In May 2025, Google officially launched its “AI Mode” feature in the United States. This functionality is powered by Google’s latest Gemini 2.5 multimodal Large Language Model (LLM), which can understand context, infer information, and proactively synthesize answers. Once AI Mode is enabled, the search page transforms into a conversational interface that can understand users’ follow-up questions and allow deeper exploration of useful web links.
Why must businesses pay attention to Google AI Mode? Because it directly changes users’ fundamental patterns of “what they see, what they click, and what they trust.” If businesses fail to understand and adjust their strategies in a timely manner, not only might traffic decline, but their brand visibility in search results will also risk marginalization.
1. What is Google AI Mode?
AI Mode’s operational mechanism differs significantly from traditional search:
Conversational Interface: The search page transforms into a conversational mode, where AI-generated response blocks become the primary display. Traditional blue links recede but are still embedded within the AI responses, providing traceable source information.
Query Fan-out: AI Mode can automatically break down complex queries into multiple sub-queries, retrieve relevant information in parallel, and finally synthesize it into a coherent and logical narrative. For example, for a complex question like “I want to know the maintenance costs and safety comparison for mid-range pure electric vehicles in 2025,” AI Mode will automatically decompose it into multiple sub-questions and integrate the answers.
Contextual Continuation and Conversational Memory: This is one of AI Mode’s most significant innovations. Users can continue to ask follow-up questions to the AI’s responses, and the system will retain the previous conversation context to deepen the answers.
It’s worth noting that while both AI Mode and AI Overviews (formerly SGE) utilize generative AI, there are differences between them. AI Overviews were launched earlier, primarily appearing as short paragraphs at the top of traditional search results pages, used to answer simple queries. They aim to help users quickly grasp the main points of complex topics. In contrast, AI Mode completely rewrites the entire search results page, offering a “conversational search experience” that allows users to ask follow-up questions, compare information, and incorporate elements like images into responses.
2. Impact of AI Mode on Traditional SEO
The launch of AI Mode is not just a visual change to the search page; it fundamentally alters how users obtain information.
SEO Ranking is No Longer the Sole Metric: In AI Mode, users first see AI-generated summary content, and ranking position becomes blurred. Therefore, the ability to be cited by AI becomes a new SEO requirement.
Impact on Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Impressions: The emergence of AI Mode accelerates the rise of “Zero-Click Search.” Users may get answers directly from AI summaries, reducing clicks to web pages. Ahrefs’ research indicates that Google’s AI Overviews feature caused a ~34.5% drop in click-through rates for the top-ranking search result. However, “impression as recognition” becomes the new normal. Even if a user doesn’t click through to your website, if your content is embedded in an AI response block, your brand name or some information can still be seen by the user.
Furthermore, Google found that when people click from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality (meaning, users are more likely to spend more time on the site).
Cross-Domain Complex Queries Become Mainstream Intent in AI Mode: AI Mode excels at handling long, multi-conditional, and cross-domain complex questions. This demands that content is no longer just “single-point detailed explanations” but must possess the ability to integrate data across topics and a logical semantic connection to have a chance of being cited entirely. This means SEO content design should optimize towards three main directions: “problem-oriented,” “solution sets,” and “contextual extension.”
3. Seven Key SEO Strategies for Adapting to Google AI Mode
To succeed in AI search, website operators need to adjust their SEO strategies. Here are seven key strategies:
Enhance Content Semantic Clarity and Structure:
- Answer-First Content: Ensure content can be easily extracted and summarized for key insights by Google AI. Content paragraphs must be logical and well-reasoned for AI to “confidently use” them.
- Problem-Oriented: Design clear, problem-oriented subheadings and multi-paragraph definitions to facilitate AI model understanding and citation.
- Deepen User Intent: Beyond keywords, delve deeper into the user’s actual problems and their underlying motivations.
Implement Schema and Structured Data:
- Google’s AI search system still relies on structured data (e.g., JSON-LD) to identify content elements.
- Using Schema markups like Article, FAQ, Product, and LocalBusiness can help AI cite your paragraphs, prices, or attribute information in summaries.
Integrate and Optimize Multimedia Content:
- High-quality images, charts, videos, and other visual elements will significantly increase the likelihood of content being selected by AI as a “featured snippet” or “recommended block.”
- Ensure all multimedia content has semantic descriptions (e.g., alt text, captions) and aligns with paragraph semantics, allowing the AI model to understand them.
Content Clustering:
- For core topics, design multiple sub-topic articles and establish connections through internal linking to enhance the AI model’s trust.
- Strengthen brand “exposure” across the entire internet, for example, by building your brand through blogs, social media, forums, and news platforms.
Maintain Content Timeliness and Update Frequency:
- AI Mode prefers to cite the latest, actively updated content.
- Regularly review high-value pages, updating statistics, trends, and recommendations.
- Clearly use an “Last Updated” timestamp in articles to signal to Google that your content is current.
Strengthen E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness):
- Google updated E-A-T to E-E-A-T in December 2022, adding “Experience.” This emphasizes that content should stem from actual product use, real location visits, or convey firsthand experience.
- Expertise: Emphasize the author’s professional background and certifications to ensure content professionalism and accuracy.
- Authoritativeness: Boost website authority through good PR, quality external links, and citations of authoritative websites or academic papers.
- Trustworthiness: Provide website administrator contact information, privacy policy; for e-commerce sites, offer complete return/exchange processes to increase user trust.
Ensure Google Can Effectively Crawl Website Content:
- Provide substantial, indexable content to meet the technical requirements for entering Google’s search database.
- Offer a good web experience and mobile device compatibility, which are also crucial technical requirements.
The most critical change with the launch of Google AI Mode is that brands must now consider not only “where do I rank?” but also “am I being cited by AI?” Businesses must fundamentally adjust their strategies, transforming from passive ranking seekers to proactive information providers and trust builders.
