Google AI Search Mode: Impact & Website Performance Optimization

You may already be familiar with the AI Mode feature in Google search. Yes, Google began introducing AI Mode experimentally in Google Search in March 2025. In fact, Google's AI Search not only impacts user experience but also digital marketing and content strategies.

This article will discuss the ins and outs of Google's AI Search mode, including how to use it, its functionality, its impact on business websites, and strategies for getting your website to appear as a reference. If you are a business owner, digital marketer, or IT practitioner, check out the complete information in this article!

What Is Google AI Search?

Google AI Search is a new Google feature that provides concise, AI-based answers at the top of search results. Google's AI feature is quite powerful because it can break down your question into several subtopics and then search for information for each topic simultaneously. As a result, the answers are more complete and relevant.

Additionally, Google AI is a great discussion partner. Because if you ask follow-up questions, no matter how complex they are, the AI will continue the discussion context without having to start over from the beginning. 

To accomplish all of this, the AI is powered by Gemini, Google DeepMind's Large Language Model (LLM). Gemini can reason (deep reasoning), think (understand more complex contexts), and process multimodal data (text, images, sound, and visual data simultaneously).

How to Use AI Mode on Google

When you access AI Mode on Google, you can ask questions in text, voice, or image form. Here is how to use Google AI Search with text:

• Go to the Google homepage. 
• Click the AI Mode button located on the right side of the search box. AI Mode has a magnifying glass logo. 
• Type your question in the Ask anything column.
• If you want to ask a new question or follow-up question, you can type it directly in the similar field located near the bottom of the screen.

 

To use AI Mode with voice, follow these steps:

• Tap the microphone icon in the Ask anything column.
• Say your question clearly.
• If you want to ask a follow-up or new question, tap the microphone icon again in the same box and say your question.

 

Finally, if you want to search using an image, follow these steps:

• In the Search bar, click the Lens icon.
• Upload the image or take the desired photo.
• If you want to ask a specific question about the image, you can type your question in the Ask anything column.
• To ask follow-up questions or new questions using an image, tap the Lens or Camera icon again and do the same.

 

Read also: Google Vs. GPT Search, Who Leads the Search Revolution?

How Does AI Work on Google?

If you look closely, you will see two Google AI features in search results, namely AI Overviews and AI Mode. Want to understand the difference between the two? Here is a brief explanation:

• AI Overviews: Used to search for topics that are quite complex. AI Overviews provide a concise summary, allowing users to understand the main points of the answer immediately. This feature also serves as a starting point for users to explore the links displayed.
• AI Mode: More powerful for answering questions that require deeper research, comparison, or analysis. AI Mode helps answer questions that previously required extensive manual searching. The answers displayed are relatively comprehensive, have in-depth reasoning, and are supported by links to other websites.

 

In carrying out their work processes, AI Overviews and AI Mode may use different AI models and techniques. This means that the answers and list of links that appear may also be different. 

However, there is one technique that both use, namely query fan-out. With this technique, AI breaks down questions into several subtopics. Next, Google performs many small searches simultaneously based on these subtopics.

From these searches, Google collects more supporting web pages. As a result, the answers generated are more complete, and the link options are more varied compared to classic search methods.

The Impact of Google's AI Search Mode on Websites

The presence of Google's AI Search Mode certainly has several impacts on business websites, including:

• CTR (Click-Through Rate) can drop dramatically: Because users already receive answers directly from AI Mode, they usually do not open the website links displayed, which puts the website's CTR at risk of a significant decline.
• Referral traffic from Google may decrease: This mainly occurs on blog posts and service pages that have high performance.
• It is difficult to measure brand presence in AI Summary: Your brand actually helps shape AI answers, but this is not always clearly visible to users. You also tend to find it difficult to measure how often AI Mode uses your content.

 

Read also: The New Era of SEO: Benefits, Tools, and AI SEO Features!

How to Make Your Business Website Appear in Google AI Search

Even though AI Mode has the impacts mentioned above, you can still do the following things to make your business website appear in Google AI Search:

1. Create Structured Content

Structured content refers to content that is organized in a clear and easy-to-understand format, both for humans and AI. Some effective ways to achieve this are to use clear headings, bullet points, tables, or lists to highlight important points, and write concise paragraphs (2–3 sentences).

2. Displaying Content in Various Formats

It is essential to recognize that Google AI Mode displays content in various formats. To increase your brand’s appearance in Google AI Search, create multi-format content, such as videos, audio, infographics, and so on.

In addition to creating varied formats, also make sure that your brand message is consistent across all channels, including SEO, PPC, UX, and brand storytelling.

3. Discuss Meaningful Topics

AI works by understanding context, so you need to compile content that is meaningful, in-depth, and comprehensive. 

To do this, you can use related terms (LSI/Latent Semantic Indexing). For example, when discussing digital marketing, include associated terms such as online marketing strategies, conversion, or digital campaigns. 

Also, try to answer questions directly and use natural language, rather than just adding more keywords.

4. Increase Authority

Authority is a crucial concept for enhancing the website’s value in Google's eyes. This concept relates to the extent to which a website is trusted to discuss certain topics.

To increase the authority of your content or website, you can do the following things:

• Create high-quality, unique, and informative content that deserves natural backlinks from other websites.
• Partner with high-quality websites, for example, by writing guest posts on well-known blogs or collaborating on content.
• Performing on-page optimization, including the use of clear heading structures, short URLs, attractive meta titles, and improved page loading speeds.
• Building a good internal link structure to channel link juice from one page to another and keep users on your website longer.
• Improving user experience by creating a responsive web design, intuitive navigation, and neat content.

5. Actively Update Content

In fact, updating content is not only effective in making the website look fresher, but also increases its relevance to current trends.

This also increases the chances of being noticed by Google AI and featured in AI Overviews. This is because Google AI tends to prioritize the latest or most frequently updated content.

6. Expanding Brand Presence

Essentially, Google AI Mode collects information not only from brand websites but also from other media. Therefore, ensure your brand is present in other trusted sources, such as niche media relevant to your industry, national news portals, social media, or community-based platforms.

The more credible sources that mention your brand, the greater the chance that AI will recognize it as an authority and feature it in AI summaries.

Essentially, every industry has its own unique approach to presenting content, increasing authority, and expanding brand presence. If you want to know how this is applied, here are some examples in several industries:

• Charity (non-profit organizations): Present data and demonstrate the impact of their services to strengthen credibility, as well as share real stories to enhance the emotional side.
• Technology: Explaining technical features, how products work, and how users can utilize them to solve problems or meet their needs.
• Food & Beverage (FnB): Creating content about ingredient quality to demonstrate the brand's commitment to quality, nutritional analysis to strengthen credibility as a health-conscious brand, and cooking methods to increase product value.

 

So, is your business ready to optimize Google AI Search to boost awareness and conversions? The good news is that SEO services by cmlabs can help your business be more adaptive and stay “surviving” even though users already rely heavily on AI for searches.

Yes, ultimately SEO will still be needed, especially from a technical standpoint. SEO Services by cmlabs utilize data-driven strategies, including technical audits, website projection development, improving website authority on search engines, and so on. 

With cmlabs, you will get resource-efficient solutions, as you do not have to build your own in-house team, but organic visibility will continue to increase.

If you want to learn more about SEO services by cmlabs, do not hesitate to contact our team and get a free consultation now! Let's ensure your business continues to perform optimally and remains relevant even amid the onslaught of Google's AI Search.

Read also: SEO Strategy for LLM, Building Online Presence in the AI Search Era