Google AI Mode: how to use it and get your business found

Google’s AI Mode is a way of searching in which you ask a real question, as long as you need, and get an answer written by artificial intelligence, with links to the pages that support it. You then carry on with a follow-up question, as in a conversation. Google calls it its “most powerful AI search experience”.

According to Google’s help page, AI Mode is available in Cameroon as well as in France, and both English and French are among its supported languages. In other words, your customers in Douala, Buea or London can already use it to find a supplier, compare two offers or plan a purchase.

This guide has two parts. The first is for everyone: how to open it, what it is good for, where it goes wrong, how to protect your privacy. The second is for businesses: how to show up in those answers, what does not work, and how to measure it.

AI Mode, AI Overviews, classic results: what is the difference?

Google uses AI in two places in Search, and they do not work the same way.

AI Overviews are an AI-generated snapshot shown at the top of the usual results, with links for further reading. Google shows them when its systems determine that generative AI can be especially helpful. You cannot turn them off, but the Web filter, chosen after a search, shows only text-based links, without AI Overviews.

AI Mode is a mode you choose. It reasons further, takes follow-up questions, and breaks your question into subtopics to run several searches at once: Google calls this “query fan-out”. It accepts text, voice, images and files.

An AI Overview can also continue as a conversation in AI Mode: according to Google’s help page, when a search begins with an AI Overview, the “Dive deeper in AI Mode” option lets you carry on.

How do you open AI Mode, in English or French?

Three routes, depending on the device:

1. In a browser, on a computer or a phone, go to google.com/ai.
2. From Search, type your question on google.com, then select AI Mode.
3. In the Google app, tap AI Mode on the home screen.

Then type your full question, speak it into the microphone, or add a photo or a file, such as a PDF. Ask in whichever language you like: English in Buea, French in Douala, or a mix of both to see what the answer does with it. To carry on, just type the next question in the same bar.

Do you need a subscription? The help page reserves only a more advanced model, with daily usage limits, for paying Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers aged 18 and over; Google says the “Auto” or “Fast” model in AI Mode will continue to be helpful for fast, all-around assistance on most questions. Personalised answers require you to be 18 or older with history and personalised recommendations turned on. Search Labs’ experimental features are open from age 13. Our LLM guide compares the Google AI Plus and Pro plans with ChatGPT’s and Claude’s.

What is AI Mode actually good for?

It is at its best on questions that need several searches in a row, and on the ones you would rephrase three times in classic search:

• comparing before deciding: “For a shop where the power keeps cutting, what is the difference between an online till and one that works offline?”;
• learning something new, step by step: “Explain the 3-2-1 backup rule as if I ran a pharmacy”, then “and if I only have one drive?”;
• preparing a meeting: the list of questions to ask a supplier before you sign;
• starting from a picture: a photo of an error message, a spare part, a document to summarise;
• searching in your customer’s language: the same question in English and in French does not always bring up the same sources.

For a simple lookup — an address, opening hours, a phone number — classic search and the Business Profile are often quicker.

Where does AI Mode go wrong, and how do you check?

Google says so on its help page: as with any early-stage AI product, AI Mode does not always get it right, and its responses may include mistakes. Its advice is sound: check important information in more than one place, and open the links it cites.

Three habits are enough:

1. Go back to the source for anything that matters: a price, an operator’s fee, opening hours, a law, an official procedure.
2. Be wary of figures with no link. An answer is only as good as the pages it cites; if a shop’s profile is out of date, so is the answer.
3. Never call a “customer service” number found in an answer without checking it on the official website. Fake advisers live on that: our guide to WhatsApp and Mobile Money scams explains why.

How do you protect your privacy in AI Mode?

History. On a computer, your AI Mode history sits on the left. You can delete one search or clear everything, and you can also delete these searches from your Search history. According to Google, a deleted search may still show in My Activity for a while, then is removed automatically in less than 24 hours.

Without history. AI Mode still works with history turned off; you just cannot pick up an earlier conversation where you left it.

Personalisation. It draws on your previous searches and the activity saved in your history. Nothing obliges you to turn it on.

What Google does with it. According to its help page, Google uses people’s interactions with Search and its AI experiences, which can include what they search for and the feedback they send, to develop and improve those experiences and the models behind them. Trained human reviewers take part in that evaluation, working on data disconnected from users’ accounts.

What never goes in. A customer file, a password, a confidential contract, your team’s salaries. The rules on your data, in Cameroon and in Europe, are set out in our guide to AI for SMEs.

At work. With a business Google account managed by your organisation, these settings are up to your administrator.

How does a business show up in Google’s AI answers?

Google’s answer is simpler than some sales pitches: there are no additional requirements and no special optimisations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special schema.org structured data. The condition is the same as in classic search: a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. Even then, nothing is guaranteed.

What changes is how people search. Because AI Mode runs several searches on subtopics, it surfaces a wider range of pages. A page that answers one of those sub-questions precisely stands a chance of being cited.

The good practices Google lists for these features are the fundamentals of search:

• let crawlers in, in robots.txt and at your host or CDN;
• make each page easy to find through internal links;
• give people a good page experience;
• put important content in text, with good images and videos where they help;
• make your structured data match the visible text on the page;
• keep your Business Profile up to date, and your Merchant Center account if you sell online.

Our guide to digital marketing for SMEs covers this foundation in detail: Business Profile, WhatsApp Business, local SEO and the diaspora. What follows does not repeat it; it translates it for AI answers.

What should you do in Douala, Yaoundé or Buea?

Start with these ten points. Whatever stays unticked is your plan for the quarter.

• ☐ Your Google Business Profile is complete: category, real opening hours, address with a landmark, genuine photos
• ☐ The same name, address and phone number appear everywhere: profile, website, social media, directories
• ☐ Your reviews are real, asked for after each job, and every one gets a reply
• ☐ Each service has its own page that answers the questions you get asked: indicative price in FCFA, timescale, area served, language, ways to pay
• ☐ Each city you really serve has its own page, with what is true there, and no copied page for a city you never go to
• ☐ Every page exists in English and French, linked to its translation with language annotations
• ☐ Your LocalBusiness structured data says the same as the page
• ☐ The essential information is written in text, not only in an image or a scanned flyer
• ☐ The site opens quickly on a phone and stays open to Google’s crawlers
• ☐ Google Search Console is set up

On the profile, Google is explicit: businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results, which are ranked by relevance, distance and prominence, and more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking.

Then write for the questions people ask in your city:

• In Douala, the city of commerce and the port, a customer will ask “which wholesaler delivers crates to Bonabéri on Saturdays?”. Your depot only comes up if a page says clearly that you deliver to Bonabéri, and when.
• In Yaoundé, a city of administration and services, questions are about records, SYSCOHADA accounting and timescales. A page that explains your process step by step answers better than a slogan.
• In Buea, an English-speaking city, the English page must be a real page, not an abandoned translation: it is the one a customer asking in English will read.

What does not work, or even hurts?

A special “AI tag”. Google says you do not need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup for these features. A provider selling you “AI SEO” based on a secret file is selling you something Google does not ask for.

Dozens of AI-generated pages nobody checked. Google’s spam policies give as an example using generative AI tools to generate many pages without adding value for users. Google asks for helpful, reliable, people-first content, not content made to manipulate rankings.

Copied city pages. Several pages each aimed at one city, all funnelling to the same content, are spam under the same policies.

Fake reviews. Google Maps’ rules prohibit made-up reviews and reviews obtained in exchange for a reward.

A tagline or a place added to your profile’s name. The Business Profile guidelines ask for your business’s real-world name, the one on your storefront; adding unnecessary information, such as a marketing tagline or a location, can get the profile suspended.

How do you know whether Google’s AI cites you?

In Search Console. According to Google, sites that appear in AI features are included in overall search traffic, in the Performance report under the “Web” search type. Look at which queries bring visitors, and which of them read like questions.

By asking the questions yourself. Once a month, ask AI Mode five questions your customers really ask you, in English and then in French. Note who gets cited, and which page of your site is, or should be.

By asking every new customer how they found you. One column in a spreadsheet is enough, as for the rest of your marketing.

How can Nematek help?

Our digital marketing and branding services build a content strategy — which messages, on which channels, how often — and landing pages that lead to one clear action: a call, a WhatsApp message, a quote, in English and in French.

Through our web, mobile development and hosting services, we build light pages designed to open on a slow mobile connection. Nematek One Web runs from a landing page to a five-to-twelve-page business site with a blog and analytics; Nematek One Domain & Email registers your domain in your name where possible; Nematek One Hosting hosts and monitors it.

To review your online presence, describe your situation in a free assessment request.