What is Google AI Mode, and how does it choose its sources?

Google AI Mode is a conversational search interface on its own tab of Google's results page. It writes a full answer to your question, links the pages it relied on, and takes follow-up questions.

Google released it in Arabic on 8 October 2025 as «وضع AI», one of more than 35 new languages announced the day before. Your customer opens it from its tab on the results page or in the Google app. Arabic is on its list of languages, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE are on its list of countries.

It is not Google AI Overviews, the short summary Google writes above the ordinary results without being asked. Google says the two may use different models and techniques, so their answers and links can differ for the same question. The full comparison is in AI Overviews versus AI Mode.

This guide is part of the eight engines we measure in Arabic, which sets out what makes each engine different and where it gets its sources.

It splits your question into subtopics, searches Google's index for each of them at the same time, then writes one answer from the pages it found and links some of them as supporting sources.

Google's Arabic name for this is «توسيع طلبات البحث», query fan-out in English. Its documentation describes it as a set of related queries the model issues together to gather more information. So your page can be cited because it answers one sub-question, as explained in what is query fan-out?

Whatever enters the answer passes through Google Search first. Google says that to be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet, and that indexing itself is not guaranteed. Its optimisation guide adds that the site must be included in Search generative AI features in Google Search Console's settings, which is the default.

That is why four things keep your page out of the answer before anything else counts:

• A page Google has not indexed yet. Check it with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.
• A page that blocks snippets with nosnippet or limits them with max-snippet. These controls limit what Google takes from it.
• A page that robots.txt blocks for Googlebot, which therefore never reads it.
• A page on a site its owner has excluded from Search generative AI features in Google Search Console.

On Arabic questions about our own field, AI Mode cited Google's documentation and machine-translated foreign pages most, then a Saudi company's blog and a page from a Saudi government body.

From our measurements in October 2026: Tasadr (تصدَّر) asked Google AI Mode Arabic questions, in Modern Standard Arabic and Gulf dialect, about optimising for AI answers on 5, 6 and 8 October. The domains it cited most were developers.google.com and translate.google.com, then a Saudi company's blog, then a page from a Saudi government body that serves small businesses.

translate.google.com is a link through which Google shows a foreign page machine-translated into Arabic. The likeliest reading is that when the engine finds no Arabic page that answers the question, it borrows an answer written for another market and translates it.

Gulf and Arab sites made up about 11% of its citations on these questions, 39 of 362. The Arabic share of these answers is still small, and a business that writes an Arabic page answering the question directly is usually competing with foreign or translated pages, not with one written for its customer.

These questions cover one field, ours, so do not read them as a rate for all Arabic questions. The picture may differ for clinics, property or online stores. The last section of this guide shows how to see the picture for your own questions.

This is an illustrative example of a fictional medical centre, naseem-medical.sa. It shows how one question branches into sub-questions, and how to match each of them with a section of your page.

A customer in Riyadh types «وش أفضل مجمع طبي في شمال الرياض يقبل التأمين ويداوم بالليل؟» ("what's the best medical centre in north Riyadh that takes insurance and opens in the evening?"). The question holds four conditions: place, insurance, hours and quality. AI Mode may search each one separately before it writes its answer.

These are sub-questions it may search, each with the section of the centre's site that answers it:

• Medical centres in north Riyadh districts: the branches section, naming the districts, such as Al Narjis, Al Yasmin and Al Malqa, with each branch's address.
• Centres that accept medical insurance: the insurance section, naming the accepted insurers as the contracts do, not "we accept most insurers".
• Clinics open in the evening: an opening-hours table for each branch and each clinic, in figures.
• Specialties available: a section per specialty, with the doctors' names and working days.
• Patients' views: the Google Business Profile, with its reviews and the centre's replies.

Nothing specific to AI Mode alone. It reads what Google Search reads, but a page that answers the sub-questions plainly and clearly is closer to being taken into its answer.

From two sources together: the generative AI report in Google Search Console, which counts how often your pages appear in this interface, and questions you ask it yourself while reading the links in its answers.

Nobody can promise you that AI Mode will cite you. Google itself says indexing and serving are not guaranteed, even when a page meets every requirement.

• Nobody knows the list of sources before the engine writes its answer; it is chosen afresh for every question.
• Google does not document how AI Mode handles Arabic dialects, so any firm claim about it is a guess.
• Today's answer may not repeat tomorrow, so do not base a decision on a single answer.
• What we saw on questions in our field does not necessarily describe questions in yours.