Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: what changes for your website?

Of all AI models, Google's own AI reaches the most businesses, simply because Google is still where most searches start. AI Overviews sit above the results. AI Mode replaces the results page with a full conversation. Both pick sources, both name businesses, and both behave differently from the classic blue links.

AI Overviews: the answer above the results

For a growing share of informational and commercial searches, Google shows a generated summary with source links at the top of the page. Those sources are partly the same pages that rank high, but not always. For the summary, Google picks pages that cover the topic completely, even when they rank lower organically.

For your traffic, this means some users read the answer and don't click. For your visibility, it means you can be named in the summary without ranking #1, and the other way around.

AI Mode: search as a conversation

AI Mode goes one step further: a chat interface where Google runs several searches at once (fan-outs), reads the web and writes a detailed answer, with follow-up questions. It behaves like ChatGPT with search, but with Google's index and Google's preferences. AI Mode tends to name local businesses more often than ChatGPT, because it leans more heavily on Google Business Profiles and local signals.

What Google's AI rewards

• Pages that answer a question completely, with a clear structure (headings, lists, tables).
• A complete, up-to-date Google Business Profile with reviews, category and opening hours.
• Consistency between your site, your profile and mentions elsewhere.
• Mentions in sources Google trusts for that topic, often the same dozen as with other AI models.
• Technical access: allow Google-Extended, fast load times, no blocks.

How to track it

AI Overviews and AI Mode are harder to track than ChatGPT, because they aren't available through an API and they vary by location. Solid tracking actually runs the prompts in a browser as a real user in your target location, several times, and records whether an AI answer appears, which businesses it names and which sources it uses. GeoReady currently tracks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude through their APIs. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode follow as soon as that tracking is reliable enough. Visibility of around 20–25% in AI Overviews and AI Mode is a realistic starting point for a small business with a solid foundation.