After introducing AI Overviews in over 100 countries, Google is unveiling two major new features to definitively mark its entry into the era of the answer engine: AI Mode, powered by Gemini 2.0. Google promises more personalized answers and increased diversity in the links offered.
What you need to remember:
- Google launches the “AI Mode” tab, to respond to more complex searches.
- AI Mode uses the power of Gemini 2.0 and relies on the “query fan-out” technique to perform multiple simultaneous searches and offer more relevant answers and links.
- With Gemini 2.0, Google is targeting advanced users of generative AI and now offers 3 models to perform more complex and less expensive tasks.
New experiment in Google Labs: “AI Mode”
Available in a dedicated tab for US users connected to Google Labs, AI Mode improves the reasoning capabilities and multimodal search of AI overviews. It would also provide more relevant links to users. Google thus responds more effectively to complex searches.
In the video below, we can see an extremely comprehensive response, taking into account the different sub-topics of the question, providing two link carousels as well as link icons at the end of the paragraph:
“Query fan-out”, the new weapon for ever more personalized responses?
In its communication, Google discusses the use of the “query fan-out” technique: it carries out several simultaneous searches, on the different subjects of the question, across several sources of information, and then groups the information into a structured and easy-to-understand response.
In its AI Mode documentation, Google details: While the response is being generated, advanced models are now able to identify and access a greater number of web pages than before. This technique allows for a broader and more varied set of content and links to be displayed associated with the response.
Because AI Mode is using more advanced models and novel techniques compared to AI Overviews, a different set of responses and links will likely appear for the same query. […] We’re also training the models to intelligently determine when and how to link and best present information so it’s most useful and actionable. For example, teaching the model to decide when to include hyperlinks in the response if it’s likely that the user may want to take action or finish a task on a website (eg booking tickets).
What impact for SEOs?
Here we understand that Google uses search intentions to determine whether or not links should appear in the AI Mode response. (A search with commercial or transactional intent would therefore be more likely to display links than an informational search). Interesting info: 3 days ago, a Google blog post communicated the figure of 5 billion searches per year. But the article also specifies that with the launch of AI overviews, “the volume of commercial searches has increased”.
Communication effect or real user behavior observed? This information gives some hope of not seeing your traffic completely siphoned off by the response engine.
Gemini 2.0: The Power Behind AI Mode
A direct competitor to ChatGPT, Gemini is updated to version 2.0 to power the AI mode. It also has three new models, available in the Gemini API via Google AI Studio and in Vertex AI:
- Gemini 2.0 Flash: Higher throughput limits, better performance, and simplified pricing.
- Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite: a more economical variant.
- Gemini 2.0 Pro: An experimental update for complex prompts and code.
Gemini 2.0 Flash offers more features, including native tools to code or use Google search directly in Gemini, longer prompting up to 1 million tokens ( presumably already available in Gemini 1.5 ), and experimental multimodal input. It currently only generates text, but image and audio generation are coming “in the coming months.”
Comparison of the three new models:
Revised pricing with a more economical “Lite” option
Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite takes over some of the features of Gemini 2.0 Flash but with a more attractive pricing for intensive uses (hello SEOs who write content with AI). The new pricing offer “eliminates the distinction of Gemini 1.5 Flash between long and short prompts”.
