Logan Kilpatrick, lead product manager for Google, said on Friday that Google’s AI Mode will be the “default” search experience for Google Search “soon.” We know Google said AI Mode is the future of Google Search, Liz Reid, the head of Google Search announced that in May 2025. And now that may be happening soon.
What Google said. On Friday afternoon, Google’s Logan Kilpatrick, replied to a post on X asking AI Mode to become the default Google Search experience, saying “Soon.”
Here are those posts:
Google AI Mode shortcut. This comes in response to Google’s announcement that google.com/ai now leads you directly to Google’s AI Mode. You no longer have to go to Google.com and click on the AI Mode tab.
Why we care. Google has been rapidly expanding access to AI Mode over the past few months. Google rolled out AI Mode in 180 countries and territories after recently expanding AI Mode in the UK, India and of course, the US.
What is AI Mode. AI Mode is a new tab within Google Search that brings you into a more AI-like interface. Google said AI Mode “is particularly helpful for queries where further exploration, reasoning, or comparisons are needed.” AI Mode lets you explore a topic and get comprehensive AI-based answers without you needing to do those comparisons and analyses yourself. We saw rumors of this news and it is finally officially here, for some of you.
AI Mode uses a “query fan-out” technique that issues multiple related searches concurrently across subtopics and multiple data sources and then brings those results together to provide a response. Google said using this query fan-out method provides searchers with a “more breadth and depth of information than a traditional search on Google.”
AI Mode supports searching with text, voice, and images through its multimodal capabilities. Plus, AI Mode offers the conversational follow-up questions like you’ve seen in AI Overviews and Gemini.
Tracking AI Mode. You won’t be able to easily track AI Mode queries and data in Search Console, despite that data being logged in Search Console. Google lumps it all together with normal search, despite it being a separate tab within Google.com.
Now that AI Mode is outside of Search Labs in India, you will see this data in Search Console, but it will just make it all super messy.
Why we care. AI Mode becoming the default can mean big changes to the future of SEO for many of us. And as I wrote before, while many of us like to complain and we honestly have good reason to be upset, complaining won’t help. We need to adapt and change and experiment. Experiment with these new experiences, keep on top of these changes happening in Google and at other AI and search companies. Then try new things and keep testing.
If you do not adapt, you will die. SEO won’t die, but you will become irrelevant.
The good news, SEOs are some of the best at adapting, embracing change and testing new strategies out. So you are all ready and equipped for the future of search.
Update: Maybe not. Robby Stein, VP at Google, said in response to this news that he wouldn’t read too much into the statement. He wrote, “wouldn’t read too much into this. we’re focusing on making it easy to access AI Mode for those who want it.”
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