Table of Contents
Google's AI Mode Now Opens Your Site Side‑by‑Side
The rest of the week, in bite-sized pieces
"How do I know if my website even shows up inside AI Mode? And if it does, is the click worth anything?"
Epic Web Studios
Epic Insights
Edition 17  ·  Apr 28, 2026

Your Website Just Got Half Its Screen Back

Since AI Overviews showed up, we've been experimenting behind the scenes to figure out where the "click" went. The common refrain lately is that websites aren't just dropping in rank—they're being summarized into oblivion.

So, when Google quietly rolled out a significant update to how AI Mode functions within Chrome the week before last, I didn't just skim the notes. I read them twice to make sure I fully grasped the implications for our traffic and strategy.
The Big Story

Google's AI Mode Now Opens Your Site Side‑by‑Side

On April 16, Google rolled out a redesigned AI Mode in Chrome that does something different from anything we've seen in the past year of generative search. When a user clicks a link inside an AI Mode response, your page no longer replaces the AI summary. Instead, it opens beside the AI panel. Your site on one half of the screen, the AI conversation on the other.

Here's why that matters. For the past year, the narrative has been that AI Overviews are effectively filtering users away from the source. The data backs the dread: Ahrefs reported in February that top-ranked pages sitting under an AI Overview lost 58% of their click-through rate. That is a massive jump from the 34.5% drop measured just a year prior.

This Chrome update is the first structural move we've seen that actually encourages the click. But there is a catch. As Aleyda Solís noted in her SEOFOMO update, AI Mode is becoming "stickier." Because the AI panel stays open, users can keep asking follow-up questions while they skim your content. The traffic returns, but the user's attention remains tethered to Google.

Don't misread this as a total victory. A layout change won't instantly recover a 58% CTR loss. However, it is a signal that publisher sites still have a job to do. The challenge now is that your page must earn—and keep—that attention in significantly less screen real estate than it was designed for.
What this means for your site
When your site renders in this side-by-side view, it's likely restricted to a 600–800 pixel panel. That's roughly 60% of the desktop width you usually optimize for. Your "above the fold" real estate just got a lot smaller.

Your move: Open your three highest-traffic landing pages in Chrome desktop. Drag the window to about 60% of your screen width. Can you still see your value prop, your hero image, and a call to action without scrolling? If not, those are the pages to rewrite first.
Quick Hits

The rest of the week, in bite-sized pieces
Your Search Console Numbers Have Been Wrong Since May
Google quietly disclosed on April 3 that a logging error has been inflating impression data in Search Console since May 13, 2025. Clicks weren't affected, but the impression numbers you've been reporting against may need revisiting.
Your move: Stop benchmarking against last year's impression counts. Use clicks and CTR for trend analysis until Google republishes corrected data.
SERPs Shifted Again After the March Update Settled
Volatility trackers (Semrush, AccuRanker, SimilarWeb) all spiked again on April 23, two weeks after the March 2026 Core Update officially wrapped. Most analysts are calling it late-stage recalibration, not a new named update.
Your move: Don't make panicked rewrites this week. Wait until the dust settles before reading GSC deltas as a real signal.
Perplexity Sends Less Traffic. It Converts Twice as Well.
ChatGPT drives roughly 78% of all chatbot referral traffic versus Perplexity's 7%, per recent referral data. But Perplexity's clicks convert 1.5–2x higher in B2B because each click is a deliberate "tell me more" moment.
Your move: When auditing AI visibility, check which AI tools your customers actually use. Quality of click matters more than volume of mention.
Ninja Forms File Uploads Bug Is Still Being Exploited
CVE-2026-0740, the critical Ninja Forms File Uploads vulnerability we flagged two weeks ago, is still being actively hit. The patch shipped in early April. Unpatched sites are seeing remote code execution attempts in the wild.
Your move: If you run WordPress and use Ninja Forms with file uploads, check your version this week or have whoever manages your site confirm.
Ask Epic

"How do I know if my website even shows up inside AI Mode? And if it does, is the click worth anything?"

Two real questions. Let's take them in order.

You can check the first one today. Open Chrome, click "AI Mode" at the top of google.com, and ask the questions your customers actually type. If your business comes up on the right-side citation panel, you're in the conversation. If you don't see your site listed, that's a visibility gap worth flagging at your next strategy check-in.

The second question is harder. AI Mode clicks do count in Search Console but Google folds them into your normal totals, and there's no native way to filter them out yet. The new side-by-side rollout adds another wrinkle: when a user keeps asking follow-up questions on the AI panel after opening your page, those follow-ups register as new queries, not as engagement with your site.

So is the click worth something? Probably. Is it worth what a pre-AI click was worth? Probably not. The honest answer is we'll know in 90 days, when there's enough referral data to read the room.
What Epic's doing for you this week
Behind the scenes this week, our team is auditing client landing pages for half-viewport readability pulling each page into a 700-pixel browser window and asking whether the hero, value prop, and primary call to action still land. We're also rolling out the latest Ninja Forms patches across hosted sites and checking schema markup for businesses that should be showing up as AI Mode citation sources but aren't yet.
Your 15-minute self-audit

The Half-Viewport Test (Three Questions, 15 Minutes)

Open your three highest-traffic landing pages in Chrome. Drag your browser window to roughly 60% of your screen width, about as wide as your hand stretched out. Now answer:

  1. Can you read your value proposition without scrolling?
  2. Is at least one clear next step (a button, a phone number, a form) visible above the fold?
  3. Does any image or design element get cropped weirdly or pushed off-screen?

If you said "no" to question one, "no" to question two, or "yes" to question three, that's a page that needs work before AI Mode users see it side-by-side with a Gemini conversation.

Thanks for reading! Got questions? Ideas? I'm all ears. Share your thoughts with me and help shape future editions of Epic Insights.

Kristy Freeman
Epic Web Studios
k.freeman@epicwebstudios.com
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