How did you google this, and did you use the dumb search, or specifically 'AI mode' lens?

Because I did this and got a vastly different result from you:

Yes, the Halifax Wanderers can still mathematically qualify for the 2026 Canadian Premier League (CPL) playoffs.The top four teams advance to the postseason. Following their 1-0 loss to Atlético Ottawa on September 26, 2026, the Wanderers sit in fifth place, just below the playoff line.

With a indexed table of the games and the playoff table, with a breakdown of what the points they need to achieve to do so.

The search window may not always crawl sources. AI mode specifically does some research before giving you a response. Not sure what you're on about.

> Because I did this and got a vastly different result from you

Which itself is a major UX issue. The average person is not going to understand, if they even realize, that there's a difference between the AI summary and AI mode.

One has to wonder just how much incorrect information people have consumed due to things like this.

I typed it in my address bar and hit ENTER. It goes to Google, and the AI result is at the top above the regular search results. Don't know what to tell you brother, but as another commenter noted you don't always get the same results out of the same search terms. I've searched for CPL standings other times and gotten results exactly as you've explained, so maybe my experience yesterday was an anomaly.

Not OP, but if I’m not interested in using Google’s AI, it’s going to just return these weird bad results that it’d be better off if Google just didn’t even include them as they’re factually wrong?

LLM results are nondeterministic, you can ask it 10 times and get 10 different answers. But also it uses your specific profile, location, tracking cookies, etc which changes the model input and thus results. Even the time of day changes the results.