AI Mode
AI Mode is a conversation inside Google Search where you ask questions and follow-ups and get a written answer with links, instead of a results page.
AI Mode is a separate part of Google Search where you get a conversation instead of a page of results. You ask a question, Google writes an answer with links to the pages it used, and you can ask a follow-up without starting again.
It sits next to the usual results, under its own tab, and it's built for longer questions: comparisons, plans, anything with several parts. Because it's Google, a lot of people will meet AI search here first, without ever opening a separate AI app.
How it builds an answer
Google says AI Mode, like AI Overviews, can run several related searches across subtopics before it answers, a technique called query fan-out. It then shows a wider set of links than one search would. To be one of those links, Google says a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and nothing more. See Google's guide to AI features.
For example, someone asks AI Mode: "What's a good espresso machine for a small office, and how much should I spend on beans each month?" Google might search for office espresso machines, machine reviews and bean prices separately. Kestrel Roasters' guide to office coffee costs could be one of the links even though it never ranked for the full question.
AI Mode and AI Overviews
They're related but not the same. AI Overviews are short summaries at the top of a normal results page, and they only appear for some searches. AI Mode is a full answer on its own screen. Google says the two can use different models, so the links each one shows can differ for the same question.
AI Mode in AnswerOrbit
AI Mode is one of the six platforms we ask every day. We keep the pages each answer read and the ones it linked to, so you can see them in Sources. Google doesn't show us the searches AI Mode runs, and we don't read its shopping results yet. How we count has the details for each platform.