Google Tests Integrating AI Overviews to AI Mode, Still Appearing Above Conversational Search Results

Google is now testing integrating AI Overviews, its web search results summarization tool, into AI Mode, a broader version of its web summarization tool that completely removes traditional search results.

Google Tests Integrating AI Overviews to AI Mode

TechCrunch reported that Google is now testing a way to integrate AI Overviews to AI Mode as the company wants to see the difference between both experiences and how they would fare with each other.

The AI Overviews tool is only available through the traditional search results, where it would be shown on top of the first page, featuring a short summary of the most important information related to a user's question. Integrating it into AI Mode would offer users a chance to get another set of summarized search results generated by Google's AI on top of their AI Mode preference.

Google has since designated AI Mode as the potential future of web search, with the company recently making it available to all users worldwide in August. According to TechCrunch, there is still a clear distinction between using AI Overviews and AI Mode, presenting two different ways of searching the web.

According to Google's vice president of product under Search, Robby Stein, the team is now testing this feature in hopes of learning how its search engine would be presented in the future. The goal is to have users talk to the search engine normally and ask what they want to find on the internet without having to worry about "where or how to ask your question."

AI Mode Would See AI Overviews Above

The report stated that this integration of Google's AI-powered search features with each other would still put the AI Overviews results on top of the page, offering a generated summary above the other answers.

AI Mode's chatbot-like write-up would appear under the summary of all the answers from the web, but it would focus on a conversational search result.

AI Overviews do not need a prompt-style query to search the web as users may go about typing as they would normally input in the text box on search engines. However, AI Mode completely changes this as it acts more like a chatbot than a search engine, with users needing to engage in a conversation with it to get the answers they are looking for.

Google's test would determine if it is wise to differentiate the experiences or merge them into one AI-powered feature for users.