Google AI Mode and AI Overviews: what changes for your business?

Google AI Mode is a separate search environment within Google where you ask a question and get a written-out answer with links to the sources it used. Unlike AI Overviews at the top of the search results, AI Mode lets you ask follow-up questions and compare options. For your business, this means simple questions bring in fewer clicks, unless your website shows up as an expert source.

How Google AI Mode answers a question and chooses its sources

Google AI Mode isn't a separate feature between the links, but an environment of its own within Google Search. Ask a question and you get a compiled text answer with clickable references to the websites it used. You can ask a follow-up question right away without starting over.

For the searcher, that saves clicking back and forth between tabs. For you as a business owner, it changes the moment a potential customer first sees your website. Many exploratory questions already get answered on the search page. Want to know where you stand now? Then you can check right away whether AI search engines mention your business.

Searching and asking follow-ups with text, voice or files

There's no button that lets a user turn AI Mode on or off for good. You choose the environment for each search. On a computer, you type a question on google.com and choose the AI Mode tab at the top. You can also go straight to google.com/ai. On a phone, you open the Google app for Android or iOS and tap the AI Mode button.

According to Google Search Help, you don't just ask a question with text or your voice. You can also take a photo, upload an image, add a PDF file or ask about a specific web address. That way a buyer can put two quotes or spec sheets side by side. Then they ask follow-up questions about the differences in the same conversation.

You can also open AI Mode without a signed-in search history. Want to save earlier conversations and get answers that fit your earlier searches? Then, according to Google's blog post on Personal Intelligence, your search history and personalized recommendations need to be turned on in your personal Google account.

How Google breaks a question into subtopics

Many business owners think an AI answer comes from a standalone language model that has nothing to do with the regular search engine. According to Google's own documentation, AI Mode actually works on top of the existing search index. The system uses a technique Google calls query fan-out. It breaks one broad question into several subtopics and runs different searches at the same time.

Google then combines the web pages it finds into one answer with source links. If the system isn't confident enough that it can give a good AI answer, it shows regular web links instead. You see part of the same principle in the summaries above the regular search results, although those serve a different purpose.

AI Overviews or AI Mode: what's the difference?

AI Overviews appear automatically as a summary above the regular search results. Google AI Mode is a separate environment you open yourself for deeper questions, comparisons and follow-up questions. Make sure you have strong pages in the regular search results, because then you have a chance to show up as a source in both places.

Businesses often mix up these two. That's a shame, because a customer behaves differently when they quickly look up a term than when they compare three suppliers. Based on the documentation in Google Search Help, you can see below how the three forms of search differ.

For your visibility, AI Overviews and AI Mode have one important thing in common. If you don't have strong, substantive pages in Google's search index, you won't be cited as a source anywhere. That immediately raises the question of which searches still send visitors to your website.

Which searches still bring clicks to your site?

Simple informational questions bring in fewer clicks, because Google answers them right on the screen. Searches for your business name and buying-intent searches for a service provider or product still bring visitors to your website. So fewer visitors on your site doesn't automatically mean fewer inquiries.

When a customer types your main service into Google, is there already a ready-made AI answer above the results? Or do they see businesses from your area right away? The answer to that question shows exactly where your traffic is changing. If you see a complete block of text with an explanation right away, Google treats that search as an exploratory informational question. If you see local businesses, service pages or tools that help people choose, it's a buying-intent search. People still click through there to do business.

If you look at your numbers in Google Search Console and measure your visibility in AI search engines, you'll see a fixed pattern since AI Overviews and AI Mode arrived:

• Impressions stay the same or go up: Google still includes your page in the background. You're often one of the sources under a compiled answer.
• Clicks on definition questions go down: someone who only wants to know what a regulation or technique involves often gets enough from Google's summary. That searcher no longer clicks through.
• The click-through rate drops: the number of impressions stays high, but the number of clicks on simple questions goes down. That lowers the average percentage of people who click through.
• Buying-intent searches hold up: someone searching for a specific agency, an installer nearby or a company to take work off their hands still wants to go to the provider's website.
• Searches for your business name almost always lead to a click: someone who already knows your name and types it in uses Google to get to your site.

The visitors who still land on your site through a source link in AI Mode or a targeted search have already done their first round of research. They read your page to see whether you know your stuff. Noticing that your knowledge base is getting outdated, and you can't find the time to write up new customer questions yourself? Then you can have an article posted on your site every week that you review yourself beforehand.

What does AI Mode ask of the articles on your website?

According to Google, you don't need any special technical tricks to appear in AI Mode. Your page has to answer a concrete question directly, be part of a coherent field of expertise on your site and show who's behind it. Because the system relies on quality pages from Google Search, a clear structure works for your reader and the search engine alike.

Does your website right now mostly have scattered news posts about your own business? Or does it have articles that work through the questions your customers ask about your field? A customer who's searching gets nothing out of a post about an anniversary or a new company van. If you want to show up as a source when Google breaks a question into subtopics, replace those scattered news items with a knowledge base. In it, cover every subtopic of your field thoroughly and have your pages link to each other.

Start every page with the answer

An article that opens with a long run-up about how fast the market is changing loses a business owner's attention right away. So put the answer to the main question in the first paragraph: what it is, who it matters for and what the reader can do with it. After that come the details, the conditions and the numbers.

That structure helps a visitor in a hurry and makes it clear right away what your page is about. Below that, cover the logical follow-up questions a customer would also ask in a sales conversation. That way your page matches your reader's subquestions exactly.

Go deep on one field, the way DIBO did

One standalone article on a topic loses out to a website that works through an entire field step by step. You can see what that switch looks like in DIBO's knowledge base. DIBO went from scattered news posts to a knowledge base with 48 chosen topics and eight articles a month. DIBO reviews them and picks one of its own photos.

Cover dozens of related topics instead of posting a standalone item now and then. That way you build an archive where articles link to each other in a logical way. A searcher then finds a complete answer to every subquestion on your domain.

Show who's writing and don't block your site

There are already plenty of generic summaries on the internet. You set your page apart by naming a real author, having a clear page about your business and adding practical examples from your own work. On the back end of your site, you use structured data for articles and frequently asked questions. According to Google, that's not a requirement to appear in AI Mode, but it does give you a clean foundation that's easy to read.

Some business owners wonder whether they should block their content from AI Mode. You can partly limit what Google shows with the same settings you use to limit text snippets in the regular search results, such as nosnippet or max-snippet. A separate setting like Google-Extended doesn't control this, because according to Google that one is about training and other systems outside Search. Limiting text snippets also costs you visibility in the regular search results. That's why blocking is a bad trade for almost any business.

Why it backfires to stop writing articles

If you stop publishing as soon as your clicks drop, over time your business also stops appearing as a source in AI answers and the regular search results. Without current, substantive pages on your website, Google has no material to connect your business to a field.

The reaction is understandable. You see in your stats that an informational article draws fewer visitors and wonder why you'd still put effort into it. But the search engine works the other way around. As soon as you stop answering new customer questions on your site, what you have to offer gets outdated. Competitors who keep writing then take over your spot as a source.

If you want to get your website ready for AI search engines, it's not about blindly pumping out more generic content. It's about consistency combined with your own expertise. At SharpClicks, our system prepares the articles with the key answer at the top and a fixed structure. Then we check every piece ourselves and add practical examples.

The system writes. A person decides what goes online.

Jesse Scherpen, owner of SharpClicks

If you keep that human check and keep answering real customer questions every week or every month, you're building a strong website. Search engines and hesitant customers both fall back on it. That calls for a different look at your numbers and your pages.

How to tackle your visibility in Google this week

You stay in control of how you're found by putting your impressions next to your clicks in Google Search Console. On top of that, deepen pages with falling clicks and actively work on searches for your own business name. With these three steps, you'll see exactly where you're leaving visitors on the table right now.

Step 1: Put impressions and clicks side by side

Open Google Search Console and compare your pages' performance with the period before. Look especially at articles and service pages where the number of impressions stays the same or rises, but the number of clicks lags behind. Those are the topics where Google does include you, but the searcher stays on the results page.

Step 2: Deepen pages that do get impressions

Take the pages with a falling click-through rate and type the matching search into Google yourself. If there's a simple summary above the results that already says it all, pick one of these two directions. Add your own cases, conditions and concrete help with choosing that don't fit in a short summary. Or shift your time to questions that are closer to a quote request.

Step 3: Work on searches for your business name

Someone who searches specifically for your business name almost always clicks through to your site. So make sure people come across your name before they start searching, for example through trade media, partnerships or podcasts. Also read how to build up mentions of your business name. Don't judge your website's results only on the total number of visitors. Look mainly at how often people search for your name and how many inquiries the traffic brings in.

Sources

• Get AI-powered responses with AI Mode in Google Search, Google Search Help
• Personal Intelligence in AI Mode in Search, Google

Frequently asked questions

What is Google AI Mode?

Google AI Mode is a separate search environment within Google where you ask a question and get a compiled text answer with clickable links to the websites it used. Unlike regular search results or AI Overviews, you can ask a follow-up question right away or compare options without starting over. The system breaks your question into subtopics and bases the answer on pages from Google's search index.

How do you turn on AI Mode?

There's no button that turns AI Mode on or off for good. You choose the environment for each search. On a computer, you type a question on google.com and choose the AI Mode tab at the top, or you go straight to google.com/ai. On a phone, you open the Google app for Android or iOS and tap the AI Mode button.

Can I stop Google from using my content in AI Mode?

You can partly limit what Google shows with the same settings you use to limit text snippets in the regular search results, such as nosnippet or max-snippet. A separate setting like Google-Extended doesn't control this, because according to Google that one is about training and systems outside Search. Since limiting text snippets also costs you visibility in the regular search results, blocking is a bad trade for almost any business.

Can you search with a photo or PDF in Google AI Mode?

Yes. According to Google Search Help, you don't just ask a question in AI Mode with text or your voice. You can also take a photo, upload an image, add a PDF file or ask about a specific web address. That way a buyer can, for example, put two quotes or spec sheets side by side and ask follow-up questions about the differences in the same conversation.

How we can help

Blog automation. A new article online every week. From €80 a month, cancel any month.

See the service