Google AI Mode: what it is, how to use it and what it means for business

AI Mode is Google's conversational search: you ask a question in Bulgarian or English, by text, voice, photo or file, and get a detailed answer compiled from many searches, with links to the sources and the option to ask follow-up questions. It has been free to use in Bulgaria, and in Bulgarian, since October 2025, and you can open it at google.com/ai, with the AI Mode button on google.com or in the Google app.

The information in this article was checked on 31 October 2026.

If you searched for "AI mode Google" or "Google AI search mode", this is the same feature. At Digital Agent we build AI agents for businesses, so in the second half of the article we explain what AI Mode changes for businesses and how to get your company into AI answers.

What AI Mode is and when it arrived in Bulgaria

Google describes AI Mode as its most powerful AI search. It uses a "query fan-out" technique: it breaks your question down into subtopics, searches for them simultaneously across several data sources and combines the results into a single answer with links. That makes it most useful for comparisons, planning and questions with several conditions.

When it is not confident enough in an answer, AI Mode shows a set of web links instead of an AI response. On Google's help page for AI Mode , the company warns that it sometimes makes mistakes, for example by misinterpreting a page. Check prices, deadlines and legal requirements against a second source.

Google unveiled AI Mode as an experiment on 5 March 2025 and opened it to everyone in the US on 20 May 2025. On 7 October 2025 it announced more than 35 new languages and more than 40 new countries and territories, many of them in Europe. We found no separate announcement for Bulgaria, but Think with Google, Google's site for marketers, lists Bulgaria among the markets in that expansion, and the help page now lists Bulgaria among the countries and Bulgarian among the 98 supported languages.

On 19 May 2026 Google announced that AI Mode had more than 1 billion monthly users. According to Alphabet's earnings report of 28 October 2026, questions in AI Mode are on average about three times longer than traditional searches, and one in five searches uses voice, a photo or a document.

AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini: what is the difference

Google's three AI features are often confused:

The two Search features are linked: if you select "Show more" under an AI Overview and ask a question in the "Ask anything" box, the conversation continues in AI Mode with all the context. Since 19 May 2026 this has worked everywhere, on both computers and phones.

AI Mode and the Gemini app both run on Gemini models, but AI Mode builds its answer from web searches, whereas Gemini is a personal assistant that writes, creates images and video and works with your files. We describe its plans in Gemini in Bulgarian, and we compare ChatGPT, Claude and the other free chats in AI in Bulgarian: free chat with artificial intelligence.

How to turn on AI Mode on a computer, a phone and in Chrome

You can open AI Mode in several ways:

• A browser on a computer or phone. Go to google.com/ai, or type a question on google.com and select AI Mode.
• The Google app on Android (including Samsung) and iPhone. Tap AI Mode on the home screen.
• Chrome on a computer. The AI Mode button is on the right-hand side of the address bar and in the search box on a new tab (keyboard shortcut: Tab + Enter). Google says AI Mode in Chrome is gradually reaching people outside the US, so the button may not have appeared for you yet.

Your conversation history is saved if you are signed in to a Google Account and history is turned on; without it, you cannot continue an earlier conversation.

In some countries, the Google AI Pro (€21.98 a month) and Ultra (from €106.86 a month) subscriptions give access to the Gemini 4 Argon model in AI Mode, but as of 31 October 2026 Bulgaria is not on the list, so you do not need a subscription for AI Mode. We compare Argon with the other models in our our comparison of AI models for 2027

How to turn off AI Mode and AI Overviews

You only get AI Mode when you open it yourself; otherwise you search as before. AI Overviews cannot be turned off, because Google considers them a core Search feature, but according to the AI Overviews help page , after a search you can select the "Web" filter above the results (sometimes it is under "More"), and you will then see only text links, without an AI Overview. Tips from 2025 telling you to "turn off SGE" remove neither AI Overviews nor AI Mode: the "AI Overviews and more" toggle in Search Labs only switches off the experiments, and Bulgaria is not on Google's list for Search Labs anyway. In Chrome on a computer, right-click the address bar and untick "Always show AI Mode".

What AI Mode can do in Bulgarian and what does not yet work in Bulgaria

Type in the "Ask anything" box or speak into the microphone. The menu in the same box lets you upload photos and files, including PDFs and documents from Google Drive, and if you paste in a web page address, you can ask about its content.

Not everything available in the US works in Bulgaria. As of the end of October 2026, interactive visualisations are available only in English, and memory ("remember", "forget") only in the US. Bulgaria is not on Google's lists for connecting Gmail, Calendar and Photos (Personal Intelligence) or for Gemini 4 Argon in AI Mode, and Deep Search, bookings made from within AI Mode and Google calling businesses on your behalf have not been announced for Bulgaria. These lists change often.

Lesser-known features and settings (October 2026)

• Search Live with your camera. Since 26 March 2026 it has worked in all AI Mode languages: in the Google app, tap "Live" under the search bar, talk and point your camera at an appliance's control panel or a label. When the app goes into the background, the camera switches off.
• No early access through Search Labs. According to Google, the AI Mode experiment in Search Labs is currently only available in the US and India, in English, so in Bulgaria new features arrive directly in Search.
• Deleting is not instant. A deleted conversation can stay in "My Activity" for up to 24 hours, and if you started from an AI Overview, there is also a second entry in your Search history that you have to delete separately.
• Opting out of model training. If your account already has the new "Search Services History" setting and you turn it off, your future activity is not used to train Google's generative models, unless you send thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback; that feedback includes your latest query.

AI Mode prompts: 6 templates for business owners

Replace the parts in square brackets, and do not upload documents containing customers' personal data: anything you upload may be kept in your history.

An AI agent connected to your price list and schedule can take over the questions about prices, available appointments and terms that your customers ask by phone and in chat.

What AI Mode changes for businesses: fewer clicks, valuable citations

When the answer is on the screen, fewer people click. According to Pew Research Center (900 US adults, March 2025), when an AI Overview appeared, people clicked on a traditional result in 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was none; they clicked on a link in the AI Overview itself in about 1% of visits. In Germany, the closest European benchmark, the click-through rate of the first result falls from over 27% to 11% when an AI Overview is shown (SISTRIX, February 2026). In a randomised experiment with 1,100 users in the US (University of Pennsylvania and Northeastern University, August 2026, not yet peer-reviewed), a version of Google offering only AI Mode reduced the share of searches ending in a click to a publisher's website by 18.8 percentage points. We found no study for Bulgaria, where Google's share of the search engine market is about 96% (StatCounter, September 2026).

Google says the total volume of organic clicks is relatively stable and that clicks from AI results are of higher quality, but it does not publish data that would allow this to be verified.

Being cited matters: according to Seer Interactive (April 2026), in 2025 pages cited in AI Overviews had an organic click-through rate two to five times higher than pages that were not cited. Pages outside the top positions get cited too: according to Ahrefs data (March 2026), only 37.9% of the URLs in AI Overviews rank in the top 10 results for the same query. On 15 October 2026 Google added more links within the text of its answers and began testing a section with official websites at the top, and as of 28 October ads in AI Mode had not been announced for any EU country.

Visits from AI answers are few, but they may be worth more: on Ahrefs' own website (June 2025, 30 days of data), AI search engines brought 0.5% of visits but 12.1% of sign-ups, although this is only one website.

How to get your business into AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity answers

Google says there are no additional requirements for AI Overviews and AI Mode: a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. In its guide to generative AI features in Search, updated on 10 July 2026, the company writes that this kind of optimisation is still SEO, and it recommends unique, first-hand content. ChatGPT and Perplexity search with their own bots, and according to Ahrefs data (August 2025), only about 12% of the pages cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot rank in Google's top 10 results for the same query. Nobody can guarantee citations; here are the essentials:

1. Access for bots. Check robots.txt and your hosting's security settings. In Cloudflare, do not choose "Block" for AI bots: since 15 September 2026 this setting also blocks Googlebot, and with it ordinary search. Allow OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) and PerplexityBot; GPTBot is for model training and is a separate decision. 2. The Search Console setting. In Settings, under Search generative AI, leave "Include", the default: with "Exclude", your site disappears from AI Overviews and AI Mode. 3. Answers to the sub-questions. AI Mode breaks a question down into subtopics such as price, timing, address and terms, so every service, room or product deserves its own page with prices in euros and terms written out as text, not only in an image. According to Google, there is no need to chop your text into small chunks or to write specifically for AI. 4. Structured data and FAQs. They are not required for AI search and there is no special schema for it, but structured data must match the visible text. FAQ rich results disappeared from Google on 7 May 2026, so the questions on your page are there for your customers. 5. Google Business Profile and genuine reviews. According to Google, your Business Profile and Merchant Center help your services and products appear in AI answers. Keep your name, categories, opening hours (including holiday hours) and photos accurate; ask every customer for a review using the link or QR code from your profile, and reply to reviews. Offering discounts in exchange for reviews and asking only satisfied customers are both prohibited, and prices in Merchant Center must be in euros, as on your website. 6. Dates and freshness. According to Ahrefs (July 2025), AI assistants, ChatGPT most of all, cite content that is on average 25.7% newer than Google's organic results, while AI Overviews show no such difference. Show when each page was last updated. 7. Genuine mentions. Google warns that artificial mentions help less than they might seem to. A genuine presence in directories, the media and social networks matters: in the US in September 2026, the most cited domains in AI Overviews were YouTube, Reddit and Facebook (Ahrefs). 8. llms.txt is optional; measurement is not. Google Search does not use llms.txt, and according to Ahrefs, 97% of valid files did not receive a single request in May 2026. Since 31 August 2026 the generative AI report in Search Console has shown impressions (but not clicks) in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and visits from ChatGPT search carry utm_source=chatgpt.com.

We explained the terms GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation) in our earlier article SEO is dead. Long live GEO.; according to Google's guide, the foundation for both is still good SEO. When a customer reaches your website from an AI answer, an AI agent on the site or on the phone can immediately answer their question about a free slot or availability, based on your prices and rules.

What we can build for your business with AI

AI Mode helps customers choose, but in Bulgaria the enquiry and the booking happen on your website, by phone or in messaging apps: booking a hotel from within AI Mode has been possible since 27 August 2026, but only in the US and in English. Here is what we build so that you do not lose these customers:

• An AI chat agent on your website. It answers based on your prices and documents, guides visitors to an enquiry or booking and saves each conversation with an AI summary.
• AI voice agent on a real phone line. It speaks natural Bulgarian, replies in about a second on average and can be interrupted. It books an appointment or reservation after explicit confirmation, and when a call is transferred, the member of staff can see what the customer wanted. In the 30 days to 28 October 2026, our voice agents handled nearly 7,000 calls on the lines of real hotels.
• An agent in Viber and WhatsApp. It replies where your customers already write, and a member of staff can take over the conversation at any time.
• AI agent for hotels. It creates and changes bookings directly in the hotel's property management system (PMS) and sends confirmations by WhatsApp, Viber or email.
• AI automation of routine tasks and documents. It takes over the confirmations, reminders, enquiries and documents that your team handles manually today.
• AI agents and multi-agent systems with Claude. We design and build agents for processes that span several systems, with a member of staff approving the important steps.

We explained how an AI agent differs from an ordinary chat bot in the article What is an AI agent and how does it differ from an assistant and a chat bot. We do not have a public demo number for the voice agent: on request, we arrange a demo call tailored to your industry through the free consultationpage. You can try the chat agent live on the AI chat agent.

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Digital Agent (AI AVTOMATIZATSII OOD) is a specialist agency for AI automation, AI agents and integrations. We build practical, durable solutions for hotels, restaurants, online shops and B2B companies in Bulgaria, Greece and Romania.