Link Building Strategies

We saw Google test follow up questions below the AI Mode responses back in July. Now Google is testing follow up search suggestions, not necessarily in question format, at the bottom of some AI Mode results.View the full article

Google's Robby Stein announced three new agentic capabilities within AI Mode - (1) booking event tickets (2) booking beauty appointments and (3) wellness appointments.View the full article

Google announced that AI Mode now lets you search by uploading a photo or image from your device. Before the new AI Mode only allowed you to search with text, but now, like you can with other Google Search features, you can use multimodal capabilities in Lens with AI Mode.View the full article

Google is rolling out UCP, Universal Commerce Protocol, powered checkout in AI Mode. This launched as part of the Google Ads news from yesterday, and you can now see it in AI Mode for products from Etsy and Wayfair.View the full article

Google is testing using the italic font type for the links in AI Mode. So the links have a bit of a slant to them, compared to the other text in the AI Mode response.View the full article

Google announced it has updated the links in AI Mode to encourage searchers to click more. Google also introduced contextual introductions to embedded links in AI Mode responses.View the full article

Google had a lot of news out of Google I/O, as you would expect. The big item, which we predicted, was that AI Mode is now available to all US searchers without having to opt into it within Search Labs. Plus, Google is testing a number of new features in AI mode including Deep Search, Live Search, personal context, custom charts, AI shopping and yes - Agentic features.View the full article

While you can access Google AI Mode directly at google.com/aimode, there is currently no way to go direclty to something like google.com/aimode?q=QUERYGOESHERE. But that might come, said Robby Stein, VP, Product at Google Search.View the full article

Google released Gemini 3, its latest AI model, and it is already powering AI Mode in Google Search today. Sundar Pichai wrote Google is shipping Gemini 3 and that includes "Gemini 3 in AI Mode in Search with more complex reasoning and new dynamic experiences." "This is the first time we are shipping Gemini in Search on day one," he added.View the full article

Google is testing a new AI Mode widget within the main search results that drives searchers away from the core search results and recipe listings/cards and into AI Mode, which then shows those horrible AI-generated Frankenstein recipes.View the full article

Google has confirmed that AI Mode reporting will be coming to Google Search Console. It is currently not yet in Search Console, but it will be coming as part of the AI Mode rollout. View the full article

Google is showing a "See more" button in some of the AI Mode results. This has been happening for almost the past month on desktop and probably mobile. It seems to come up more often for shopping related results, to load more products from the Google Shopping Graph.View the full article

Google AI Mode is showing really light colored fonts for product pricing and inventory when you click on a product. This differs from the normal font type in the main Google Search results interface.View the full article

Google AI Mode doesn't always pass referrer data from the links on the sidebar. This is supposedly being looked at by the Google Search team and hopefully will be fixed soon, if not, already.View the full article

Google is testing various link formats in AI Mode. Initially Google launched AI Mode with those tiny paperclip links, but Google, like they've done in AI Overviews, is testing in AI Mode, anchor text links and URL links within the text of the AI response.View the full article

Google appears to be testing showing the citation favicon site icons at the bottom of the answer in AI Mode. This is in addition to where it normally shows those icons, at the top right of the card stack, on the side of the answer response.View the full article

Google is testing using different colored map pins in the map embed within Google AI Mode. The map pins can be in red, blue, yellow and maybe orange? View the full article

Google is testing using inline, hover-style links for citations in the AI Mode results. When you hover your mouse cursor over the link card, it will hover the link card sources over the answer. View the full article

Google is testing moving your query from the left top position to the right top position of the AI response within AI Mode. This is a subtle change but it is interesting to see Google test these small changes to AI Mode.View the full article

Google is testing adding price labels on top of the product images within AI Mode results. I tried to replicate this but I was not able to, so it seems like a test. View the full article

Google is testing integrating Search Live (Gemini Live - voice search as you talk) in AI Mode. Plus, this version shows citation cards as part of the answer, as you are having a conversational search with AI Mode.View the full article

Google is testing the ability to highlight portions of the response, to do a follow-up question on what you highlighted. It is similar to past tests on the AI Overview, but this is within AI Mode.View the full article

Google released AI Mode in the U.S. a couple of days ago and Tom Critchlow and Patrick Stox noticed that Google prevented you from tracking referrer data from AI Mode. Well, that turned out to be unintentional and Google said it is a bug and it will be fixed.View the full article

Google AI Mode has had travel planning for some time but according to some in the travel industry, Google recently began rolling out more of these features in the wild. These include dynamic day-by-day trip plans, hotel add-ons, tickets, and dining stitched into a single AI conversation.View the full article

Google is testing another variation of the AI-generated product summaries in Google AI Mode, this one is named "What to know." It is made up of user reviews and web sources, according to the disclaimer.View the full article