Google Search will soon send complex queries straight into AI Mode, skipping the traditional search results entirely. Jonathon Heard, Google’s industry head for insurance, told this to an audience at Simply Business’s London headquarters yesterday.
He also said Google is working on improved Search Console reporting for AI Mode and AI Overviews.
Bypassing Google Search. With Gemini 3, Google is going to auto-route complex queries through to AI Mode automatically, Heard confirmed:
- “We announced that with Gemini 3 launch on Tuesday. So this is U.S. only at the minute. But for queries that are very long and very complex and for which there is currently no good experience on traditional search to answer that question for them, we will auto-route those queries into AI Mode where Gemini 3 can produce generative UI for the answer.”
An example of such a niche query would be something like the three-way physics challenge of how different atoms interact with each other in space and their gravitational pull on each other, he said.
- “So rather than a long text answer on that, Gemini 3 has built an interactive graphic so you can see how these three entities interact with each other as they move through space. And that’s a much better answer for the user than having to read 15 different websites.
- “The thing I’d say in there is that for the sources we’ve used, on the right-hand side, there’s a column of different sources that we link through to prominently. So when the user’s read that, and wants more information, we give them the authoritative high-quality sources to go and dig further into, and that’s where the publisher traffic comes from.”
Google did announce this. From a Nov. 18 blog post by Google’s Head of Search Liz Reid (Google Search with Gemini 3: Our most intelligent search yet):
- “And in the coming weeks, we’re also enhancing our automatic model selection in Search with Gemini 3. This means Search will intelligently route your most challenging questions in AI Mode and AI Overviews to this frontier model.”
But that doesn’t mean Google will redirect users from Search to AI mode. It means the system will use Gemini 3 to handle those complex queries.
Google has hinted at this before, suggesting AI Mode may become the default Google Search. Google later backtracked and said that wasn’t happening. Robby Stein of Google told us then:
- “Wouldn’t read too much into this. we’re focusing on making it easy to access AI Mode for those who want it.”
AI Mode & AI Overview Search Console data. Simon Schnieders, founder of Blue Array, who was moderating the panel, asked Heard whether we’d get AI data split out in Search Console in the future.
Right now, Google lumps AI Overviews and AI Mode data directly into Search Console’s overall web search data. Making it impossible to see how well a site performs within AI Mode, specifically, or in the AI Overview feature.
Heard replied that Google is “looking at it” and later explained that the only way forward, based on the changes to Google Search and the interfaces, is to provide new data. Schnieders said that he is the first Googler to have mentioned that, to which Heard replied:
- “Yeah, yeah. It’s moving really, really fast. Clearly, as we experiment with this stuff, we’re also gonna have to change the reporting structure that sits underneath it. And so, you know, AI Mode is launched here, is powered by Gemini 2.5 at the minute.
- “Once we start to auto-route some of those queries. And I think that that’s then an interesting question for what we do about how we help businesses understand where the traffic is going and what the sources of those are.
- “So we are looking at it, as I said, it’s a, it’s a constant conversation. We’ve not announced anything publicly yet, but you can sort of see that the reporting structures that have existed for a while would have to adapt for the new world that we’re moving into.”
Here is the video of the event:
Why we care. When Google bypasses Google Search and send people directly to Google AI Mode, that will change the searcher experience in a massive way. It will also change how searchers find your websites, content, products, and services.
Plus, Google has been avoiding talking about AI Mode and AI Overview data in Search Console since it demo’ed SGE (Search Generative Experience), the previous name for AI Overviews.
We have reached out to Google for clarification on this story and to confirm this Googler did not misspeak.
More clicks. Heard also addressed zero-click searches, saying Google is seeing the opposite with AI search:
- “And we see actually you know there’s lots of chatter about zero-click searches. We see users clicking more and more and more. Because the thing about this is they go deeper on the query they’re asking, they become more inquisitive.
- As we’ve launched AI, the more the users see AI in search, the more they search. It unleashes something inherent in them about this boundless human curiosity. And we’re in year 3 of a 10-year platform shift. So you can sort of see as you extrapolate that out where our users might get to overall.”
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