- QUICK ANSWER
AI Overview is Google’s quick AI summary at the top of results, while AI Mode is a conversational search for deeper questions. Since January 2026, a follow-up question under an AI Overview takes you straight into AI Mode.
- WHAT WE FOUND
Ranking on page one no longer guarantees a place in the AI answer, and AI Overview and AI Mode don’t always pick the same sources. Brands are often named without a link, so what others say about you matters as much as your own pages.
- WHAT TO DO NEXT
Treat AI visibility as a cycle. Check where you appear, make your pages easy to quote, build your reputation on the sites AI trusts, then measure and repeat every month.
Why I Updated This Guide
When I first wrote this piece in December 2025, AI Overview and AI Mode felt like two separate experiments Google was running side by side.
That’s no longer true.
Since then, Google has made Gemini 3 the default model behind AI Overviews, joined the two features so one flows into the other, and told us at I/O in May 2026 that AI Mode alone now has more than a billion monthly users.
So instead of rewriting the same definitions you’ll find on every other site, I ran a small test. I searched 12 real Singapore queries in both AI Overview and AI Mode, logged which sources each one cited and which brands it named, and compared that against who ranks in the normal results.
You’ll find the method and the results further down, along with what I’d change in your SEO and GEO approach because of them.
How We Create This Article
This guide was written by Benjamin Lau, first published in December 2025. It was rewritten in October 2026 to reflect Google’s updates. The test results come from searches our team ran on 6 October in Singapore, and the Search Console figures are from OOm Institute’s own account. We used AI tools to help research and structure the draft, and every fact, figure and recommendation was checked and edited by our team before publishing.
AI Overview vs AI Mode At a Glance
The short version is that AI Overview answers a question and AI Mode helps you work through one. Here’s how they compare.
| AI Overview | AI Mode | |
| Where it appears | At the top of the normal Google results page | In its own AI Mode tab, or after a follow-up from an AI Overview |
| How it’s triggered | Automatically, when Google decides a summary will help | The searcher chooses it |
| Best for | Definitions, quick facts, simple how-tos | Comparisons, planning, multi-step research |
| Depth | One short summary | A longer answer that builds over a conversation |
| How it searches | Summarises top sources for a single query | Runs many related searches at once (query fan-out) |
| Follow-up questions | A follow-up box hands you over to AI Mode | Built around follow-ups and keeps context |
| AI model | Gemini 3 (default since January 2026) | Gemini 3.7 Flash and 3.8 Flash |
| Sources shown | A handful of links beside or below the summary | More sources, in a side panel and inline |
| Monthly users | About 2.5 billion | More than 1 billion |
| Content it tends to pick | Short, direct, answer-first passages | Detailed pages that cover the follow-up questions too |
| How to track it | Search Console’s Generative AI performance report | Partly visible in Search Console |
User numbers are from Google I/O, May 2026.
What Is AI Overview?
AI Overview is the AI-written summary Google places above its normal search results. It pulls information from several web pages, combines it into a short answer, and links to the sources it used.
It appears automatically when Google thinks a summary will help, mostly for informational and how-to searches.
That’s the textbook definition, and it still holds. What’s changed this year is how capable the summary has become and what happens after you read it.
In January 2026, Google made Gemini 3 the default model behind AI Overviews worldwide. For a search like “What is SkillsFuture Credit?”, the overview now explains eligibility, credit tiers and amounts, and how to claim the credit in a few lines, rather than providing just a one-sentence definition.
The bigger change is the follow-up box.
Under many AI Overviews you can now type a follow-up question, and when you do, Google moves you into AI Mode with the context of your original search intact. The overview has stopped being the end of the search journey and become the front door to a longer one.
What hasn’t changed is that AI Overview is built for speed. It cites a small number of sources, and it favours passages that answer the question directly and cleanly.
If your page buries the answer in its fourth paragraph, it’s much less likely to be the one quoted.
What Is AI Mode?
AI Mode is Google’s conversational search. Instead of a list of links, you get a detailed, structured answer you can keep questioning. Behind the scenes it splits your question into many related searches, runs them at the same time, and pulls the results into one response with sources.
That splitting step is called query fan-out, and it’s the most useful idea to understand if you work in marketing.
When someone asks AI Mode “which AI course in Singapore suits a marketing executive with no coding background”, Google doesn’t just search that exact phrase.
It also looks up related questions about course duration, core focus & tools and best for, then stitches together an answer. A page that only targets the headline keyword covers one of those sub-questions.
A page that answers the follow-ups too has more chances to be pulled in.
How AI Overview and AI Mode Now Work Together
If you take one thing from this update, I’d make it this.
“AI Mode vs AI Overview” is now partly “AI Mode and AI Overview”, because Google has built them into a single journey.
Here’s what that journey looks like on mobile today.
- Someone searches a question and sees an AI Overview at the top.
- Under the overview, they type a follow-up question.
- Google opens AI Mode, carrying over the original question, and the conversation continues there with a fuller set of sources.
Google announced this flow in January 2026, and at I/O in May it described the two surfaces as converging into one experience. Google said its own testing showed people prefer search that flows naturally into a conversation.
For marketers this changes the question you should be asking.
It used to be “am I in the AI Overview?” Now it’s closer to “am I present at each step?”
A brand can be cited in the quick summary, then disappear when the searcher asks for a sharper follow-up in AI Mode, or the other way round.
Being visible at the first step and absent at the decision step is a real risk, and it’s one a rank tracker won’t show you.
How We Tested
In October 2026, me and my team members ran 12 searches from Singapore in a signed-out browser, on both desktop and mobile. For each one we recorded whether an AI Overview appeared, which sources it cited, which brands it named, and the top three organic results.
We then asked the same question in AI Mode and recorded the same details. Everything went into a shared log.
We picked a deliberate mix of search types, because I expected the two features to behave differently depending on intent.
| Intent | Queries |
| Informational | why is my competitor more visible than me, what is wsq, what is geo in marketing, ai mode vs ai overview |
| Commercial | best seo course singapore, ai seo course, geo course in singapore |
| Comparison | chatgpt vs claude for work, google ads vs meta ads |
| Local | google analytics 4 course near me |
| Brand | >oom institute review, oom institute courses |
Screenshot of “Why is my competitor more visible than me” in AI Overview
Screenshot of ‘Recommend a GEO course in Singapore’ in AI Mode
A small sample like this can’t tell you how Google behaves across millions of searches, and results change week to week.
What it can show is the pattern of queries that matter to a Singapore training and marketing audience, which is exactly what most published studies don’t cover.
What We Found
| Query | AIO shown? | AIO sources | AI Mode sources | Shared sources | Top-3 organic cited in AIO | OOm Institute cited (AIO / AI Mode) |
| why is my competitor more visible than me | Yes | 7 | 3 | 0 | 2 of 3 | Yes / No |
| what is wsq | Yes | 4 | 12 | 4 | 2 of 3 | Yes / Yes |
| what is geo in marketing | Yes | 10 | 15 | 6 | 1 of 3 | No / No |
| ai mode vs ai overview | Yes | 8 | 14 | 7 | 2 of 3 | Yes / Yes |
| best seo course singapore | Yes | 6 | 6 | 4 | 3 of 3 | Yes / Yes |
| ai seo course | Yes | 5 | 8 | 5 | 2 of 3 | Yes / Yes |
| geo course in singapore | Yes | 8 | 12 | 8 | 2 of 3 | Yes / Yes |
| chatgpt vs claude for work | Yes | 10 | 13 | 7 | 1 of 3 | No / No |
| google ads vs meta ads | No | n/a | 13 | n/a | n/a | No / No |
| google analytics 4 course near me | Yes | 5 | 7 | 5 | 3 of 3 | Yes / Yes |
| oom institute review | Yes | 4 | 6 | 4 | 3 of 3 | Yes / Yes |
| oom institute courses | No | n/a | 5 | n/a | n/a | n/a / Yes |
Tested 6 October 2026, desktop, Singapore. Source counts are unique website domains.
Across the 12 searches, an AI Overview appeared on 10. Where both features answered, AI Mode cited about 9.6 domains per query against 6.7 for AI Overview, and 50 of the 67 domains cited in AI Overviews (75%) also appeared in the AI Mode answer.
Of the 30 pages ranking in the top three organically on those 10 queries, 21 (70%) were cited in the AI Overview, which means nearly one in three page-one leaders was left out.
Three Patterns Worth Knowing
Pattern 1. AI Overviews showed up for almost every question, but not for every search.
An AI Overview appeared on 10 of the 12 searches. All four course-buying searches triggered one, and they read like shortlists. For “best seo course singapore” the overview named OOm Institute and SMU Academy, and for “google analytics 4 course near me” it listed four providers with course length and funding details.
The two searches without an overview were a comparison where ads filled the top of the page (“google ads vs meta ads”) and a navigational brand search (“oom institute courses“). AI Mode answered all 12, so for those two, AI Mode was the only place an AI answer existed.
Pattern 2. The two features agree more than the big studies suggest, until they don't.
Across the 10 searches with both, 50 of the 67 websites cited in AI Overviews (75%) were cited again in AI Mode, and AI Mode added more on top, averaging about 10 websites per answer against about 7. That’s far higher than the 13.7% overlap Ahrefs reported, though Ahrefs compared exact pages and I compared whole websites, so the two numbers measure different things.
The exceptions are what caught my attention. For “why is my competitor more visible than me“, OOm Institute ranks first organically and is cited in the AI Overview, yet the AI Mode answer shared none of the overview’s 7 sources and cited only tool vendors such as Semrush and Ahrefs.
For “ai seo course” it went the other way, with OOm Institute missing from the overview but cited in AI Mode. Being visible at one step tells you nothing certain about the next.
Pattern 3. Different questions pull answers from different websites, and being named isn't the same as being linked.
For course searches, both features leaned on provider websites and the government’s MySkillsFuture portal. For general marketing questions they leaned on blogs, LinkedIn posts and video, with YouTube cited in 4 AI Overviews and 5 AI Mode answers, and Reddit in 2 and 5 respectively.
AI Mode also separated being named from being linked. For “google analytics 4 course near me” it cites pages from Click Academy Asia without naming either in the answer. A citation without a mention, or a mention without a citation, are both partial wins, and you can’t tell which you’re getting without checking.
Twelve searches on one day is a snapshot, not a study, and I’d expect some of these results to look different by the time you read this. Still, the direction is clear enough to act on, and it shapes everything in the sections that follow.
SEO vs GEO and What Each Feature Rewards
GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is the work of making your content easy for AI systems like AI Overview, AI Mode and ChatGPT to find, understand, trust and cite. SEO gets your page ranked.
GEO gets your page, or your brand, used inside the answer.
I don’t think SEO is going away, and I’d be wary of anyone who tells you to stop doing it. AI Overview and AI Mode still draw on Google’s index, so a page that isn’t crawlable, fast and well-structured is unlikely to be cited by either.
What has changed is that ranking is now the entry ticket rather than the finish line.
The clearest sign of that is in our own test. On the 10 searches that showed an AI Overview, 9 of the 27 pages ranking in the top three organically were not cited in it, and 7 of the 10 searches left out at least one top-three page.
For “what is geo in marketing”, only one of the top three made it into the overview, and Search Engine Land, one of the most established SEO publications, wasn’t among the sources.
Ranking and being cited are related, but they are not the same result any more.
| Classic SEO | GEO | |
| The win | A high ranking position | Being cited or named in the AI answer |
| Main metric | Clicks and CTR | Citations, brand mentions, share of AI answers |
| Unit of content | The whole page | A passage that answers one question cleanly |
| Keyword focus | Target keyword and close variants | The topic and its follow-up questions (fan-out) |
| Authority signal | Backlinks | Backlinks plus unlinked brand mentions across the web |
| What hurts you | Thin pages, poor technical setup | Vague, unoriginal content nobody needs to quote |
If you look at those two columns side by side, the overlap with Google’s own helpful-content guidance is hard to miss. Pages with original data, a clear expert behind them and accurate, dated facts are the ones I’d expect AI systems to quote, because they’re the ones that add something the other ten results don’t.
Citations, Brand Mentions and Visibility in AI search
When marketers talk about “showing up in AI”, they usually mean three different things, and it helps to separate them because you work on each one differently.
A citation is when the AI answer links to your page as a source. It’s the closest thing to a ranking, and it’s the only one of the three that can send you a click.
A brand mention is when the answer names your brand without linking to you. In our test this happened on at least 5 of the 12 searches. The AI Overview for “ai seo course” named ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity without linking to any of them, and the overview for “best seo course singapore” named Semrush and Ahrefs as tools the courses teach, again with no link.
A mention earns no traffic, but it still shapes what the searcher thinks of you, often before they ever visit your site.
A recommendation is a mention with a judgement attached, such as being listed as a good option for a specific need. For a training provider or any business that sells a considered purchase, this is the one that matters most, and AI Mode, with its comparison-style answers, produces far more of them than AI Overview does.
- Why unlinked mentions matter?
AI systems learn what your brand is, what it’s known for and whether it’s credible from everything written about you, not just your own website. Reviews, news coverage, forum threads, directory listings and partner pages all feed that picture. A brand that’s consistently described the same way across many independent sources is easier for an AI to recommend with confidence than one that only talks about itself.
This is the part of GEO that looks most like traditional PR and reputation work, and in my view it’s the part most SEO teams underinvest in.
The Singapore Angle
For Singapore businesses, a handful of local sources came up again and again in our test. The government’s MySkillsFuture course portal was cited on 6 of the 12 searches, more than any other website apart from our own, and agency sites such as SWDA, the TPGateway training portal and SkillsFuture for Business appeared on funding and qualification questions.
On the near-me search, AI Mode leaned on Google Business Profile data, showing each provider’s star rating and number of reviews. On review-style searches, the answers drew on Glassdoor, Reddit and Facebook rather than the brand’s own website. If your brand is missing or described inconsistently on sources like these, fixing that is often a faster win than writing another blog post.
What to Do After Reading This
If you want your brand to show up in AI Overview and AI Mode, here’s what I’d do in the next 30 days. None of it needs a big budget, and every step comes from something we saw in our own test.
1. Run your own 10-search check.
List 10 questions your customers actually ask before they buy, then search each one in AI Overview and AI Mode in an incognito window. Note whether you’re cited, named or missing, and who appears instead. That one table tells you more about your AI visibility than any ranking report, because in our test nearly one in three page-one results wasn’t cited at all.
2. See which pages Google already uses.
Open the Generative AI performance report in Search Console and filter by page. The pages already appearing in AI features are your strongest candidates, so improve those first rather than starting from scratch.
3. Put the answer at the top.
For each important page, write a two- or three-sentence answer to the main question right under the heading, and turn any comparison into a simple table. AI Overview favours passages it can lift cleanly, and a buried answer rarely gets quoted.
4. Answer the next question too.
Type your main search into AI Mode and look at the angles its answer covers, such as cost, duration or who it’s for. Add a short section for each one your page is missing. That’s how you show up across AI Mode’s related searches, not just the one you targeted.
5. Fix your listings on sources AI already trusts.
In our test, MySkillsFuture was cited on 6 of 12 searches, and AI Mode showed Google Business Profile ratings on the near-me search. Make sure your profiles on government portals, Google Business Profile and industry directories are complete, current and describe you the same way.
6. Get talked about where your customers talk.
YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn came up again and again as sources, and at least 5 of our 12 answers named a brand without linking to it. Encourage reviews, answer questions in relevant communities, and pitch expert comments to publications your audience reads.
7. Add something only you can say.
Original numbers, real screenshots, a named expert and a clear “last updated” date are what make a page worth quoting over the ten others saying the same thing.
8. Repeat the check every month.
Use the same 10 searches so the results are comparable. AI answers change week to week, so the trend over three months matters more than any single result.
What's Next for AI Search
Google has been clear that AI Mode will keep taking on tasks, not just answering questions. It now handles things like flight tracking and hotel bookings, and Google showed always-on “information agents” at I/O that it plans to launch first in the US.
I’d expect more of the search journey to happen inside Google over the next year, which makes being cited and recommended there even more valuable than it is today. I’ll update this guide as those changes reach Singapore.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the key difference between AI Mode and AI Overview?
AI Overview is a short AI summary that appears automatically at the top of Google’s results. AI Mode is a separate conversational search where you can ask follow-up questions and get longer, more detailed answers drawn from many related searches.
2. Are AI Mode and AI Overview connected?
Yes. Since January 2026, you can ask a follow-up question under many AI Overviews, and Google moves you into AI Mode with your original question carried over.
3. Does AI Mode use the same ranking as normal Google Search?
It draws on Google’s search index, but it doesn’t simply show the top-ranked pages. It runs several related searches and picks passages that best answer each part of the question, so a page ranking first isn’t guaranteed to be cited.
4. How do I know if my site appears in AI Overviews?
Check the Generative AI performance report in Google Search Console, then back it up with a regular manual check of your most important searches.
5. Is AI Mode the same as ChatGPT?
Both are conversational AI, but AI Mode is built into Google Search and grounded in Google’s live web index, while ChatGPT is a standalone assistant from a different company with its own way of searching and citing.
6. Do I need to attend courses to learn AI Mode?
If you’d like structured, hands-on practice, OOm Institute’s GEO and SEO for Search Visibility course covers it over two days. It explains how GEO, AEO and SEO differ, how AI Overview and AI Mode change search behaviour, schema markup for AI search, and how to track performance in Search Console and Google Analytics 4.
