Many have criticized Google for letting ChatGPT steal search traffic, but it’s now clear that Google took the safer route and thoroughly prepared its own integration of AI into the search experience. The new AI Mode, which is coming soon to Serbia as well, provides highly useful links and is quickly becoming the primary way people interact with Google Search.
AI Mode represents the biggest shift in search since the days when people used web directories — in other words, the biggest change in the last 30 years. This feature is being rolled out country by country, and results shown in AI Mode will not be the same as in the classic Google Search. Even if you’re ranking well today, you’ll need to make extra effort to be seen in AI Mode. This blog explains what steps to take.
AI Overview Replaces the Rich Snippet
It all started last year with AI Overview, which initially had no impact on e-commerce SEO. AI Overview primarily affects informational queries, while its influence on pre-transactional, transactional, and commercial queries was below 3%. Later, AI Mode appeared in Google Labs and was tested through Early Access in May. At first, the results were unpredictable — it wasn’t clear how it worked or how long it would take to understand how to rank well in this new format. But that time is behind us. We now know what AI Mode looks like (even though it still lacks integration with Google Ads), how it works, and what actions are needed to achieve good visibility. Initially, it seemed that local SEO wasn’t significantly affected, but then Google introduced a new “Ask for Me” feature, which uses Gemini to automatically call local businesses and request information such as prices and availability of services.
When using Google today, we see that almost every search returns an AI Overview — a summarized answer generated by AI. This feature is already working well in Serbian, often providing more useful responses than what’s found on the first link. Additionally, Sistrix has measured a decline in Rich Snippet visibility in German search results, while at the same time AI Overviews are becoming more prominent. Predictions suggest that AI Overviews (AIO) will soon replace Rich Snippets wherever technically and logically feasible — as a new way of providing instant answers without the need to click on a link. However, since AIO and other AI-generated responses can sometimes “hallucinate” and deliver inaccurate information, Rich Snippets still play an important role, especially in sensitive contexts where it’s risky to let AI generate direct SERP content. Over time, Rich Snippets are expected to gradually disappear — but for now, they will remain a visible part of search results.
Who Benefited from AIO?
In a word: brands. All websites recognized as brands — whether within their niche, topical cluster, entity group, country, or globally — have benefited.
The conclusion is simple: a seller must either become a brand or position themselves as one in the eyes of Google.
The impact of AIO on CTR varies by niche. If a site relied primarily on informational queries, it may have experienced a drop in CTR of up to 70%. On the other hand, the effect on e-commerce SEO has been significantly smaller, although we still lack precise data. On average, AIO is estimated to have affected CTR by around 30%. The most affected queries are informational or a mix of informational and transactional. The biggest losers in this shift are news websites, which have seen a significant drop in traffic. In an attempt to protect themselves, many are now suing Google, claiming that their content was used without permission — shown to users through AIO, while almost no one clicks through to their sites.
AI Mode — A Completely New Way to Search
AI Mode wouldn’t exist without the revolution in artificial intelligence known as Large Language Models (LLMs). These models were developed before AIO, and their popularity is one of the key reasons Google started showing AIO results and is now pushing AI Mode. Models like ChatGPT have taken over a large number of searches that used to belong to Google, especially when it comes to complex informational queries. Although GPT is 300 times smaller than Google, it currently captures a significant share of informational search traffic.
AI Mode first appeared in May 2025 through Google Labs. Most expected it to go public sometime next year, but just a month and a half later, it was launched in the U.S. and India. Now that it’s live in the U.S. market, it’s expected to expand globally very soon. Current data shows that most users who try AI Mode end up asking how to set it as their default search method! So, it’s only a matter of time before AI Mode becomes Google’s default mode.
Source: Google
In some cases, GPT performs better than AIO — and even better than Google AI Mode — not only for informational queries, but also for pre-transactional and transactional ones. This is likely due to the current advantage GPT still holds over Google’s Gemini model, which powers AI Mode. However, while GPT may handle abstract concepts better, AI Mode handles links more effectively. AI Mode almost never hallucinates in its responses, and when it cites sources, they are 100% accurate. By contrast, other LLMs hallucinate to varying degrees — for example, ChatGPT fabricates sources in around 25% of cases, while other models do so somewhat less frequently.
Tools You’ll Need to Measure Brand Visibility in AIO and AI Mode
With the rapid evolution of AIO and AI Mode, there’s a growing need for specialized tools to measure brand visibility inside LLM responses and AI-driven Google SERP features. While major SEO platforms like Semrush and Ahrefs have yet to fully adapt to these changes, new tools such as tryprofound.com and atomicagi.com already offer more advanced solutions in this area — and are well worth testing.
How to Prepare Your Brand for the Arrival of AI Mode?
Although AI Mode has only existed since May 2025, we can already offer some best-practice recommendations to help your brand gain at least comparable visibility in AI Mode as it currently has in classic Google Search.
1. Become a BRAND — because brands dominate
Websites that are not recognized as brands and instead use keyword-based domains currently have almost no visibility in AIO. This trend will very likely carry over to AI Mode, as shown by recent testing. So, switch your KW domains to brand domains as soon as possible, and start building your brand across all digital channels. Someone might own a successful domain like air-conditioner-service.uk, but without brand development (e.g., AC Service Chill), that site is likely to lose its rankings quickly.
2. Protect your brand
Make sure no one else is using your brand name and register a trademark — ideally worldwide or at least in the U.S. Alternatively, register the trademark in your own country — because Google crawls trademark databases extensively to determine brand relevance and authenticity.
Source: Google
3. Consistent NAP + brand identity
Use consistent data across all platforms — from company name and brand to contact info and social media profiles. This consistency helps Google and LLMs better recognize and connect your company as a web entity.
4. Native PR articles on large, authoritative sites
Publish native PR articles on news portals or niche-specific authoritative websites. The topic must be relevant to your niche, with a title that includes a keyword, and your brand must appear in context with major brands from the same niche/cluster/entity. Ideally, your brand should be linked, but the key factor is its presence among relevant brands. The content must avoid fluff — it should be direct, specific, and useful. The topic must have search volume (SV), and the article should include relevant sources: research, studies, reports, expert quotes…
5. Why news portals?
LLMs aim to stay current and accurate, which is why they constantly crawl news websites. If your brand appears regularly on such portals, LLMs will analyze it more frequently, understand it better, and gradually send you more relevant traffic. As current research and testing show, brand presence has the strongest influence in AIO, and it will be even more important in AI Mode. If you want to remain competitive and visible in the future AI ecosystem, you must become a brand — not just in the eyes of users, but in the eyes of Google and LLM systems.
SBO – Search Brand Optimization
Another strong indication of the importance of branding is the emergence of a new SEO specialization — SBO (Search Brand Optimization). This profession focuses exclusively on ensuring that a website is recognized as a brand — whether within a niche, a cluster, an entity group, or even globally. This new practice clearly shows the direction SEO is heading: branding is becoming the foundation of all future SEO ranking factors. Without a well-defined and recognizable brand, the effectiveness of other SEO tactics will be significantly reduced.
Not all brands are safe
Despite the importance of branding, there are categories of websites that will struggle to survive in the upcoming AI-driven environment. Generalist webshops that only resell products from other brands — without offering their own — will likely be the biggest losers in AI Mode. To remain competitive, you need to offer your own products or be the exclusive distributor of a brand within your country. This does not mean selling low-quality white-label goods — it means developing your own high-quality products.
Take Nike shoes as an example: in 99% of cases, the AI Mode result will show Nike’s official store in the user’s country. Any query involving “Nike” or brand/product variations will direct users to Nike’s own site, while resellers will be largely ignored. Product reviews are also expected to play an increasingly important role in AI Mode visibility. Authentic, detailed, and user-focused reviews can help products gain more exposure and trust in AI-generated results.
Another model that’s likely to be impacted in the long run is the price comparison site. Although AI Mode is not yet accurate enough for price comparisons, Google has access to Shopping data — which will likely be used in the future to display the most accurate prices from trusted sources.
How do LLMs and AI Mode crawl websites?
Unlike traditional Googlebots, LLMs do not calculate link juice, meaning link authority has no impact on whether a site appears in LLM responses (note: not all links are excluded — see the table at the end). This is one of the biggest differences compared to Google’s standard algorithm. LLMs and AI Mode do not respect robots.txt, llms.txt, robots or canonical tags — they behave like human users, mostly analyzing visible content. Everything that is published is available for AI crawling, and there is no way to block LLMs from crawling a site or individual pages.
However, LLMs and AI Mode have a more limited crawl budget than Googlebot — meaning they won’t revisit and read the same pages as frequently.
How to optimize crawling in AI Mode
- Limit the number of links on your homepage to 100. This helps LLMs understand which products, pages, and categories are most important.
- Reduce the number of products if possible, as data shows that in most webshops, only 2% of products generate 80% of the traffic — regardless of store size.
- Consolidate your categories, since those 2% of high-performing products can usually be grouped into just 5–6 categories.
- Postavite ključne kategorije na Home page zajedno sa proizvodima.
This strategy is effective only if your site is already recognized as a brand. Without that status in the eyes of Google and LLMs, these technical optimizations will have limited impact.
Top ranking factors for websites in AI Mode, according to research by Ahrefs:
- Branded web mentions – How often the brand is mentioned across other websites, even without a link.
- Branded anchors – Links pointing to the site using the brand name as anchor text.
- Branded search volume – How often the brand is searched for by name in Google.
- Domain Rating – Metrička vrednost (Ahrefs) koja meri autoritet sajta na osnovu profila linkova.
- Number of referring domains – How many unique websites link to your site at least once.
- Branded traffic – Koliko posetilaca dolazi jer su eksplicitno tražili brend.
- Number of backlinks – Total number of links pointing to your website.
- Ad traffic – Visitors arriving via Google Ads.
- Ad traffic – Visitors arriving via Google Ads.
The conclusion is simple: AI Mode will become the default SERP mode in Google worldwide — it’s only a matter of time. Our internal projection suggests this will happen by the end of this year. The only possible exception might be the European Union, where AI Mode could be delayed due to legal and regulatory constraints.