For the last couple of years, I've been writing about AI Overviews and how they're reshaping search. But Google's AI Mode — which started rolling out to broader audiences this year — is a different animal entirely. AI Overviews sit on top of the regular results page. AI Mode replaces it. Instead of a list of links, users get a conversational interface that synthesises answers, follows up with questions, and only surfaces traditional web results when you explicitly ask for them. It's the most fundamental change to Google Search since the introduction of Universal Search in 2007, and if you're an SEO professional or a business that depends on organic traffic, you need to understand what's happening.
AI Mode vs AI Overviews: What's the Difference?
This is the question I get most often from clients, and the distinction matters. AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear above the organic results — the links are still there, just pushed further down. AI Mode is a full conversational search experience. When a user switches to AI Mode (via a tab in Google Search, similar to how you'd switch to Images or News), they enter a chat-like interface. The results page as we know it doesn't exist in that mode.
Google described AI Mode as using Gemini 2.0 to power "multi-step reasoning" across queries. Think of it as Google's answer to Perplexity and ChatGPT search — but baked directly into the world's biggest search engine. Search Engine Land has been tracking the rollout closely, and the consensus is that Google is positioning AI Mode as the future of search, not a side experiment.
How AI Mode Sources Content
Here's the part that matters most to me as an SEO: AI Mode still draws from web content. When it generates an answer, it cites sources — sometimes inline, sometimes in a sidebar. But the way it surfaces those sources is fundamentally different from a ranked list of ten blue links. A single query might pull from five different sites, synthesise their information, and present it as one answer with citations. The user may never click through to any of them.
This is why I've been telling clients that being cited matters more than being clicked — at least in AI Mode. If your content is good enough to be a source, you get brand exposure. If it's not, you're invisible. There's no page-two consolation prize.
What I'm Seeing in the Data
I've been comparing traffic data across several client sites since AI Mode started expanding. The pattern I'm seeing is consistent with what happened when AI Overviews rolled out, but amplified:
- Informational queries: Down 20-35% in click-through rate compared to pre-AI Mode baselines. Simple questions — "what is X", "how does Y work" — are almost entirely answered in the AI response
- Commercial queries: Down 5-15%. Users still want to compare products and read reviews, but AI Mode is starting to handle comparisons too
- Transactional queries: Relatively stable. "Buy X near me" and "order Y online" still drive clicks because users need to complete a transaction
- Brand queries: Up slightly. When users search for a specific brand, AI Mode tends to surface the brand's site directly
These numbers come from my own client portfolio, so they're anecdotal rather than definitive. Similarweb and Semrush have both published broader studies that align with these trends, though the exact percentages vary by industry.
What SEOs Should Do Right Now
1. Check How AI Mode Handles Your Keywords
I've been running queries through AI Mode for all my clients' target keywords and documenting what comes back. Is your site cited? Is a competitor cited? Does the AI answer seem accurate? This is the new version of checking your rankings — except instead of position 1-10, you're checking for inclusion in the AI response at all. Our UDM 14 search is still the best way to see the organic baseline — what Google ranks without AI — so you can compare the two.
2. Double Down on Original Research
AI Mode synthesises content from multiple sources. If your content says the same thing as everyone else's, you're competing to be one of many interchangeable sources. Original data, proprietary research, and unique case studies are what make your content citable — the AI has to reference you because no one else has the information. I've seen this play out with clients who invest in original research: they consistently get cited in AI responses while their competitors don't.
3. Structure Your Content for AI Parsing
AI Mode reads content differently than a human does. Clear headings, concise answer blocks, and proper schema markup make it easier for the AI to extract and cite your content. I recommend structuring key articles with a summary paragraph at the top that directly answers the implied question — this is what the AI is most likely to pull.
4. Build Brand Search Volume
The one area where I've seen traffic increase with AI Mode is branded search. When users see your brand cited in an AI response, some of them will search for your brand directly afterwards. This means brand awareness is becoming an SEO metric — the more people recognise your name from AI citations, the more direct traffic you'll earn. SparkToro's zero-click research supports this: brand recall from search impressions is increasingly valuable even when clicks don't happen.
5. Don't Abandon Traditional SEO
AI Mode hasn't replaced regular Google Search — it's a tab alongside it. Millions of users still use the standard results page, and that's not going away overnight. I tell clients to treat AI Mode as an additional channel, not a replacement. Keep optimising for organic rankings using our technical SEO audit checklist and Core Web Vitals guide, while also building the content strategy that gets you cited in AI responses.
The Bigger Picture
I've been doing SEO for over 12 years, and every few years there's a moment where people declare "SEO is dead." AI Mode feels like one of those moments. But I've lived through Panda, Penguin, Mobilegeddon, BERT, and AI Overviews — and each time, the sites that focused on quality, originality, and technical excellence came out stronger. The tactics change; the principles don't.
The sites that will struggle are the ones that have been coasting on thin, generic content that could be written by anyone — because now, it literally can be written by AI, and Google's AI doesn't need to click through to read it. If your content adds something that can't be generated, synthesised, or paraphrased, you have a future in AI Mode search. If it doesn't, it's time to rethink your strategy.
I'll keep tracking this closely and posting updates as AI Mode evolves. In the meantime, I'd recommend reading Google's official AI Mode announcement and following Search Engine Land for ongoing coverage. And if you want to see what Google's organic results look like without any AI interference, that's exactly what our AI-Free Search tool is for.
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