Anyone looking for a supplier used to get a list of results from Google and choose from it themselves. With Google AI Mode, the searcher gets a coherent answer, usually with a few names and the sources underneath. As a marketer, you may see little of this: there is no position 3 to track, and not always a click to count. Yet your brand can be recommended in that answer. Or be missing from it. So what exactly is Google AI Mode, how does it differ from what you already knew, and what can you track?

What is Google AI Mode?

Google AI Mode is a way of searching in Google in which an AI model answers the question in the form of a conversation. The searcher can ask a long, compound question and then ask follow-up questions. The answer refers to web pages as sources, so the searcher can click through.

So it is something different from a list of links. The behaviour marketers already know from ChatGPT or Gemini, asking a question and getting an answer, now sits inside the search engine itself. And that matters, because for many people a search still starts at Google.

How it differs from AI Overviews and the regular results

Three formats now exist side by side, and it helps to keep them clearly apart.

  • The regular search results. A list of pages, ads and other blocks. Here you measure positions and clicks.
  • AI Overviews. A short summary Google can show above the regular results. The searcher stays on the results page and sees the list below.
  • Google AI Mode. A separate search experience in which the answer takes centre stage and the searcher continues in a conversation.

For your brand, the difference lies in what is visible. In the regular results, your page competes with other pages. In an AI answer, your brand competes with other names within a single text. If you are in that text, you are being considered. If you are missing, you are out of the picture, even if your own page ranks well.

How often people already use AI Mode compared with the regular results differs by country, language and period. Figures you read about it therefore say little about your market. Base your plans on what you measure yourself instead.

Why your regular SEO report doesn't show this

An SEO report measures positions, impressions and clicks. An AI answer is hard to capture in those terms. Your brand can be recommended without a click following, and it can be missing while your page still ranks well. The report then says everything is fine, while the searcher never gets to see your brand.

That is no reason to give up on SEO. Pages that give a good answer and are easy to find remain the foundation, for AI answers too. It is, however, a reason to add a measurement that looks at the answer itself.

What you can track in GripIQ

With every Prompt scan, GripIQ retrieves the answer from Google AI Mode alongside the answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, tailored to the region of the Prompt. That answer counts in full: in the analysis, in Share of Voice, in the source citations and in all charts. You filter on it as "Google AI Mode", next to the other AI assistants. No setup needed.

An important distinction: GripIQ tracks the answer from Google AI Mode, not the AI Overviews in the regular results. If Google doesn't give an AI Mode answer to a question, that answer is missing from that scan.

In practice, this lets you answer a few very concrete questions:

  • Does your brand appear in the AI Mode answer to your buyers' questions? Filter on "Google AI Mode" and look at Share of Voice.
  • Does it differ from the other assistants? Switch the filter and compare. The same question can put a different brand at the top in Google than elsewhere.
  • Which sources does the answer use? The source citations show which pages the answer relies on, including those of your competitors or third parties.
  • Does it differ per market? Because the answer belongs to the region of the Prompt, you can filter by region on the Answers tab and compare markets side by side. GripIQ sets the region of a Prompt for you; a Prompt without its own region follows the project's market.

An AI assistant's answer can differ from day to day. So look at the pattern across several scans, not at a single answer.

What a high score does and doesn't mean

A high Share of Voice in Google AI Mode means your brand appears often in the answers to the questions you track. That doesn't yet mean your traffic is increasing or that sales will follow. You measure that link elsewhere, for example in your own analytics. The reverse is more useful to know: a brand that hardly ever appears for buyers' questions has a visibility problem that its position in the regular results won't reveal.

What you can do now

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