Google AI Mode

Google AI Mode is a mode in Google Search that answers a question with an AI-generated response, links to the web and room for follow-up questions. Google's help page calls it "Google's most powerful AI search experience" and says it "divides your question into subtopics and searches for each one simultaneously," a technique Google calls query fan-out. People open it by tapping AI Mode in Google Search, or at google.com/ai.

Google introduced AI Mode in 2025, built on a custom version of Gemini, and began rolling it out to everyone in the US that year. At I/O 2026, Google said AI Mode had passed 1 billion monthly active users within a year, and in its Q3 2026 earnings remarks that AI Mode queries are on average three times longer than traditional searches.

How it differs from AI Overviews

AI Overviews summarize at the top of a normal results page. AI Mode is a separate, conversational experience for questions that need further exploration, reasoning or comparisons. Google says the two may use different models and techniques, so the responses and links they show will vary. Track them as two engines.

How to measure it

Search Console counts a click on a link in AI Mode as a click in the Performance report, within the Web search type, and its Generative AI performance report shows AI Mode impressions by page. Neither shows which brands an answer names. For that, run the long, specific questions your buyers ask, such as "project management tool for a 15-person design studio with client approvals", and log whether you are named, in what position, and which citations appear. AI Mode also takes follow-up questions, so add the ones buyers ask next, such as pricing or integrations, as prompts of their own.