Last year in May, Google introduced AI Overviews, a new way for users to get answers to their search queries. AI Overviews provide a quick overview of a topic and links to learn more. Later in October, Google expanded AI Overviews to more than 100 countries and made it accessible in more languages, including English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Today, Google announced that AI Overviews in the US are now using the Gemini 2.0 model to provide higher quality responses for users with harder questions involving coding, advanced math, and multimodal queries. Google also announced that AI Overviews are now available for teens, even without a sign-in requirement.
Along with the expansion of AI Overviews, Google today announced an early experiment in Labs called AI Mode. The new AI Mode is built using a custom version of the Gemini 2.0 model. Google claims that this new feature will be more useful for questions that need further exploration, comparisons, and reasoning.
Once users post their question, AI Mode uses a “query fan-out” technique, performing multiple related searches concurrently across subtopics and multiple data sources, and then uses AI to bring those results together to provide a comprehensive response. This approach helps users access more breadth and depth of information easily when compared to a typical web search on Google. Users can also ask a follow-up question and get a response.
Google is also working on improving AI Mode with features like adding more visual responses with images and video, richer formatting, and more.
AI Mode aims to provide users with direct answers, but this could significantly reduce website traffic for publishers and creators. The long-term effects of AI Mode on website traffic remain to be determined. To address feedback regarding potential traffic loss from AI Overviews feature, Google is experimenting with incorporating direct links within AI-generated responses.
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