Google’s AI Mode Just Changed SEO: Here’s the Data

AI Mode Adoption & Usage

• 1.5 billion users engage with AI Overviews each month across 200+ countries and territories.
• AI Overviews led to a 10% increase in search usage for queries with AI summaries in markets like the U.S. and India.
• AI Mode is now available to all U.S. users and supports over 40 languages.

AI Mode Technical Capabilities

• AI Mode processes 480 trillion tokens per month, a 50× increase over the previous year.
• AI Mode uses a "query fan-out" approach to split questions into sub-queries for deeper answers.
• AI Mode is powered by Google’s Gemini 2.5 AI model with multimodal understanding.

AI Mode SEO & Web Traffic Impact

• Websites report organic traffic drops between 18% and 64% when AI Overviews are present.
• Click-through rates dropped by nearly 30% due to users finding answers directly in AI summaries.
• 93.8% of AI-cited links come from sources outside the top organic results.
• AI Mode traffic is untrackable in Google Analytics/Search Console, showing as "direct" or "unknown".

AI Mode User Behaviour & Trust

• Users trust AI search results 3.4 out of 5 on average, depending on topic complexity. (source)
• Most users only read the top third of AI Overviews, emphasizing importance of early placement.

AI Mode SEO & Marketing Strategy Implications

• Structured data and authority signals are becoming more critical for ranking in AI-generated answers.
• AI Mode emphasizes Google Business Profile data for local results—accuracy is crucial.
• AI Mode referrals often lack attribution data, making ROI tracking difficult.

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