Google AI Mode: what it is, how to use it and how it works

Google AI Mode is a conversational search experience inside Google Search, opened from its own tab, where a Gemini model answers your query in full, cites the web pages it used and lets you ask follow-up questions without starting a new search.

Where an AI Overview adds a summary on top of the classic results, AI Mode replaces the results page with an answer. It is free, and to try it you only need to open google.com/ai.

How to turn on and use Google AI Mode

There is nothing to turn on and nothing to pay: it is part of Google Search. According to Google's help page, there are three ways in:

• Go to google.com/ai.
• Type a question on google.com and tap AI Mode.
• In the Google app, tap AI Mode on the home screen.

Inside you can ask by typing, by voice, with an image or by uploading a PDF, and keep asking about the answer. If search history is on in your Google account, you can pick up earlier conversations. If the option does not show up, AI Mode has not reached your country or language yet, or your account has a restriction (see below).

On desktop (Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox)

1. Open google.com/ai in any browser and type your question.
2. Or search on google.com as usual and select AI Mode, next to the search bar and among the results tabs.
3. To keep going, type in the "Ask anything" bar under the answer. Your past conversations are in the history icon on the left.

On Android

1. Open the Google app (update it in Google Play if you do not see the option).
2. Tap AI Mode on the home screen.
3. Type, tap the microphone to ask by voice, or use the camera to ask about a photo.

You can also open google.com/ai in Chrome on your phone without installing anything.

On iPhone and iPad

1. Download or update the Google app from the App Store.
2. Tap AI Mode on the home screen.
3. Or open google.com/ai in Safari or Chrome, no app needed.

Open AI Mode from the address bar

If you use it often, set up a shortcut. In Chrome settings, go to manage search engines, add a new site search with the URL https://www.google.com/search?udm=50&q=%s and a shortcut such as ai. Typing "ai", a space and your question in the address bar takes you straight to AI Mode. The udm=50 parameter is the same one Google's own "Try it now" link uses.

Is Google AI Mode free?

Yes. AI Mode is free to use, signed in or not, on desktop and mobile. What a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription adds is access to Google's most advanced Gemini model, picked from the model menu in the "Ask anything" bar, with daily limits that depend on your plan. The default fast model handles most everyday searches.

Google AI Mode requirements: country, language, age and account

• Country and language. Google rolls AI Mode out by country and language. Since October 2025 it has been available in more than 200 countries and territories and in dozens of languages. It is not available in France or Cuba.
• Account. You do not need to sign in to use it. Signed out, or with history off, you cannot resume earlier conversations.
• Age. Personalization and the "AI Mode" experiment in Search Labs, which gives early access to new features, are for users 18 and older.
• Work and supervised accounts. On a Google Workspace account with Search turned off, only the admin can turn history on; child accounts are managed with Family Link.

"AI Mode is not available": why and how to fix it

If you do not see the AI Mode button, or Google tells you AI Mode is not available, work through these causes in order:

1. Your country or language is not supported. Check the list on Google's help page and make sure your account language is one of them.
2. You are on a work or school account. The admin may restrict Search. Try your personal account, or search signed out.
3. The app is out of date. Update the Google app in Google Play or the App Store.
4. The button does not show on your search. Go straight to google.com/ai, which opens AI Mode without going through the results page.
5. Google is not confident in an answer. When confidence is low, AI Mode shows regular web links instead of a generated answer.

How to turn off Google AI Mode or stop using it

There is no switch to turn AI Mode off, because it does not replace regular Search: it only opens when you choose it. If you only want links, use the Web filter on the results page. If you set up the address bar shortcut above as your default search engine, set Google back as the default in Chrome settings. To clear what you asked, open the AI Mode history and delete one conversation or all of them; to stop saving future ones, turn off Web & App Activity in your Google account.

How Google AI Mode works

Google opened AI Mode as a Search Labs experiment in March 2025 and made it available to all users in the US in May 2025. You reach it from the AI Mode tab next to the other search tabs, and it has since reached more countries and languages. In October 2025 Google added 36 languages and nearly 50 more countries and territories, Spain among them.

Google describes AI Mode as using query fan-out: it breaks your question into subtopics, runs many searches at once and combines what it finds into one answer. The answer usually mixes prose, lists and links to sources, and it keeps the context of the conversation, so a follow-up like "and which one is cheaper?" is read against the previous answer. Google says people type questions two to three times longer in AI Mode than in traditional search.

Google AI Mode features

• Multimodal questions: text, voice, camera photos, images, PDFs, Drive files or the URL of a page you want to ask about.
• Real-time voice conversation (Search Live), where you can also share what your camera sees, where available.
• Personal Intelligence: it can draw on your past searches and, if you connect them, Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Photos.
• Interactive visuals such as simulations, diagrams or calculators, for signed-in users in English.

Deep Search in AI Mode

Deep Search is the research version of AI Mode. Google launched it in July 2025 for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the US: it runs hundreds of searches, reasons across what it finds and, in a few minutes, writes a report with every source cited. It suits big decisions, such as comparing vendors or researching a major purchase.

Google AI Mode vs AI Overviews vs Gemini

Because the two draw on different searches, the brands and pages they cite for the same keyword can differ. Measure them separately. AI Mode is not ChatGPT either: both answer with sources, but AI Mode sits inside Google and uses its index, so a brand can appear in one and not the other. If you want to rank in Google's assistant, read the guide to Gemini SEO.

Why AI Mode matters for brands

AI Mode behaves more like ChatGPT or Perplexity than like a results page. Users write longer questions, compare options inside the conversation and often leave with a shortlist of brands instead of a list of links. If your brand is not in that shortlist, a strong organic ranking does little for you in that session. It is also a Google product, so it reaches people who never open a separate AI assistant.

For marketers, AI Mode is part of the shift towards conversational search and zero-click search: the unit you compete on is the answer, not the position. Watching what AI Mode and the other engines say about your brand is the job of AI brand monitoring.

Ads in Google AI Mode

Google announced in May 2025 that it was bringing ads to AI Mode, starting in the US. They are labelled as sponsored and appear below or within the answer when they are relevant to the question. For a brand, an ad buys a slot next to the answer, but it does not change what AI Mode says about you or whom it recommends: that still depends on the sources it cites.

What sources AI Mode cites: Mencoro data

In Mencoro's study of the websites Google AI Mode cites in Spain, covering 8,035 answers for 42 brands, AI Mode cited 6.8 sources per answer, against 6.5 for AI Overviews and 9.1 for ChatGPT. Only 5.5% of citations pointed to the brand's own website; of the rest, 76.7% were company websites, and the most cited domain was instagram.com, present in 8.4% of answers. In other words, what AI Mode says about your brand comes mostly from other people's websites.

How to measure your presence in AI Mode

Search Console does not split it out: AI Mode clicks and impressions are counted in the Performance report under the "Web" search type, together with the rest of Search, according to Google's AI features and your website guide. And since AI Mode answers almost every query, the useful question is how often it names you, not whether it answers. Use a mention rate over the queries you track:

AI Mode mention rate = answers that name your brand / answers checked × 100

Worked example: you track 50 prompts in AI Mode, checked weekly for 4 weeks, so 200 answers. Your brand is named in 60 of them, a mention rate of 30%. If a competitor is named in 110, its rate is 55%, and the prompts where it is named and you are not are the ones to study first.

Also read how you are named. A recommendation and a passing reference in a long list both count as a mention, but they do not carry the same weight for the user. To compare your share with your competitors', try the share of voice calculator. The same method works in ChatGPT: see how to track brand mentions in ChatGPT.

How to improve your visibility in AI Mode

• Answer the follow-ups. Pricing, alternatives, use cases and limitations are the sub-questions AI Mode searches for. Pages that answer them clearly give it something to cite.
• State who you are for. Answers often qualify a recommendation ("for small teams"). Say plainly which audience and use case each product fits.
• Be named by others. Comparisons, reviews and press coverage give the model independent sources that mention you.
• Keep the basics. A page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to be cited, as Google's AI features documentation explains. Google says AI Mode needs no special markup, and you control what it shows from your pages with nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex.

Common mistakes

• Assuming that AI Overview results tell you what AI Mode says.
• Tracking only short keywords when AI Mode users type full questions.
• Reading one answer as the truth: the same question can get another answer the next day.
• Looking for AI Mode traffic in Search Console as if it were a separate report.

How Mencoro tracks Google AI Mode

Google AI Mode is one of the engines Mencoro checks, alongside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overview and Google SERP. Each prompt runs in the country you choose, and you can ask for 1 to 3 passes per check to smooth out answers that vary. Every brand the answer names is classified by type (recommendation, comparison, listing, example or reference) and tone, and every link to your domains is recorded with its position among the sources. That feeds your Coverage, Favorability and Share of voice for AI Mode, which you can compare with your AI Overview and SERP results for the same topic. AI Mode is not available in France or Cuba, so it cannot be checked there. See the Google AI Overview and AI Mode tracker, the methodology, or run a free check with the AI Mode checker.

Related glossary terms

• Google AI Overviews: the AI summaries shown above some Google results.
• Query fan-out: how one question becomes many searches.
• Conversational search: searching through a dialogue instead of keywords.
• AI search engine: search engines that answer with generated text.
• Zero-click search: searches answered on Google's own page.