Some AI Overviews lost their desktop label but kept it on mobile
Summary
Some AI Overviews now render on desktop without the "AI Overviews" label while the same panel keeps it on mobile, so a tracker that keys on the label can undercount them.
Run the queries where your tool shows a drop in a desktop browser by hand before reporting it as a change in Google's results.
Google is showing some AI Overviews on desktop without the “AI Overviews” label, while the same panel on mobile still carries it, per Search Engine Roundtable’s report. Glenn Gabe, an SEO consultant who posts his search findings on X, spotted it on the morning of October 20 on queries about shows and movies. Barry Schwartz, who runs Search Engine Roundtable, called it a probable bug and said he has asked Google about it.
The unlabeled panels sit at the top of the results page and resemble knowledge panels. Plenty of other AI Overviews still carry the label, so this is not Google retiring the labeling across the feature.
Schwartz connected the missing label to Semrush, which has been reporting a drop in how often AI Overviews appear in Google Search. He wrote on X that the drop has to be a bug in Semrush’s tracking, because he sees AI Overviews everywhere.
Neither Gabe nor Schwartz describes how a tracker decides that a result contains an AI Overview. If the missing label and the Semrush drop are connected, the likelier explanation is that detection keys on the visible label. A scraper looking for the “AI Overviews” string on a desktop results page counts nothing when the string is gone, even though the panel rendered and the searcher read it. Prevalence falls in the chart while exposure on the SERP stays where it was.
Schwartz also notes that Google has shipped missing AI labels before and that it turned out to be a bug. If that repeats here, the line recovers on its own once the label returns, and anyone who presented the dip to a client as a shift in Google’s behavior has to walk it back.
Tool data about SERP features has gone wrong in this direction before. Google serves altered results to rank trackers on a share of queries, and AI-readiness checkers score whether markup is present rather than whether it works. In each case the number moved because of a limit in how it was collected, not because the web changed.
What to do
Take the queries where your tool shows the decline and run them yourself, on desktop and on mobile. If the panel is there on desktop without a label and labeled on mobile, your AI Overview exposure has not changed and there is nothing to report.
Hold any client deck or monthly report that reads a drop in AI Overview coverage starting around October 20 until that manual check is done. Segment by query type first, since the missing label has so far turned up on entertainment queries rather than across the board.
If you run your own AI Overview tracking, check whether its detection depends on the label text appearing in the HTML. That is the part worth knowing now, because the same failure will recur the next time Google changes the wording or drops the label on another surface.
Nothing here calls for a change to the site. This is a measurement and reporting problem, not a crawling, rendering, or markup one. Google has not confirmed the change or called it a bug, so the finding stands on Gabe’s observation and Schwartz’s report rather than on anything official.