What is Google AI Mode?

Published . Updated .

AI Mode: Google Search's conversational mode that answers harder, multi-part questions with a generated reply and links, running many related searches behind it.

Google describes AI Mode as the place for deeper reasoning and comparisons, where AI Overviews give a summary at the top of ordinary results. Google's own guidance says both may use a query fan-out technique, running many related searches across subtopics before writing the answer. The technique is explained in what is query fan-out.

Google says a page needs nothing special to be a supporting link: it has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, with no extra file or markup. Only Fan Out does not read AI Mode; it reads ChatGPT, Claude and Grok.

Read next

Sources

See the fan-out for your own prompts

Only Fan Out is a free Chrome side panel that lists the queries, fetched pages and cited pages behind each ChatGPT, Claude or Grok answer. Nothing leaves your browser.

Add to Chrome, it's free