Definition
AI Mode is Google's full-page generative answer experience (launched 2025), where the user gets a chat-style synthesized answer with citations rather than scrolling SERP results. Different surface from AI Overviews (which are inline-above-SERP). AI Mode runs on Gemini, uses query fan-out, and surfaces citations as side-panel tiles. The retrieval rules are similar to AI Overviews but the fan-out depth is greater.
User clicks 'AI Mode' tab in Google Search → full-page conversational answer with 5-12 inline citations.
How to optimize
Same surface-level rules as AI Overviews: strong schema, BLUF, factual claims, author credentials. Also: AI Mode favors deeper subtopic coverage (more sub-questions answered per page) because the fan-out goes deeper.