What Is Google’s AI Mode? (And How to Show Up With Endless Customers)

According to Google, AI Mode allows you to "ask anything on your mind and get a helpful AI-powered response with the ability to go further with follow-up questions and helpful web links." 

When it comes to online search, the rules of engagement are changing rapidly. What was once a complicated (but understood) hunt for website links has transformed into an AI-driven conversation. 

If you're a business leader looking to learn about Google’s AI Mode, you're in the right place. In this article we'll explain how AI Mode in Google Search works, how it's different from AI Overviews, and what best practices are needed to show up in AI Mode.

We'll also share how the Endless Customers System™ provides a clear path forward, helping you stand out with a marketing strategy that wins qualified demand in an AI-powered era.

What is Google’s AI Mode?

Google’s AI Mode is an experimental, AI-powered search experience that delivers interactive, in-depth answers directly within Google Search.

Unlike a traditional search results page, AI Mode allows users to ask complex questions, even using images or voice, and receive an AI-generated summary that includes relevant follow-up links to websites for deeper exploration.

Google describes AI Mode as its most powerful AI search, acting as a conversational search tool (similar to a chatbot or other popular LLM) embedded in Google. It's designed to handle long, complex, or comparison-based questions that might have previously required multiple searches.

AI Mode is powered by the latest Gemini 2.5 model’s advanced reasoning and multimodal capabilities, enabling it to tackle even the toughest queries. 

Action to take now: Access Google's AI Mode yourself via google.com/ai and experiment with different types of questions your customers might ask to understand how it works firsthand.

How is AI Mode Different From AI Overviews?

AI Mode builds upon the concept of AI Overviews, expanding with more advanced reasoning, thinking, and multimodal features. 

AI Overviews are shorter AI summaries that appear at the top of regular search results, and are used by over a billion people as of March 2025. AI Mode takes this concept further, enabling users to ask complex, multi-part questions and dig deeper with follow-up prompts, providing more comprehensive and context-aware responses than AI Overviews alone.

Action to take now: Observe how AI Overviews appear for common searches in your industry and identify opportunities for your content to be summarized effectively in these overviews.

Why Does AI Mode Matter For My Business?

We already knew that AI tools were changing the way customers find our businesses, and this is just another step in that direction. AI search has profound implications for your online visibility and how you measure marketing success.

What Are Zero-Click Searches?

When AI Mode synthesizes information from many websites into a single comprehensive answer, it raises concerns that users may not click through to individual sites because they found the answer they needed without a click into a link. This is a phenomenon known as zero-click searches. 

According to SparkToro, almost 60% of all Google searches ended without a click in 2024, an increase from years prior. This trend is likely to increase.

However, Google argues that while total clicks might decrease, the quality of those clicks increases. Google's Search team stated in May 2025 that when people click to a website from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality, where users are more likely to spend more time on the site. 

The theory is that AI summaries provide more context, meaning users who do click are more engaged and genuinely interested, making them more likely to read deeply or convert.

Google advises site owners to focus on the overall value of your visits from Search, rather than just click counts.

Action to take now: Start tracking metrics beyond just website traffic, such as engagement duration and conversion rates for visitors to assess the quality of traffic from AI-driven results.

Will Google’s AI Mode Help Smaller Sites Get Seen?

AI Mode takes a user's main question and does its own searching from many angles to bring that user the best result. By checking lots of sources at the same time, it can surface a wider mix of helpful links. That can include pages from business sites that don't have the name recognition and budgets of the big brands. 

If your content is clear, honest, and useful, you can be cited or linked in AI Mode if it satisfies the prompt of the end user.

How Does My Business Show up in AI Mode?

To succeed with AI-driven search, you don't need a completely new strategy. Google's guidance reinforces what we at IMPACT have advocated for years: focus on delivering exceptional value to your audience.

What Has Google Said About Showing Up in AI Mode?

Google has explicitly stated that "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary". If your content can rank in regular Google Search, it can also be surfaced in AI results because AI Mode and AI Overviews pull from the same index of web pages and apply the same fundamental criteria for quality and relevance.

Google advises site owners to continue following SEO best practices, such as ensuring your site can be crawled and indexed, providing great content and page experience, and adhering to search content policies. 

The core advice is to focus on outstanding, original content that adds unique value.

Action to take now: Reaffirm your commitment to fundamental SEO best practices, ensuring your website is technically sound and easily discoverable by Google's crawlers.

What is The Endless Customers Philosophy?

Endless Customers is built on principles designed to build trust and authority, making your business indispensable to buyers in any era, including the age of AI.

The Endless Customers System™ is rooted upon The 4 Pillars of a Known and Trusted Brand:

1. Say What Others Aren’t Willing to Say.
2. Show What Others Aren’t Willing to Show.
3. Sell in a Way Others Aren’t Willing to Sell.
4. Be More Human Than Others Are Willing to Be.

These pillars challenge you to think like your buyer, push boundaries, and disrupt how things have always been done in your industry to earn trust and position your company as the go-to leader in your market.

Can The Big 5 Help in AI Mode?

With Google's call for original content that helps consumers with unique value, The Big 5 content topics give your business a great opportunity to show up in AI Mode.

The Big 5 include: 

1. Cost & Price
2. Problems
3. Versus & Comparisons
4. Reviews
5. Best in Class

These are the five subjects buyers are obsessed with before making a purchase, yet most businesses are too afraid to address them head-on online. 

By openly and honestly discussing these topics, businesses can drive significant lead and revenue growth.

Action to take now: Choose one Big 5 topic related to your core product or service, such as Cost & Price, and commit to publishing an in-depth article or video that honestly addresses customer questions, even if it feels uncomfortable.

What Videos Can Help My Business Show Up in AI Mode?

The Selling 7 are seven types of videos designed to have the greatest impact on driving leads and sales. These include: 

1. Cost and Pricing Videos
2. The 80% Video (answering common FAQs)
3. Product/Service Videos
4. Landing Page Videos
5. Customer Journey Videos
6. Bio Videos (introducing your team)
7. Claims We Make Videos (proving your claims)

These videos are strategic tools that shorten sales cycles, create more informed prospects, and lead to faster deal closures. 

For instance, Sheffield Metals' video "Metal Roofing Problems: 7 Common Issues That Could Affect Your Roof" proactively addressed concerns, gaining nearly half a million views and helping the brand make a massive leap in their industry.

Action to take now: Identify the most common question your sales team answers repeatedly, and create an "80% Video" that addresses it comprehensively, aiming to save time in future sales conversations.

The Right Website For Google AI Search Traffic

Your website is an active participant in the sales process and an educational hub that must meet the expectations of the modern buyer. With 80% of the buying process happening before a prospect ever speaks to sales, your website must be equipped to do the heavy lifting.

Launching a Learning Center

A Learning Center is a dedicated, strategically structured section of your website where all your best content (articles, videos, podcasts, webinars, guides, and tools) is organized and easily accessible. 

This is not a “blog.” It's a hub designed to educate prospects at every stage of their buying process. 

For your sales team, a Learning Center is a powerful tool, enabling them to quickly find and share relevant content for Assignment Selling, saving hours of explanation and teaching. A great Learning Center should be searchable, segmentable (by content type, topic, audience), easy to use, and prominently located in your website's main navigation.

Action to take now: Begin planning your Learning Center by identifying your existing valuable content and brainstorming how to organize it into searchable and segmentable categories on your website.

Why is Having Disruptive Content On My Website Important?

The Endless Customers System™ demands a culture change, fostering continuous learning and experimentation to adapt to new platforms and technologies. Disruption is central to this, defined as obsessing over what buyers truly want and having the courage to deliver it, even if it means challenging industry norms. 

It means avoiding complacency, which has led many giants to fall. Instead, continuously question assumptions, maintain radical transparency, embrace new technologies, and actively seek ways to disrupt your industry.

Action to take now: Schedule a monthly meeting to review your website analytics and content performance, specifically looking for opportunities to refine messaging and improve user experience based on buyer feedback.

FAQs

Here are some common questions around Google's AI Mode and how to have your business show up in its results.

Do we need special tags or code for AI Mode?

No, Google has explicitly stated that "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary". If your content ranks well in traditional Google Search, it is eligible to be surfaced in AI results. You do not need any special markup, schema.org structured data, new machine-readable files, or AI text files.

Can smaller businesses still show up in Google's AI Mode?

Yes, smaller businesses can show up in Google's AI Mode. Google's AI is designed to connect users with high-quality information from a wide range of perspectives across the web.

What content should I make to show up in Google’s AI Mode?

To show up in Google's AI Mode, you need to create high-quality content that provides genuine value to users. Google's AI Mode is designed to connect people with high quality information from the best of the web, and provide helpful links to evaluate sources and explore further from a wide range of perspectives. We recommend applying Endless Customers by focusing on The Big 5 topics buyers ask about: price, problems, comparisons, reviews, and best in class.

Work With Google’s AI Mode, Not Against It.

AI Mode is not the enemy. It is a chance for your business to help potential customers make informed decisions.

When you answer real buyer questions with clear writing and simple video, you give Google a reason to cite you and you give buyers a reason to trust you.

Keep it simple. Publish pricing guidance with honest trade offs. Tackle the hard questions your competitors avoid. Show how things work with useful, educational videos. Make your website fast, easy to navigate, and built around a Learning Center so visitors can keep exploring. 

Endless Customers is the system that helps you do this every week, in house, without the guesswork. If you want a guide, talk with an IMPACT advisor.

If you want to explore first, grab the mini book and listen to the podcast. Either way, start now. The most helpful teacher in your space will win.

Sources:
https://search.google/ways-to-search/ai-mode/
https://blog.google/products/search/ai-mode-search/
https://neilpatel.com/blog/google-ai-mode/
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features