AI Mode
Google's conversational search surface, a separate tab and mode from the AI Overview that appears above ordinary results. Both draw on the Search index, but they fan a query out differently, cite differently, and refresh on different cycles, so a page can be cited in one and absent from the other.
What AI Mode does not show
We appear in Google's AI results is therefore two claims, and a measurement that does not say which surface it read is not reproducible.
Where AI Mode comes up on this site
- AI citations on two dates: seven matched questionsWe asked the same seven questions on Google AI Mode and Perplexity on 5 October and again on 29 October 2026, and recorded whether each answer cited CrawlCheck.
- AI answer corrections: three clocks, not one update timeThe evidence was two operator-written notes on the recurring question “what is CrawlCheck”: on 5 October an AI Mode answer emphasised the browser extension and mixed in a different, similarly named product; on 29 October the web product was described…
Terms this definition uses
Definitions that name AI Mode
Related terms in Answer engines and retrieval
How a generated answer gets made, and what your page is competing for inside it.
AEO · GEO · AI visibility score · share of voice · prompt set · brand mention · RAG · grounding · training data · embedding · chunking · context window · token · hallucination · refusal · AI Overview · answer engine · citation · retrieval · hallucinated attribution · Hybrid search · Re-ranking · Passage ranking · Query fan-out · Chunk boundary · BM25 · cross-encoder · information gain · dense retrieval
Questions about AI Mode
What is AI Mode?
Google's conversational search surface, a separate tab and mode from the AI Overview that appears above ordinary results. Both draw on the Search index, but they fan a query out differently, cite differently, and refresh on different cycles, so a page can be cited in one and absent from the other.
What does AI Mode not show or guarantee?
Both draw on the Search index, but they fan a query out differently, cite differently, and refresh on different cycles, so a page can be cited in one and absent from the other. We appear in Google's AI results is therefore two claims, and a measurement that does not say which surface it read is not reproducible.
Which area of the glossary does AI Mode belong to?
Answer engines and retrieval: How a generated answer gets made, and what your page is competing for inside it.
← cross-encoder · information gain →
See it in the full glossary · 772 terms across 19 areas.
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