Google AI Mode: how to turn it on, use it and get cited

Have you noticed "AI Mode" next to "All" and "Images" in Google? It is Google's conversational search, which arrived in France at the same time as AI Overviews. Here is what Google AI Mode is, how to turn it on and use it, how it differs from AI Overviews, then what it changes for SEO and how to get cited in it.

What is Google AI Mode?

According to Google, AI Mode is its most advanced AI search experience. You ask a question, even a long and specific one, and you get an answer written by Gemini, along with links to the pages that back it up. You can then ask follow-up questions without losing the thread, as in a conversation.

What sets it apart is technical: query decomposition, or "query fan-out". AI Mode breaks your question into subtopics, runs a search for each one in parallel, then compiles the results. That is how it handles, in one go, a question that would have taken five classic searches.

It accepts more than text: voice, a photo, a PDF or a file, the address of a web page. And when Google judges that a generated answer would not be reliable enough, AI Mode may simply show a list of links.

It is not the Gemini app: AI Mode stays inside Google Search, relies on Google's index and sends people to web pages. That is what makes it an SEO topic.

Where is AI Mode available, and is it free?

Google launched AI Mode and AI Overviews in France on July 22, 2026, on desktop, on mobile and in the Google app for Android and iOS. The announcement, signed by the managing director of Google France, states that AI Mode runs on Gemini 3.5. French is on the list of supported languages.

France waited two years: the global rollout had started in May 2024, and AI Mode was already open in the rest of the European Union. The French trade press linked the delay to the dispute between Google and news publishers over neighboring rights for press publishers.

AI Mode is free and requires no subscription. With a Google account and history turned on, you can find your previous searches and pick a conversation back up. Personalized answers are limited to users aged 18 and over.

How to turn on Google AI Mode

There is nothing to turn on or install: AI Mode is open to everyone. You just need to open it, in one of these ways.

1. Go to google.com/ai: the page opens directly in AI Mode.
2. From google.com: type your question, then choose AI Mode on the results page.
3. In the Google app (Android, iPhone): tap AI Mode on the home screen.
4. From an AI Overview, on mobile: tap "Show more" at the bottom of the summary, then type your question in the question bar. The context of your search is kept.
5. In Chrome on desktop: the AI Mode button on the right of the address bar or of the New Tab page search box, or press Tab then Enter. Google is rolling it out gradually outside the United States, so it may not show up for you yet.

How to use Google AI Mode: example questions

AI Mode is built for the questions you would not have typed into Google two years ago: long ones, with constraints, that call for a comparison or some reasoning. Google says an AI Mode search is on average three times longer than a classic search.

Typing a question

Write the way you would talk to an advisor, and spell out your constraints. Three examples:

• "I need to choose invoicing software for a three-person construction business. Compare four options on price, e-invoicing and mobile app, in a table."
• "Explain the difference between a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA for a 45-year-old, with a worked example."
• "I'm going to Scotland for ten days in May with two kids and no car. Suggest a train itinerary with the budget to plan for."

Chaining follow-up questions

Conversation is where AI Mode shines. After the first answer, ask "what about a team of ten?" or "which one is cheapest over three years?" without repeating the context. Each follow-up refines the answer instead of starting from scratch.

Searching by voice, with a photo or with a file

Tap the microphone to speak. Search Live, inside AI Mode, lets you hold a voice conversation while sharing your phone's camera: handy for identifying an object or describing a breakdown. The menu in the question bar lets you upload an image, a PDF or a Drive file, or paste a page's address to ask a question about it.

Checking the answers

Google says so itself: AI Mode can be wrong, misread a page or miss some context. For any decision that matters (health, money, law), open the cited sources and rephrase the question to cross-check the answers.

Google AI Mode vs AI Overviews: what are the differences?

Both rely on Gemini and on Google's index, but Google specifies that they may use different models and techniques: the same question will not necessarily return the same answers or the same links. If it is AI Overviews that bother you, here is how to turn off Google AI Overviews.

How to turn off Google AI Mode

AI Mode never opens on its own: if you don't choose it, you stay in classic search. So there is no on/off switch. Two steps reduce its presence:

• Hide the button in Chrome: right-click the address bar, then uncheck "Always show AI Mode".
• Clear the history: open your AI Mode history and delete one search or all of them. Searches also stay in your account's Search history, which you need to delete separately.

What Google AI Mode changes for SEO

For a website, AI Mode adds a second answer page next to the classic results page. Three effects matter.

Longer queries, broken down into sub-questions

Your page no longer competes only on the query that was typed, but on each of the sub-questions AI Mode explores. A page that covers the price, the comparison or the steps of a topic well can be cited on a question it does not target word for word. Conversely, a page that ranks well for a keyword but says nothing about neighboring questions gives up its spot.

Clicks are counted, but rarer on simple questions

In Search Console, a click to your page from AI Mode counts as a click, impressions follow the usual rules and position is calculated as on a results page. Every follow-up question is a new query. Since August 31, 2026, the generative AI performance report isolates your impressions in AI Mode and AI Overviews, without clicks for now: those are still counted with the rest of your Web search traffic.

When the answer is enough, the searcher does not click. Pages that live off short definitions are the most exposed. Comparisons, real prices and experience-based content keep a reason to be visited, because the decision takes more than a summary.

Being named matters as much as the click

Being named in the answer, at the moment the person is comparing, has value even without a visit. That is why I track presence in AI Mode as a share of voice against competitors, and not only as traffic.

How to get cited in Google AI Mode

Google's official position is simple: SEO best practices still apply, and there is no extra requirement or special optimization to appear in AI Mode or AI Overviews. To be shown as a link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet. No dedicated file or special markup is needed. Google's guide on generative AI in Search, updated July 10, 2026, puts it bluntly: for Google Search, GEO and AEO are still SEO, and an llms.txt file or artificially chunking content into blocks does nothing.

On the pages I want to see cited, here is what I work on, in this order:

1. Cover the sub-questions of the topic. List what AI Mode will look for around your query (price, comparison, steps, mistakes, reviews) and answer it on the page, or on linked pages that exist for the reader. Do not create one page per sub-question: Google classes that as scaled content abuse. The simulator below gives you a first list.
2. Answer at the top of each section. One sentence that answers, then the detail. A passage that makes sense on its own is easier to reuse.
3. Provide comparable data. Tables, explicit criteria, dated prices: AI Mode often builds comparisons, and it needs structured material to do it.
4. Keep off-site data up to date. Google itself lists the Google Business Profile and Merchant Center among the information to keep current. For a local business, the citation is often decided there.
5. Stay crawlable and readable. No blocking in robots.txt or at your host, important content in text, structured data that matches the visible text.
6. Get cited by others. Press, comparison sites, directories in your industry: these are the pages answer engines pick up when they don't cite you. Earned mentions, not manufactured ones: Google warns that artificial mentions do little.

I cover this approach in detail in my GEO SEO guide, and how to write passages that are easy to reuse in my article on AEO. For a diagnosis of your site, see my GEO consulting.

To prepare your pages and your tracking, start from your topic: the simulator suggests the long question a searcher would ask AI Mode, the sub-questions Google is likely to explore, a link to test each one, and a tracking sheet to download.

Measuring your visibility in AI Mode

The generative AI report in Search Console gives you impressions page by page. It does not tell you which questions you are cited on, or who is cited instead of you. For that, measurement is still manual, and it takes rigor:

1. Build a panel of twenty to forty questions your customers actually ask, phrased as they would be in a conversation.
2. Ask them in AI Mode and record, for each one, whether you are cited, which competitors are, and which sources appear. Date the record.
3. Repeat every month with the same panel, without rephrasing. A single measurement cannot tell progress from noise.
4. Report absolute values: "cited on 6 of 40 questions" says more than a growth percentage.
5. Change one thing at a time between two measurements, otherwise you will know something worked without knowing what.

Allow three to six months before a page change shows up in generated answers: that is the delay I observe. The full method, with metrics and tracking tools, is in my article on AI visibility.

Written by

Anthony Courtin

SEO, GEO & AI automation consultant

I help SMBs and independent professionals with their visibility (Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity) and with real-world use of AI at work. I work with companies on site to train their teams and rethink their processes. Everything I write here, I use with my clients.

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