What Is Google AI Mode? Is It the Same as AI Overviews?

This May, at Google’s I/O conference, one number stood out from everything else: Google AI Mode passed a billion monthly users in a single year, as Elizabeth Reid, who runs Google Search, revealed on the Google blog.

This is the biggest change to Google search in years: it’s moving from a list of links to a conversation.

So, what is Google AI Mode, and is it the same as AI Overviews? Here’s what it is, what the redesigned search bar now does, and why the two aren’t as interchangeable as they look.

Here’s where to find it in the search bar:

What Is Google AI Mode and How Does It Work

Google AI Mode is a conversational search experience powered by the Gemini model. Google’s official name for it is simply ‘the AI mode.’

In practice, it splits your question into several sub-topics, runs searches on all of them at once, and hands you one in-depth answer instead of a list of links.

Here’s the feature that actually matters: it’s ‘agentic,’ meaning it checks local availability and prices on its own. No published prices, appointment slots, stock, or booking details? Google AI Mode picks up the phone and calls the business itself to get them.

AI Mode reached a billion users in its first year alone, and query volume has more than doubled every quarter since launch.

How Has Google’s Search Bar Changed?

AI Mode didn’t just change what you get back. It rebuilt the search bar itself, the first real update in 25 years to a box that used to handle nothing more than a few keywords.

This new AI mode of search is quickly replacing classic typing. People now type in long, complicated questions and upload images and videos instead of keywords.

Google merged AI Overviews and AI Mode into one conversational flow. You can ask a follow-up question right inside the generated answer. No tab-switching required.

Analysts say this keeps traffic locked inside Google, since users leave the search engine far less often than before.

We broke down exactly how that shows up in the numbers in our post ‘AI traffic brings fewer page views, but more conversions’.

Why Doesn’t AI Mode Cite the Same Pages as AI Overviews?

Because they’re not actually the same system, even though they look almost identical on the surface. Here’s the part most people haven’t caught onto yet.

AI Mode and AI Overviews only pull from the same sources for the same query in 13.7% of cases, despite landing on similar conclusions most of the time.

The two systems read the web on their own terms.

That means optimizing for one doesn’t guarantee you’re visible in the other. If you’ve only ever invested in classic SEO rankings, there’s a real chance AI Mode doesn’t see you at all, even if you’re sitting at position one on Google.

Why Does This Matter for Your Brand?

An analysis of brand citations in AI answers found that Google AI Mode names a brand in 37.6% of its answers. ChatGPT does the same in just 20.7% of its answers.

In our experience, the gap comes down to what each system reads. Google has direct access to Google Business Profiles and company websites; ChatGPT leans on general sources from across the web, especially for lesser-known brands.

This isn’t unique to any one market: a Google Business Profile pointing to the wrong page, or one that hasn’t been touched in a year, gets you left out of recommendations entirely, in classic search and AI mode alike.

How Do You Show Up in Google AI Mode?

This isn’t something that’s going to blow over in six months.

At Madwise, we track this as part of AI search optimization (GEO), because classic SEO rankings and actual visibility in AI answers keep drifting further apart. The numbers above suggest that gap is only going to widen.

Before you dive into optimization, check:

• whether your Google Business Profile is up to date and points to the right page,
• whether you have a separate strategy for AI Mode and AI Overviews, since they’re two different systems,
• where AI Mode already mentions you, and where it doesn’t.

Tell us your brand name. We’ll check what Google AI Mode actually says about you. Get in touch.