Following initial launches in the US, India, and the UK, Google has now expanded AI Mode to 180 additional countries and territories.
At this rate, it’s only a matter of time before the feature is available worldwide, and eventually, integrated into the main search experience.
Search visibility is no longer just about ranking. If your content is nowhere to be seen in AI-generated summaries, your brand is effectively invisible.
In this guide, I will cover exactly how to rank in Google’s AI Mode for maximum visibility. This isn’t just theory – these are proven strategies based on my experience helping clients get consistently recommended in AI search results.
A Quick Overview of Google’s AI Mode
AI Mode is Google’s latest and most powerful AI search feature. It uses the advanced reasoning capabilities of Gemini 2.5 to handle even the most complex questions people could ask.
Instead of listing ten blue links, AI Mode synthesises content from multiple web pages, Google’s Knowledge Graph, and other sources to present a personalised summary.
If users aren’t satisfied with the answer, they can ask follow-up questions or click one of the provided web links to learn more.
This is where the opportunity lies.
If your brand is consistently mentioned and cited by Google’s AI Mode, users will start to develop familiarity and trust. And when people trust your brand, they will be more likely to buy from you.
Let’s break down how to make that happen.
Step 1: Engineer Brand Associations
Large language models (LLMs) build internal associations based on co-occurrence frequency in training data and live web content. Over time, this shapes what they “believe” to be the best answer.
For example, when you search for “best value skincare brand” using AI Mode, it lists The Ordinary as one of the answers.
And it wasn’t just Google’s AI Mode. I ran the same query in ChatGPT, and guess what? Same result.
That’s not a coincidence. It happens because “The Ordinary” and “value skincare” appear together a thousand times across the internet.
AI has learned this association so deeply that it’s embedded in the model’s understanding.
Now, stop for a second and ask yourself: what concepts do you want associated with your brand?
Develop a clear brand positioning
Creating these associations requires two components: clarity and consistency.
First, get crystal clear about the concepts you want linked to your brand. This sounds simple, but proves challenging for most companies.
There are two approaches to engineer brand associations:
- Audience-based positioning: Link yourself to a specific demographic or use case. Instead of “project management software,” position yourself as “project management for remote teams” or “project management for creative agencies.”
- Uniqueness-based positioning: Claim a specific spot in the market hierarchy. Are you the lowest cost? The most feature-rich? The easiest to use? The most secure? Instead of trying to rank for the broad term “digital marketing agency,” position yourself around “free website audits performed by humans, not AI.”
If you’re still struggling with your brand positioning, the easiest way to find out is by asking your customers directly.
Interview your customers
Instead of guessing what makes you different, ask your customers the actual reasons they chose you over competitors.
This makes it easier to identify the specific positioning you should be building online.
Some tips for conducting effective customer interviews:
- Dig deeper into their responses: Don’t settle for vague compliments like “great service” – ask follow-up questions to uncover what specifically made the experience stand out.
- Look for recurring themes: Pay attention to the specific words and phrases they naturally use to describe your value. Words like “fast,” “reliable,” or “affordable” can reveal what truly matters to your customers.
- Capture direct quotes: Gather standout customer quotes in one document. These raw, authentic insights are gold for website copy, social proof, and brand messaging statements.
Build your brand associations across the web
Once you’ve identified your unique selling proposition, it needs to appear repeatedly and consistently across the internet.
AI doesn’t just learn from your website. It learns from everything it can crawl—blogs, forums, social posts, media coverage, and beyond.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Reinforce your positioning in your content: Make sure your website, blog, social media, and email copy all reflect your core message.
- Promote your USP through digital PR: When you’re doing PR or guest posts, tie everything back to your unique angle. The more often your message shows up in different places, the more AI starts to connect the dots.
- Keep your messaging consistent: From your About page to your guest post author bio, use the same language to describe what you do. That consistency helps AI recognise what you’re about.
Step 2: Optimise Your Content for AI Inclusion
Getting cited in AI-generated answers isn’t just about writing great content – it’s about making sure AI can easily summarise and repackage your content to answer relevant user questions.
Structure your content for AI parsing
AI Mode looks for semantically rich, topically aligned content that helps answer multi-layered queries.
So, if you want to be included, the logic is simple: format your content in a way that makes it easy for AI to scan, understand, and extract key information.
Here’s how:
- Use clear headings (H2s and H3s): Break up content into logical sections so AI can quickly spot what’s relevant.
- Give answers directly and clearly: Start sections with short, clear summaries before going into detail. Also, stick to one core idea or topic per section.
- Add bullet points and numbered lists: AI loves skimmable content because it’s easier to parse and repackage.
- Include FAQ sections: They reflect how users are asking questions and are often cited in AI summaries.
Cover a topic thoroughly
AI Mode uses something called “query fan-out” when processing searches.
When someone enters a topic, it runs a bunch of related sub-queries in the background, pulls from multiple sources, and then stitches everything together into one neat summary.
For example, if someone asks for “best email marketing software for e-commerce,” AI Mode might run background searches for:
- Email marketing software reviews
- E-commerce email automation tools
- Email marketing platform comparisons
- Best email tools for online stores
- E-commerce marketing software
To maximise your chances of being recommended, you need to create content that aligns with all likely sub-queries around your main topic.
The more often AI Mode encounters your content during its research phase, the higher your likelihood of being recommended in the final answer.
There’s only one problem: AI Mode doesn’t show you its thinking process.
But no worries! Since AI Mode uses a version of Gemini 2.5, you can run the search on Gemini and expand its thinking to find related sub-queries:
- Open Gemini 2.5 Pro.
- Enter your core topic.
- Expand the Show thinking panel.
This will reveal how Gemini is breaking down your query, including what assumptions it’s making, what angles it’s exploring, and which sub-questions it’s using to build a complete answer.
With this knowledge, you can start creating content that covers the topic more thoroughly.
In fact, this is the exact strategy we used to help our client get featured in AI Overviews for 17 keywords.
If you want to know how we did it, read the Oriel Partners case study here.
Show your expertise
AI search engines are trained to prioritise original, trustworthy, and experience-backed content that adds something new to the conversation.
If your blog post looks like it could’ve been written by ChatGPT in 30 seconds, it probably won’t make the cut.
To stand out, your content needs to show real expertise:
- First-hand experience: Share personal insights, lessons learned, and what actually worked (or didn’t) for your own website.
- Case studies: Walk through real examples with context, outcomes, and measurable results.
- Expert commentary: Include quotes and unique insights from seasoned experts in your field.
- Niche-specific depth: Go beyond the basics. Cover the angles only an insider would know.
- Proprietary data: Publish original research, internal benchmarks, or industry trends you’ve observed firsthand.
Remember this: AI can summarise facts, but it can’t replicate your lived experience. That’s your edge.
Let me show you what that looks like in action.
When you ask AI Mode to explain the difference between SEO and SEM, it often surfaces an article from Backlinko right at the top.
Dig a little deeper, and you’ll notice that the post includes expert commentary from Brian Dean himself. It’s detailed, personal, and clearly written by someone who’s done the work.
That might not be the only reason the article was included. But Brian’s personal experience definitely gives a strong signal to AI that the content is trustworthy and expertly written.
Humanise your content
With AI tools becoming so advanced at generating content, there’s a temptation to use them for efficiency.
However, the irony is that AI Mode specifically looks for content that feels authentically human and demonstrates real expertise.
If you do use AI tools to help with content creation, consider using an AI humanizer tool to ensure your content maintains that natural, human touch that AI search systems value.
These tools help remove the typical patterns and phrases that make AI-generated content obvious, ensuring your content sounds like it comes from a real human.
The key is striking the right balance between efficiency and authenticity in your content creation process.
Step 3: Earn Brand Mentions Through Digital PR
Creating content is only half the battle.
If no one’s talking about you online, it’s hard for AI to learn who you are—let alone associate your brand with anything meaningful.
To really show up in AI-generated answers, you need third-party validation. That means getting your brand and your positioning featured on trusted websites, publications, and platforms your audience (and AI) pay attention to.
This is where digital PR becomes crucial.
Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.
Richard Branson, Founder at Virgin Group
A study by Ahrefs found that branded mentions are the strongest driver to AI Overview visibility. And I can’t see why it isn’t the case with AI Mode, considering both come from the same parent company.
Here’s how to secure brand mentions from reputable sources:
- Pitch expert insights: Use platforms like Qwoted and Help a B2B Writer to connect with journalists and writers looking for expert quotes.
- Create linkable assets: Publish original research, studies, or surveys that others will want to cite and link to.
- Get your brand listed in listicles: Reach out to bloggers or authors who publish “best of” roundups in your niche. AI often derives answers from these listicles.
- Become a guest speaker: Appear in interviews, podcasts, webinars, or virtual panels where you can provide insights on your area of expertise.
Step 4: Implement Guerilla Marketing on Reddit
Don’t overlook the power of forums like Reddit and Quora. In fact, Google uses user-generated content from Reddit to train its AI models.
If your brand or product consistently pops up in the right conversations, AI will take notice.
For example, YNAB (You Need A Budget) is frequently recommended by users in Reddit threads about personal finance. Over time, those consistent mentions have built strong brand associations that AI tools have picked up on.
So now, when you search “What’s the best budgeting app” in Google’s AI Mode, YNAB often appears as a top recommendation.
One thing to keep in mind: Reddit users can smell self-promotion from a mile away. If you come off as salesy or inauthentic, you’ll get downvoted (or worse, banned).
So you need to approach Reddit with the right strategy:
- Start by listening: Spend time in relevant subreddits to understand the tone, norms, and types of questions people ask. Lurking first is key to not coming off as an outsider.
- Join as a real user, not a brand: Use a personal account (ideally with some post history) rather than a company profile. Redditors are quick to reject anything that feels too corporate.
- Add value first, mention later: Only mention your product or brand when it’s truly relevant—and do so in the context of helping, not selling. Lead with your advice, and let the brand mention be secondary.
- Be transparent if you’re affiliated: If you own or work for a brand, mention it upfront. Reddit appreciates honesty more than stealth marketing.
- Encourage people to share their experiences: You can’t (and shouldn’t) fake UGC, but you can ask real users to share their honest feedback on your product.
Step 5: Don’t Neglect Technical SEO
Brand associations and content optimisation are crucial, but technical SEO is just as important.
If you want to get cited by AI Mode, Googlebot should be able to access and index your content in the first place.
Make sure your page:
- Can be accessed publicly: Avoid hiding content behind a paywall, login form, or gated modal. If Google can’t access it, AI Mode can’t cite it.
- Returns a valid HTTP 200 status code: Pages that return 4XX or 5XX error codes won’t be indexed, let alone considered for AI-generated results.
- Contains indexable file types: Stick to content formats Google can index, such as HTML, PDF, and JPEG.
- Isn’t blocked by robots.txt: Check that your robots.txt file isn’t preventing Google from crawling your page or key content sections.
Using structured data or Schema.org tags (like Article, FAQ, HowTo, Product) can also help AI Mode understand the context of your content better.
How to Measure Your AI Mode Presence
AI Mode is still in its early days, which means most traditional SEO tools don’t yet offer any tracking or reporting on clicks, impressions, or citations coming from AI Mode.
So for now, you’ll need to rely on manual testing, observation, and a bit of smart guesswork to gauge your visibility.
Here’s how:
Conduct prompt research
While there’s no way to know for sure what your audience is typing in AI Mode, you can use tools like AnswerThePublic and AlsoAsked to understand popular questions, phrasing, and intent around your main topic.
Track brand mentions
Monitor how often your brand appears in AI Mode responses for those queries.
If your content gets cited, note the exact URL, page title, and how it’s framed. This helps you understand what type of content AI finds most helpful.
Monitor your competitors
Run the same queries and see which competitors show up regularly. It’s a great way to benchmark your performance and spot content gaps.
Look for a surge in branded search terms
Use tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to see if more people are searching your brand name or branded terms. A spike here may suggest you’re getting visibility through AI Mode.
As AI Mode becomes more integrated into core search, you can expect new tools and reporting features to emerge.
But until then, this hands-on approach is your best bet.
Here’s Your 30-Day Plan to Rank in Google AI Mode
Week 1: Audit & Align
- Define your brand associations
- Interview customers
- Test your presence in AI models
Week 2: Build Deep Content
- Map your fan-out queries
- Create or improve 3–5 high-value articles
- Add schema, internal links, and real examples
Week 3: Launch PR & UGC
- Pitch 3–5 media outlets
- Seed Reddit and Quora threads
- Encourage customer reviews and social shares
Week 4: Optimise & Track
- Track AI Mode visibility weekly
- Measure progress and refine
Final Thought
Ranking in Google’s AI Mode isn’t just an SEO strategy – it’s a brand strategy.
You’re no longer just optimizing for search engines. You’re educating AI systems about who you are, what you stand for, and where you belong in the market.
The businesses that win in AI Mode will be those that understand how to build genuine expertise, create meaningful associations, and position themselves strategically in AI’s brain.
The transformation has already begun.
The only question is: will you lead it or follow it?
Partner with Position Digital and capitalise on the first-mover advantage.
We’ll make sure your brand shows up—and stands out—in AI-generated answers while your competitors are still figuring things out.
