this subtle shift matters more than one might think, especially since Discover’s AI-driven reporting can influence how our pages gain visibility—though impressions don’t necessarily translate to clicks on sources anymore. So, is this just a minor tech blip, or does it hint at something bigger brewing in the AI discovery space? If you’ve got a few moments, dive into your own Discover feed and tap those source links—see what you get. Curiosity never hurt anyone, right? LEARN MORE.

Google says disabled source taps on Discover’s AI summary cards were “a bug in a Discover experiment,” and that it has turned the experiment off.

Rajan Patel, VP of Engineering for Search at Google, said so in a reply on X Monday evening. Damien Andell, who researches Google Discover, had reported the issue on Oct. 23.

Before the test, Andell wrote, tapping a summary’s sources opened a feed of articles from those sources, one path from an AI summary to the sites it cites. The morning after Patel’s reply, Andell posted that the experiment had been removed and replaced with another.

What Google Said

Patel was replying to Lily Ray, who had quote-posted Andell’s report the morning of Oct. 23. Patel wrote:

Hey Lily – this was a bug in a Discover experiment. We’ve turned off the experiment, and the experience works as intended again.

The reply doesn’t say what the experiment was testing, how long it ran, or how many people saw the disabled taps.

What Was Reported

Andell wrote on Oct. 23 that Discover was testing an AI summary change that disabled clicks on sources.

He found this test through a flag called “disable_aio_sources_button_tap,” and stated that this flag stopped taps on the sources at the bottom from opening the article feed.

In his two screenshots, Andell is showing a Fox 9 video from YouTube that has appeared in his Discover feed. Each screenshot shows a brief summary underneath the video and a series of icon links below it. The second image circles the icon links and labels them “Sources.”

What Andell Found After Google’s Reply

On Oct. 27, he looked at this again. In a reply on X, he stated:

I just checked and the experiment did indeed remove and replace it with another one called “aio tap falls through to hero”.

His post didn’t explain how the new experiment works or where it is running.

Why This Matters

The Discover generative AI report from Search Console reports how many times users see links to your pages in Discover through the generative AI capabilities. Each source page is listed by URL in the Discover Generative AI Report.

The only metric described in Search Console Help for this report is Impression, which represents when someone sees one of your website’s link(s) via the generative AI in Discover, not a source tap.

Looking Ahead

Until Google or Andell explains the replacement experiment, you can take a quick look for yourself. Tap the sources on an AI summary card in your Discover feed to see whether the article feed opens.