How people are actually using Google's AI search
John Dwyer | Digital Strategist 7 min read AI Mode is the chat-style search Google rolled out in May 2025. A year in, they’ve published the usage data, and it confirms a lot of what we’ve been seeing in client work. The way people search is shifting from keyword lookup toward something closer to a conversation. If you sell something online, or you’re thinking about how to be found on Google in 2026 and beyond, the numbers are worth knowing.
The headline numbers, in one glance
Three figures from the report set the scene before we get into the charts.
1. Queries are getting a lot longer
The single biggest behavioural change in the report is query length. The average AI Mode search query is roughly three times longer than a traditional keyword search.
What this means for you Where you used to type 'electric SUV', the same person now types 'best quiet electric SUV under sixty grand that fits two car seats and a dog'. Same intent, way more context, completely different page you need to rank for.
Why this matters
The practical effect is that very few of your existing pages are written to match these queries. They were built for keywords. The pages that earn AI Mode traffic answer the full question, including the attributes (price, family, quiet, two car seats) that used to live in the buyer's head, not in the search box.
Source: Google AI Mode US Insights, p. 4. View the full PDF →
2. It’s growing very fast
AI Mode launched in May 2025. According to Google, the query volume has more than doubled every quarter since launch.
What this means for you If your competitor is starting to optimise for AI Mode now, they're a year ahead of you in twelve months. This is one of those moments where being early actually counts.
Why this matters
Google states the growth as 'more than doubled every quarter since launch'. We've indexed the first quarter at 100 to show the shape. The absolute numbers aren't in the report, but the curve is the story: this is going from a small share of search behaviour to a meaningful one inside two years.
Source: Google AI Mode US Insights, p. 3. View the full PDF →
3. People are using it to decide and plan, not just to look things up
This is the part of the report that should change how you think about content. The fastest-growing query patterns are ones where the user is asking the search engine to help them make a decision or plan something out.
Two stats illustrate it. Searches that begin with “which” are growing 40% faster than AI Mode queries overall. Queries about planning (trips, meals, fitness, schedules) are growing 80% faster than the baseline.
What this means for you If your site only answers 'what is X', you're competing for a slice of search that's losing share. The pages that win are the ones that help the reader pick, plan, or compare. Build them on purpose.
Why this matters
Google's data covers the last six months at time of report (late 2025 to early 2026). 'Which' queries are the classic decision moment: 'which insurer is best for a 2018 Mazda', 'which dog food is best for an elderly Labrador'. Planning queries cover everything from family holidays to ten-week fitness blocks. Both signal that the user wants help arriving at an answer, not a list of links.
Source: Google AI Mode US Insights, p. 14. View the full PDF →
4. Search is no longer text-only
Roughly one in six AI Mode searches is multimodal, meaning the input includes an image, voice clip, or video. Image-input searches alone are growing 40% month over month.
What this means for you If your product photos, alt text, and image SEO are an afterthought, you're invisible to a chunk of search traffic that didn't exist a year ago. Same for voice-friendly answers.
Why this matters
Multimodal here means the user attached an image, recorded a voice query, or used video. 'Search by photo' is the obvious example: someone snaps a plant they want to identify, a label off a wine bottle, a fault code on a dashboard. For local and ecommerce businesses, this is the lever to pull next on visual content.
Source: Google AI Mode US Insights, p. 5. View the full PDF →
People aren’t just searching with images. They’re also creating them inside AI Mode. The report flags image creation queries as having more than tripled since the start of 2026.
What this means for you Your competitors are using AI to generate images directly inside search. The bar for 'good enough product imagery' is dropping fast. Worth thinking about how your real photography earns its place.
Why this matters
The report doesn't give absolute volumes, only the 3x multiplier. The point isn't the raw number, it's that AI Mode is becoming a creation tool, not just a retrieval one. For service businesses, that means your competitors can mock up concept images for client conversations in seconds. For ecommerce, generic stock-style product imagery has lost most of its remaining edge.
Source: Google AI Mode US Insights, p. 25. View the full PDF →
So what should an Australian business do about this?
A few practical reads, in plain language.
Write for the way people are actually asking. If your service page targets the keyword “electrician Brisbane”, you’re still relevant. You’re also no longer sufficient. The same person is now typing “trusted electrician in Northside Brisbane that can do switchboard upgrades and is on Sundays”. Make sure that page answers the full question.
Build clusters, not islands. AI Mode is conversational. People ask a question, then a follow-up, then another. If your site has one page on a topic and three orphaned pages around it, the AI has no path to follow. Group related content, link it clearly between pages, and the AI is much more likely to pick your site as the source it leans on.
Add the attributes buyers think in. Best for, budget-friendly, family-friendly, quiet, premium, beginner. These are the words AI Mode users are typing now. They were always in the buyer’s head; they used to get stripped out at the search box. Now they don’t.
Take your image and voice content seriously. Alt text, named files, structured data on images, voice-friendly answer copy. None of this is new. It’s just that the upside has roughly doubled in the last twelve months.
Don’t panic and don’t ignore it. This is the biggest shift in search since mobile-first indexing in 2018. The businesses that act on it through 2026 will look prescient by 2028. The ones that don’t will spend the next two years wondering where their traffic went.
If you’d like a hand thinking through what this means for your site specifically, that’s the kind of work we do every day. Book a call below.
About the data in this post
Every chart and stat in this post comes from Google’s How People Use AI Mode US Insights report, published in May 2026 to mark one year since AI Mode launched. The report covers US AI Mode usage from May 2025 to April 2026. Quarterly growth and “indexed” figures are Google’s own framing because they publish proportional indices, not raw query volumes.
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