# Google AI Mode: What It Is and What Changes for Your Store > What Google AI Mode is, how it composes its answers, how it differs from AI Overviews and what a product page needs to show up in it. URL: https://clione.ai/glossary/google-ai-mode/ Lang: en It helps to separate AI Mode from the summaries Google puts above the results right from the start, because they are two different things. AI Mode is **a separate tab, with its own conversation**: you ask a question, Google answers with written text and a set of links, and you can keep asking about what it told you. For a store it matters because it is where the shopper asks the questions they used to spread across several searches, and where the comparison between products can be settled before the first click. ## How it works On October 8, 2025, Google expanded AI Mode to 36 new languages and about 50 more countries and territories. It appears as a button on the Google results page and in the Google app for Android and iOS, and it answers using Google's [Gemini](/glossary/gemini/) models.[^google-es-launch] It accepts multi-part questions and follow-ups, and Google says early users **ask questions two or three times longer** than traditional search queries.[^google-es-launch] Inside, AI Mode breaks the question apart. Google explains it this way: it breaks your question down into subtopics and fires off a barrage of simultaneous queries to dig deeper into the web.[^google-es-launch] That technique is [_query fan-out_](/glossary/query-fan-out/), and it is why AI Mode can show **a wider and more varied set of links** than a classic search.[^google-ai-features] The pages it uses come from Google's index, retrieved with its usual ranking systems.[^google-ai-guide] When Google is not very confident in an answer, it shows a set of web results instead.[^google-es-launch] According to the documentation for site owners, AI Mode is especially useful for searches that call for exploring, reasoning or comparing options, and it gives a complete answer with links to the sites that back it up.[^google-ai-features] It also takes voice and image questions: you can snap a photo or upload an image and ask about it.[^google-es-launch] ### Shopping in AI Mode In May 2025, Google announced a shopping experience inside AI Mode that combines Gemini with its Shopping Graph, with **more than 50 billion product listings**, of which more than 2 billion are refreshed every hour. With it, AI Mode shows a panel of images and products that changes as you refine the search, and the announcement included an [agentic checkout](/glossary/agentic-checkout/): you track a product's price and, when it drops and you confirm the purchase, Google adds it to the cart on the merchant's site and completes the payment with Google Pay. Google announced both features for the United States.[^google-shopping-io] To show up there, the route Google points to is [Google Merchant Center](/glossary/google-merchant-center/): its feeds help make your products visible in AI answers and in the rest of Search.[^google-ai-guide] ## What a page needs to show up There are no additional technical requirements to appear in AI Mode, according to Google: the page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet.[^google-ai-features] Its optimization guide adds a condition: **the site has to be included in the generative AI features of Search** from [Search Console](/glossary/google-search-console/).[^google-ai-guide] The rest is the same old SEO, and Google lists it: allowing crawling in [`robots.txt`](/glossary/robots-txt/) and at the CDN, linking pages well to each other, having the important content in text, making sure [structured data](/glossary/structured-data/) matches the visible text of the page and keeping the Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date. No AI file or special markup is needed.[^google-ai-features] To limit what AI Mode shows from your pages you use the snippet controls (`nosnippet`, `data-nosnippet`, `max-snippet`) or `noindex`; [Google-Extended](/glossary/google-extended/) is not the tool, because it refers to training and [grounding](/glossary/grounding/) in other Google systems.[^google-ai-features] ## In a store A **fictitious example** of a session. Someone asks AI Mode: "I'm looking for a camera backpack that fits as carry-on and holds up in the rain." The screen it returns mixes three things worth separating when you analyze it: | Element | What it is | Where it comes from | What your store can do | | ------------ | ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | The answer | The text Gemini writes | Pages retrieved from the index, with several related queries at once[^google-ai-guide] | Have the data that answers on the [product page](/glossary/product-page/): dimensions, material, water resistance | | The links | The pages that back up the answer | Indexed pages with snippets allowed[^google-ai-features] | Have the page indexed and the site included in the generative AI features | | The products | Products with an image and a price | Product data; Google points to Merchant Center feeds as the way to make them visible[^google-ai-guide] | Keep the feed up to date and consistent with the page | Saying "we show up in AI Mode" without saying which of the three rows is only half the story. A link in the answer and a product in the panel are two different appearances, with different origins. That AI Mode and [AI Overviews](/glossary/ai-overviews/) are the same thing and that appearing in one is appearing in the other. Google warns that they may use different models and techniques, so **the answers and links they show vary**, and that AI Overviews only appears when its systems think it adds something to classic search, so it often does not show up.[^google-ai-features] You check them separately. ## How to check it 1. **Open AI Mode on google.com** and ask it the question your customer would ask, without your brand. Note the answer, the links and the products separately, with date and time. 2. **Inspect in Search Console a page that should show up**: that it is indexed and that nothing stops it from showing a snippet.[^google-ai-features] 3. **Check that the site is included in the generative AI features** of Search, in the Search Console settings.[^google-ai-guide] 4. **Open the [generative AI performance report](/glossary/generative-ai-performance-report/).** It shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date. It has been available for all sites since August 31, 2026, it only appears if your site adds up enough impressions and it does not include Search Labs experiments.[^gsc-genai-report] Those visits also count in the overall performance report, under the "Web" search type.[^google-ai-features] 5. **Repeat the question another day.** One session is a sample of one: if the link or the product shows up again, it is a pattern worth looking at. ## Related concept: AI Overviews AI Overviews is the summary that appears **above the regular results**, without switching tabs, and only when Google thinks it adds something; it often does not appear.[^google-ai-features] AI Mode is a separate experience you choose to enter, built for questions that call for exploring or comparing, and with conversation.[^google-ai-features] Both can use query fan-out and both count in the same Search Console report,[^gsc-genai-report] but they do not necessarily show the same links. For the general framework, there is the entry on [AI search](/glossary/ai-search/); for what Google says about optimizing for these features, the one on [GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)](/glossary/geo/), and the rest of the vocabulary is in the [AI search reading path](/learn/ai-search/).