Guide
Is Google AI Mode the Same as Gemini?
Google AI Mode and Gemini
Google AI Mode is not the same as Gemini. AI Mode is a mode of Google Search that divides a question into subtopics, searches each one, and answers with links to supporting websites, while Gemini is Google’s separate assistant app, with its own address, its own activity history, and sources shown on some answers rather than all. The two are related, because Google built AI Mode on a custom version of Gemini, but a shared model does not make them one product. This answer rests on Google’s own documentation as read on 2026-11-09, and Google says the details of both are subject to change.
Google AI Mode and Gemini come from the same company and share a model family, which makes it reasonable to ask whether they are one product. Google’s own documentation treats them as two.
Publisher interest
Hendricks is not a neutral party on which AI products are worth measuring, because it sells Search Intelligence Engineering. Hendricks also builds and sells KnewSearch, AI visibility software for marketers and agencies, on monthly plans. This guide recommends no product, firm, or tool, and its figures come from Hendricks research, not from KnewSearch.
AI Mode And Gemini
How is Google AI Mode different from Gemini?
Google AI Mode is part of Google Search, and Gemini is a separate app with its own help center. Google’s Search Help says AI Mode “divides your question into subtopics and searches for each one simultaneously”, then answers with links to the web, while Gemini’s help pages describe an assistant that shows sources on some answers and not others. Four differences matter to a business, and they are set out below.
- Where each one lives.Google AI Mode sits inside Google Search: at google.com/ai, behind the AI Mode option after a search on google.com, and in the Google app. Gemini is its own product, used in the Gemini web app and the Gemini mobile app.
- How each one shows its sources.Google AI Mode answers with “links to supporting websites”, and Google says that “In some cases, AI Mode will provide a set of web links if there’s not high enough confidence in the quality or helpfulness of an AI response.” Gemini shows sources only sometimes, and its help pages say “Not all responses include related links or sources.” The links Gemini does show may include “public websites, files you have uploaded, or documents or emails from Google Workspace if you’ve connected to Workspace.”
- Where each one keeps your history.Google AI Mode keeps an AI Mode history, which Google says can be deleted from your Search History page. Gemini keeps its own record: “When you are signed in and Keep Activity is on, Google stores your Gemini Apps activity in your Google Account.”
- How Google Analytics records a visit from each.Google Analytics defines its Organic Search channel as including visits from non-ad links in “Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode”, and names Gemini as an example source of its AI Assistant channel, which “excludes Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.” What analytics can and cannot identify about AI traffic is set out on the Search Impact Measurement page.
The Model
Does Google AI Mode use Gemini?
Yes. Google’s explainer on AI Overviews and AI Mode, dated May 2025 and still linked from Google’s AI Mode help page when read on 2026-11-09, states: “Using a custom version of Gemini, AI Mode is particularly helpful for queries where further exploration, reasoning, or comparisons are needed.” The current help page also describes Gemini 4 Argon in AI Mode, a Gemini model that eligible signed-in subscribers can select from a menu inside AI Mode, alongside the “Auto” and “Fast” models that Google describes as helpful for most questions.
Sharing a model does not make two products the same. The same May 2025 explainer says AI Overviews also “use a customized Gemini model”, and Google’s current documentation for site owners states: “AI Mode and AI Overviews may use different models and techniques, so the set of responses and links they show will vary.” What a product searches, which results it keeps, and how it presents them shape the answer alongside the model. That last sentence is reasoning from Google’s description, not a measurement of AI Mode.
Perplexity
How does Perplexity compare with Google AI Mode?
Perplexity is a separate company’s product, and it documents its own way of reaching the web. Google states that to be shown as a supporting link in AI Mode, a page “must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet”. Perplexity documents its own crawler, PerplexityBot, which “is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity”. Whether a site can be reached by one is therefore a separate question from whether it can be reached by the other.
The two also answer differently. Perplexity’s help center says each answer “includes numbered citations linking to the original sources”, names “GPT-5 and Claude 4.6 Sonnet” among the language models it uses, and offers a model selector that “allows you to choose between different AI models when submitting queries”, a feature “available to Perplexity Pro subscribers”. Google AI Mode runs on a custom version of Gemini and answers with links to supporting websites, or, in some cases, with a set of web links instead of an AI response.
What Hendricks Observes
Does Hendricks measure Google AI Mode?
No. Hendricks observes four systems: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Hendricks does not measure, test, monitor, or report on Google AI Mode or Microsoft Copilot. Gemini running inside AI Mode is part of AI Mode, so observing Gemini is not observing AI Mode, and nothing Hendricks publishes describes how a brand appears there.
In The Answer Index, all four observed systems were reached through a commercial search-data vendor’s API, which the study says “is not the same surface as any consumer app”. Everything this guide says about AI Mode comes from Google’s own documentation, cited below.
What Was Measured
If a brand is cited in Gemini or Perplexity, will it be cited in AI Mode?
Hendricks cannot say, because it has no reading of AI Mode. What it has measured is how little the observed systems share. In The Answer Index, one capture of 480 questions on 2026-09-01, Gemini and Google AI Overviews overlapped at a mean per-question Jaccard of 0.151 over 462 questions, Perplexity and Gemini at 0.151 over 480, and the strongest pair, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, at 0.181. Perplexity, re-asked the same 240 questions 38 minutes later, agreed with itself at 0.900. A mean per-question Jaccard is the share of cited domains two engines had in common for a question, out of all the domains either one cited, averaged across questions, so a mean of 1 would mean the two engines cited exactly the same domains on every question, and 0 that they shared none on any.
Those figures come from one capture, read through an API rather than the consumer apps. Every Google AI Overviews figure in the study is directional pending a browser-screenshot control run, and Gemini was not re-run, so the study claims no stability figure for it. The figures describe AI Overviews, not AI Mode, and Google says the two may show different responses and links.
In the same capture Perplexity cited a source in 480 of its 480 answers, and the study notes that Perplexity cites about fifteen sources per answer. Gemini and Google AI Overviews are both Google products built on Gemini models, and they cited largely different domains for the same questions. That is reason to read AI Mode on its own terms rather than infer it from Gemini, and it is an inference from figures about other surfaces, not a measurement of AI Mode.
Which surfaces a business should track is answered in the guide to answer engine optimization: the ones its buyers actually use, read one at a time.
Limitations
This guide reads two companies’ documentation and quotes one study.
- Every product fact here is quoted or restated from Google’s or Perplexity’s own documentation, read on 2026-11-09. Where that documentation is silent, this guide is silent too, and it says nothing about how either company ranks or selects sources beyond what each has published.
- Hendricks does not measure, test, monitor, or report on Google AI Mode or Microsoft Copilot. Everything here about AI Mode comes from Google’s documentation, and the figures quoted come from one capture of The Answer Index and describe Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews only.
- That a shared model does not produce a shared answer is reasoning from Google’s documentation and from figures about other surfaces, not a measured property of AI Mode.
- No product, firm, or tool is recommended or ranked, and no fee is published. Hendricks builds and sells KnewSearch, AI visibility software, and this guide neither names it as an option nor draws any figure from it.
Sources
Sources
Last reviewed .
This guide states the Hendricks point of view on how Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity differ. Its product facts come from Google’s and Perplexity’s own documentation, which describes those companies’ products and is not evidence of observation by Hendricks. Its figures are quoted from one Hendricks study, and it names no firm or tool it recommends.
The position in this guide is applied in the Selection Intelligence solution and the Search Intelligence Diagnostic.
References
Publication Record
Publication record
- Author
- Brandon Lincoln Hendricks, Search Intelligence Engineer, Hendricks
- Published
- Last updated
Change History
Change history
| Date | Kind | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Publication | First publication of this page. |