Google AI Mode is the tab beside “All” and “Images” that answers your question in a paragraph instead of a list of links. It reached Europe in Google’s October 2025 rollout, and it’s now the first thing a lot of Irish people tap. If you own a website, that matters more than any Google change since mobile.
The facts come from Google’s announcements, its Search Central guidance, and the one independent study with real numbers.
What is Google AI Mode?
Google’s own definition, from the day it launched in the US on 20 May 2025: “AI Mode is our most powerful AI search, with more advanced reasoning and multimodality, and the ability to go deeper through follow-up questions and helpful links to the web.”
In plain terms, it’s a chat window built into Google Search. You ask a question the way you’d ask a person, it writes an answer, and you keep asking. It runs on “a custom version of Gemini 2.5”, Google’s AI model, and it shows links to the pages it drew on.
It is not the same thing as AI Overviews. An AI Overview is the summary that sometimes appears at the top of a normal results page. AI Mode is a separate tab you choose, where the whole page is the conversation. Our guide to appearing in AI Overviews covers the summary.
When did AI Mode come to Ireland?
The US got it in May 2025 and the UK on 28 July 2025. On 7 October 2025 Google announced AI Mode was “launching in more than 35 new languages and over 40 new countries and territories”, bringing it “to over 200 countries and territories total, including many across Europe”. Google didn’t list the countries by name, but Ireland was in that wave, and Irish tech press was writing about what it meant for users within days.
How do I turn on AI Mode on Google?
You don’t switch it on so much as tap into it. Google’s announcement put it this way: “you’ll see a new tab for AI Mode appear in Search and in the search bar in the Google app”. The ways in:
- On a results page, tap the AI Mode tab beside All, Images and News.
- Go straight there at google.com/ai, which opens AI Mode with an empty box.
- In the Google app on Android or iPhone, the AI Mode button sits in the search bar on the home screen.
- In Chrome, Google added AI Mode to the address bar and the new tab page from September 2025, “in English in the U.S. and expanding to more countries and languages in the weeks ahead”.
You need to be signed in to a Google account for some of these, and the tab only shows where AI Mode has launched in your language.
Can I switch off AI Mode?
You can ignore it, but you can’t remove it. Because AI Mode is a tab, nothing forces you into it: stay on the All tab and search as you always did. The thing people usually want to switch off is the AI Overview at the top of ordinary results, and on that Google’s own FAQ is clear: AI Overviews “are a Search feature like knowledge panels and can’t be turned off”.
What you can do is use the Web filter. Google’s words: “you can select the Web filter after you perform a search. This filter displays only text-based links without features like AI Overviews.” It’s under the More menu on a results page. Google has also been testing a button inside AI Overviews that jumps to that web-only view.
There was a toggle during the Labs trial in 2025, under Search Labs, where you could “toggle off ‘AI Mode'”. That controlled the experiment, not the tab that everyone now has.
How do I disable AI on my phone?
Same answer. In the Google app or Chrome on a phone you can’t remove the AI Mode button, and you can’t stop AI Overviews appearing. You can pick the Web filter for a link-only page, and you can simply not tap the AI Mode tab. If AI Mode has become your phone’s default search screen in Chrome, that came with a Chrome update rather than a setting you chose, and the ordinary search box is still there beside it.
How AI Mode works, and why it changes which sites get seen
Google explained the mechanism when it launched: “AI Mode uses our query fan-out technique, breaking down your question into subtopics and issuing a multitude of queries simultaneously on your behalf.” Its Search Central guidance for site owners says the same: “AI Mode and AI Overviews may use a ‘query fan-out’ technique, issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources, to develop a response.”
So when someone in Cork asks “who does the best kitchen fitting near me and what would it cost”, AI Mode runs several searches behind the scenes, on kitchen fitters, on costs, on the area, and stitches together the answer. A page ranks in AI Mode by ranking for one of those hidden searches. That’s why pages that answer one specific question well do better here than pages that mention everything a little.
Ads have been in AI Mode since May 2025, when Google said it was “bringing ads to AI Mode to create new opportunities for our customers”.
What AI Mode does to your website’s clicks
Two sources, and they don’t agree.
Google, in August 2025: “Overall, total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year”, and “average click quality has increased and we’re actually sending slightly more quality clicks to websites than a year ago”. Google also said people are “increasingly seeking out and clicking on sites with forums, videos, podcasts, and posts where they can hear authentic voices and first-hand perspectives”.
Pew Research Centre, from a study of 900 US adults and 68,879 of their real Google searches in March 2025: “Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits”, while “those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits)”. People clicked a link inside the AI summary itself in “just 1% of all visits”, and they ended their browsing session more often after an AI summary, “26% of pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional search results”. Some 18% of the searches in the study produced a summary.
Read together: across the whole web, clicks may be holding up, and Google says the ones that arrive are better. On any one search that gets an AI answer, about half the clicks disappear. For a small Irish business, the question is which of your searches fall into the second group. Questions with a factual answer (“what is the VAT rate on a haircut”) lose the most. Searches where someone wants a person, a price for their job, or a place to go lose the least.
What Google says site owners should do
Search Central’s guidance on AI features, updated in December 2025, is short. “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” And: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add.” Its summary line is “the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search.”
If anyone offers to sell you “AI Mode optimisation” as a new thing, that is Google saying it doesn’t exist.
What Google gives you instead is control. The same page names the switches: nosnippet and data-nosnippet to keep text out of AI answers, max-snippet to limit how much is used, noindex to keep a page out altogether, and Google-Extended, a separate crawler rule that limits use of your content for AI training and grounding without affecting whether you rank. In 2026 Google added a setting inside Search Console to block a site’s content from AI Overviews and AI Mode, and a performance report showing impressions from AI features by page, country and device, though not clicks. It went to every site at the end of August 2026.
Seven things that hold up in AI Mode
- Answer the question in the first sentence under the heading. Fan-out searches are specific; a page that opens with the answer gets pulled in.
- One page, one question. “How much does a website cost in Ireland” and “how to choose a web designer” are two searches and two pages, not one.
- Put in what only you know. Your own prices, your own data, a real job you did. Google’s own line about “authentic voices and first-hand perspectives” is where the clicks went.
- Be the local answer. AI Mode leans on Google Maps and reviews for anything “near me”. A complete Google Business Profile with fresh reviews is now search-engine optimisation.
- Keep the basics right. Fast pages, clear headings, working structured data. Google says the old rules are the rules.
- Build the brand people type. A search for your name doesn’t get an AI answer, it gets you. Our guide to advertising a small business is about that.
- Measure it properly. Open the AI features report in Search Console before you decide AI Mode is or isn’t hurting you.
Questions people ask about Google AI Mode
Is AI Mode available in Ireland?
Yes. Google’s 7 October 2025 expansion brought AI Mode to “over 200 countries and territories total, including many across Europe”, in English and 35 other languages.
Is Google AI Mode free?
Yes. It’s part of Google Search and the Google app. Nothing in Google’s announcements attaches a price to it, and it now carries ads like the rest of Search.
What is the difference between AI Mode and AI Overviews?
An AI Overview is a summary at the top of a normal results page. AI Mode is a separate tab where the whole page is a conversation with follow-up questions. Both run on Google’s custom Gemini model and both use query fan-out.
Does AI Mode use ChatGPT?
No. It runs on Google’s own Gemini models. ChatGPT is OpenAI’s product; our guide to ChatGPT in Ireland compares the two for business use.
Can I see AI Mode traffic in Search Console?
Partly. Google said in June 2025 that “AI Mode is now counting towards totals in Search Console” but “not in a way where we can segment it out”. Since 2026 there’s a separate report for AI features showing impressions by page, country and device, without clicks.
Can I stop Google using my site in AI Mode?
You can limit it with nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet, block AI training with Google-Extended, or use the new Search Console setting. Google’s guidance is that these don’t change your ordinary ranking.
What to do this month
Pull up Search Console, sort your pages by lost clicks since the summer, and look at what each one answers. The pages losing clicks to a one-line answer need a reason to click that an AI paragraph can’t give: a price, a tool, a photo of the job, a booking button. That’s the work, and it’s the work we do. If you’d like us to look at your site’s numbers, a short call is enough to start.
Sources
Google: AI Mode launch, 20 May 2025; UK launch, 28 July 2025; languages and countries expansion, 7 October 2025; AI Mode in Chrome, 18 September 2025; ads in AI Mode, 21 May 2025; AI search and clicks, 6 August 2025; Search Central, AI features and your website. Google’s AI Overviews FAQ and its Search Console statements as reported by Search Engine Roundtable (June 2024, June 2025) and Search Engine Land (August 2026). Pew Research Centre, 22 July 2025. Read in September 2026.
