Google now gives two AI answers to the same search. The AI Overview sits at the top of the normal results page. AI Mode is a separate tab with a longer, conversational answer. Both list the websites they used, and many marketing teams check one and assume the other looks the same.
We tested that assumption in a study of 660 searches, repeated daily for 15 days. For the same search on the same day, the two answers had only 32.5% of their cited sites in common. Our guide to AI Mode vs AI Overviews explains how the two products work. This post is about what each one cited, and what that means for the sources you track.
How we compared AI Overviews and AI Mode
Babel42 ran 660 US English Google searches in six industries: B2B software, finance, health, local services, online shopping and travel. 600 were generic searches, 100 per industry, picked by a fixed rule from the highest-volume searches. The other 60 were "[brand] reviews" searches.
On day one, 26 September 2026, we recorded the organic top 10, the AI Overview and the AI Mode answer for every search, then measured the pages they cited. The 601 searches that showed an AI Overview were re-run every day for 15 days. AI Mode was recorded on day one only, so every comparison below uses the same search on the same day.
We collected the results ourselves, and the sample is high-volume commercial US searches, not a random sample of everything people search. A site counts once per answer, however many of its pages are cited. The method and the full data, free to download, are in our AI Overviews study.
Do AI Overviews and AI Mode cite the same sources?
AI Overviews and AI Mode mostly cite different sites. We compared 475 searches where both answers cited at least one site on the same day. On average, only 32.5% of the cited sites were shared between the two answers. The rest appeared in one answer and not the other.
| Measure (475 searches, 26 September 2026) | Result |
|---|---|
| Cited sites in common, on average | 32.5% |
| Same first-listed source in both answers | 43.2% |
| No cited site in common at all | 10.1% |
The first-listed source is the site Google puts at the top of its source list. The two answers agreed on it in fewer than half of the searches. For 10.1% of searches, the two answers did not share a single site.
Your page can be the first source in the AI Overview and still be absent from the AI Mode answer. The opposite happens too. A check of one answer gives you no reliable reading of the other.
AI Mode cites YouTube less often and Google's own pages more often
The same three sites lead both answers, in different proportions. YouTube was cited in 68.1% of AI Overviews and in 40.0% of AI Mode answers. Pages on google.com moved the other way.
| Source (600 generic searches, 26 September 2026) | AI Overviews | AI Mode |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | 68.1% | 40.0% |
| 28.3% | 24.8% | |
| Google's own pages | 15.9% | 25.3% |
Each figure is the share of answers that cited the site at least once. "Google's own pages" are links to google.com. In online shopping these are product pages, and in travel mostly flight searches.
Reddit was close in both answers. YouTube was not: it was cited in well over half of AI Overviews but in 40.0% of AI Mode answers. Links to google.com appeared in 25.3% of AI Mode answers against 15.9% of AI Overviews.
Video does less work in AI Mode, if it is your main route into Google's answers. Shopping product pages and flight searches on google.com take a larger share of AI Mode answers instead.
AI Mode cited no site in 10.5% of its answers
AI Mode gave an answer to every one of the 600 generic searches. In 10.5% of them, it cited no site at all. An answer with no sources gives no website a citation, however well it ranks.
The share of uncited answers changed by industry.
| Industry (100 searches each, 26 September 2026) | AI Mode answers citing no site |
|---|---|
| Finance | 17% |
| Online shopping | 14% |
| Local services | 10% |
| Health | 9% |
| B2B software | 8% |
| Travel | 5% |
Finance had the highest share, at 17%. Travel had the lowest, at 5%. A finance brand checking AI Mode will find more answers with no source list to appear in. A travel brand will find a source list on almost every answer.
Both answers quote mostly from the top of the page
Where on a page the words come from is one point the two answers agree on. We traced 1,702 AI Overview passages and 2,266 AI Mode passages back to the pages they came from. 67% of AI Overview passages and 62% of AI Mode passages came from the first 30% of the page's main text.
| Part of the page (1,702 AI Overview and 2,266 AI Mode passages) | AI Overviews | AI Mode |
|---|---|---|
| First fifth | 56% | 48% |
| Second fifth | 19% | 24% |
| Third fifth | 12% | 13% |
| Fourth fifth | 8% | 9% |
| Last fifth | 5% | 6% |
AI Mode reaches a little further down the page. The first fifth supplied 48% of its passages, against 56% for AI Overviews. Both drop off sharply after the second fifth.
A page that puts its answer near the top serves both answers. The pages that each answer chose still differ, as the earlier tables show. For what the cited pages had in common, see how to rank in AI Overviews.
How to check your brand in both of Google's AI answers
Being cited in AI Overviews does not mean being cited in AI Mode. If both matter to you, check both, and keep the results apart. A combined "Google AI" score hides which answer you are missing from.
A simple routine for your own searches:
- Pick the 10 to 20 searches your buyers use to compare products in your category.
- Run each search on Google and record the AI Overview's source list.
- Open the AI Mode tab for the same search on the same day and record its source list.
- Mark which sites appear in both, which appear in one, and whether your own site is first in either.
- Repeat on several days, not once.
The last step matters because AI Overviews change from day to day. Across 601 searches run daily for 15 days, only 11% of AI Overviews cited exactly the same sites as the day before. A single check is one day's reading. Our guide to tracking AI Overview citations over time explains how to measure citation as a rate across days.
Then look at the sites that cite you in one answer and not the other. In this study, AI Mode leaned less on YouTube and more on pages on google.com. Those two sources are a good first place to look when the two answers disagree about your brand.
How Babel42 checks AI Overviews and AI Mode
Babel42 AI Visibility checks whether Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok cite and recommend a brand, and lists the sources they used. AI Overviews and AI Mode are each probed for appearance and citation, so you see both answers side by side.
Our AI visibility tool runs those checks on a weekly or more frequent schedule, depending on your plan, so you can follow both answers over time. If you are new to these measures, what AI search visibility measures is the place to start. The full figures behind this post, with every source cited by every AI answer in the study, are in the AI Overviews and AI Mode comparison section of our study.
