What Our AI Mode User Behavior Study Reveals About The Future Of Search

Our new usability research of 37 contributors throughout seven particular search duties clearly reveals that folks:

1. Learn AI Mode
2. Not often click on out, and
3. Solely go away when they’re able to transact.

From what we all know, there isn’t one other impartial usability research that has explored AI Mode to this depth.

In Could, I revealed an intensive two-part research of AI Overviews (AIOs) with Amanda, Eric Van Buskirk, and his staff. Eric and I additionally collaborated on Propellic’s journey business AI mode research.

We labored collectively once more to carry you this week’s Development Memo: a research that gives essential insights and validation into the behaviors of individuals as they work together with Google’s AI Mode.

Since neither Google nor OpenAI (or anybody else) gives consumer information for his or her AI (Search) merchandise, we’re filling a vital hole.

We captured display recordings and think-aloud classes through distant research. The 250 distinctive duties collected present a strong information set for our evaluation. (The entire methodology is supplied on the finish of this memo, together with particulars in regards to the seven search duties.)

And also you could be shocked by a few of the findings. We had been.

It is a longer publish, so seize a drink and settle in.

Govt Abstract

Our new usability research of Google’s AI Mode reveals how profoundly this function modifications consumer conduct.

• AI Mode holds consideration and retains customers inside. In roughly three‑quarters of the overall consumer classes, customers by no means left the AI Mode pane – and 88 % of customers’ first interactions had been with the AI‑generated textual content. Engagement was excessive: The median time by activity sort was roughly 52-77 seconds.
• Clicks are uncommon and principally transactional. The median variety of exterior clicks per activity was zero. Yep. You learn that proper. Ze-ro. And 77.6% of classes had zero exterior visits.
• Individuals skim however nonetheless make choices in AI Mode. Over half of the duties had been categorized as “skimmed rapidly,” the place customers look on the AI‑generated abstract, kind an opinion, and transfer on.
• AI Mode delivers “website sorts” that match intent. It’s not nearly assembly search question or immediate intents; AI Mode is citing sources that match particular website classes (like marketplaces vs assessment websites vs manufacturers).
• Visibility, not visitors, is the rising forex. Contributors made their model judgments immediately from AI Mode outputs.

TL;DR? These are the core findings from this research:

• AI Mode is sticky.
• Clicks are reserved for transactions.
• AI Mode matches website sort with intent.
• Product previews act like mini product element pages (aka PDPs).

However earlier than we dig in, a fast shout-out right here to the staff behind this research.

Along with Eric Van Buskirk’s staff at Clickstream Options, I carried out the primary broad usability research of Google’s AI Mode that uncovers not solely essential insights into how individuals work together with the hybrid search/AI chat engine, but additionally what sorts of branded websites AI Mode surfaces and when.

I wish to spotlight that Eric Van Buskirk was the analysis director. Whereas we collaborated carefully on shaping the analysis questions, areas of focus, and methodology, Eric managed the staff, oversaw the research execution, and delivered the findings. Afterward, we labored aspect by aspect to interpret the info.

Click on information is a superb first cross for evaluation on what’s occurring in AI Mode, however with this usability research particularly, we primarily seemed “over the shoulder” of real-life customers as they accomplished duties, which resulted in a strong assortment of knowledge to tug insights from.

Our testing platform was UXtweak.

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Google’s own Sundar Pichai has been crystal clear: AI Mode isn’t a toy; it’s a proving ground for what the core search experience will look like in the future.

On the Lex Fridman podcast, Pichai said (bolding mine):

“Our current plan is AI Mode is going to be there as a separate tab for people who really want to experience that… But as features work, we’ll keep migrating it to the main page…” [1]

Google has argued these new AI-focused options are designed to level customers to the online, however in apply, our information reveals that customers stick round and make choices with out clicking out. In concept, this might not solely affect click-outs to natural outcomes and citations, but additionally scale back exterior clicks to advertisements.

In August, I explored the truth behind Google’s personal product cannibalization with AI Mode and AIOs:

Proper now, in keeping with Similarweb information, utilization of the AI Mode tab on Google.com within the US has barely dipped and now sits at simply over 1%.

Google AIOs are actually seen by greater than 1.5 billion searchers each month, they usually sit entrance and heart. However engagement is falling. Customers are spending much less time on Google and clicking much less pages.

However as Google rolls AI Mode out extra broadly, it brings the most important shift to Search (the most important buyer acquisition channel there’s) ever.

Conventional website positioning is very efficient within the new AI world, but when AI Mode actually turns into the default, there’s a probability we have to rethink our arsenal of ways.

Making ready for the way forward for search means treating AI Mode because the vacation spot (not the doorway), and determining how one can present up there in ways in which truly matter to actual consumer conduct.

With this research, I sought out to find and validate precise consumer behaviors inside the AI Mode expertise when enterprise quite a lot of duties with differing search intents.

1. AI Mode Is Sticky

Picture Credit score: Kevin Indig

Key Stats

Individuals learn first and often keep contained in the AI Mode expertise. Right here’s what we discovered:

• Nearly all of classes had zero exterior visits: which means, they didn’t go away AI Mode (in any respect).
• ~88% of customers’ first interplay* inside the function was with the AI Mode textual content.
• Typical consumer engagement inside AI Mode is roughly 50 to 80 seconds per activity.

These three stats outline the AI Mode search floor: It holds consideration and resolves many duties with out sending visitors.

*Right here’s what I imply by “interplay:”

• An “interplay” inside the consumer duties = the participant meaningfully engaged with AI Mode after it loaded.
• What counts as an interplay: Studying or scrolling the AI Mode physique for greater than a fast look, together with scanning a consequence block just like the Procuring Pack or Proper Pane, opening a service provider card, clicking an inline hyperlink, hyperlink icon, or picture pack.
• What doesn’t depend as an interplay: Temporary eye flicks, cursor passes, or hesitation earlier than participating.

Customers are in AI Mode to learn – not essentially to browse or search – with ~88% of classes interacting with the output’s textual content first and spending one minute or extra inside the AI Mode expertise.

Plus, it’s attention-grabbing to see that customers spend greater than double the time in AI Mode in comparison with AIOs.

The general engagement is far stronger.

Picture Credit score: Kevin Indig

Why It Issues

Deal with the AI Mode panel like the first studying floor, not a teaser for blue hyperlinks.

AI Mode is a contained expertise the place sending clicks to web sites is a low precedence and giving customers the very best reply is the very best one.

Because of this, it utterly modifications the worth chain for content material creators, firms, and publishers.

Perception

Why do different sources and/or AI Mode analysis analyses say that customers don’t return to the AI Mode function fairly often?

My concept right here is that, as a result of AI mode is a separate search expertise (not less than, for now), it’s not as seen as AIOs.

As AI Mode adoption will increase with Google bringing Gemini (and AI Mode) into the browser, I anticipate our research findings to scale.

2. Clicks Are Reserved For Transactions

Whereas clicks are scarce, buy intent will not be.

Contributors within the research solely clicked out when the duty demanded it (e.g., “put an merchandise in your buying cart”) or in the event that they browsed round a bit.

Nonetheless, the shopping clicks had been so few that we are able to safely assume AI Mode solely results in click-outs when customers wish to buy.

Even prompts with a comparability and informational intent are likely to maintain customers contained in the function.

• Procuring prompts like [canvas bag] and [tidy desk cables] drive the very best AI Mode exit share.
• Comparability prompts like [Oura vs Apple Watch] present the bottom exit share of the duties.

When contributors had been inspired to take motion (“put an merchandise in your buying cart” or “discover a product”), the vast majority of clicks went to buying options like Procuring Packs or Service provider Playing cards.

Picture Credit score: Kevin Indig

18% of exits had been brought on by customers exiting AI Mode and going immediately to a different website, making it a lot tougher to reverse engineer what drove these visits within the first place.

Examine transcripts affirm that contributors typically share out loud that they’ll “go to the vendor’s web page,” or “discover the product on Amazon/ebay” for product searches.

Even when evaluating merchandise, whether or not software program or bodily items, customers barely click on out.

Picture Credit score: Kevin Indig

In plain phrases, AI mode eats up all TOFU and MOFU clicks. Customers uncover merchandise and kind opinions about them in AI Mode.

Key Stats

• Out of 250 legitimate duties, the median variety of exterior clicks was zero!
• The immediate activity of [canvas bag] had 44 exterior clicks, and [tidy desk cables] had 31 clicks, accounting for two-thirds of all exterior clicks on this research.
• Comparability duties like [Oura Ring vs Apple Watch] or [Ramp vs Brex] had only a few clicks (≤6 whole throughout all duties).

Right here’s what’s attention-grabbing…

Within the AIOs Overviews usability research, we discovered desktop customers click on out ~10.6% of the time in comparison with virtually 0% in AI Mode.

Nonetheless, AIOs have natural search outcomes and SERP Options beneath them. (Individuals click on out much less in AIOs, however they click on on natural outcomes and SERP options extra typically.)

Zero-Clicks

• AI Overviews: 93%*
• AI Mode: ~100%

*Remember the fact that contributors of the AIO usability research clicked on common natural search outcomes. The 93% pertains to zero clicks inside the AI Overview.

On desktop, AI Mode produces roughly double the in-panel clickouts in comparison with the AIO panel. On AIO SERPs, whole clickouts can nonetheless occur through natural outcomes beneath the panel, so the page-level fee will sit between the AIO-panel determine and the traditional baseline.

An vital be aware right here from Eric Van Kirk, the director of this research: When evaluating the AI Mode and AI Overview research, we’re not precisely evaluating apples to apples. On this research, contributors got duties that may immediate them to depart AI Mode in 2/7 questions, and that accounts for almost all of outbound clicks (which had been fewer than three exterior clicks). However, for the AIO research, essentially the most transactional query was “Discover a transportable charger for telephones underneath $15. Search as you sometimes would.” They weren’t advised to “put it in a buying cart.” Nonetheless, the insights gathered relating to consumer conduct from this AI Mode research – and the sample that customers don’t really feel the necessity to click on out of AI Mode to make further choices – nonetheless stands as a strong discovering.

The larger image right here is that AIOs are like a truth sheet that steers customers to websites finally, however AI Mode is a closed expertise that hardly ever has customers clicking out.

What makes AI Mode (and ChatGPT, by the best way) tough is when customers abandon the expertise and go on to web sites. It messes with attribution fashions and our means to grasp what influences conversions.

3. AI Mode Matches Web site Kind With Intent

Within the research, we assess what sorts of websites AI Mode reveals for our seven duties.

The categories are:

• Manufacturers: Sellers/distributors.
• Marketplaces: amazon.com, ebay.com, walmart.com, homedepot.com, bestbuy.com, goal.com, rei.com.
• Evaluate websites: nerdwallet.com, pcmag.com, zdnet.com, nymag.com, usatoday.com, businessinsider.com.
• Publishers: nytimes.com, nbcnews.com, youtube.com, thespruce.com.
• Platform: Google.

Picture Credit score: Kevin Indig

Procuring prompts path to product pages:

• Canvas Bag: 93% of exits go to Model + Market.
• Tidy desk cables: 68% go to Model + Market, with a visual Writer slice.

Comparisons path to critiques:

• Ramp vs Brex: 83% Evaluate.
• Oura vs Apple Watch: break up 50% Model and 50% Market.

When the consumer has to carry out a popularity examine, the result’s break up model and publishers:

• Liquid Demise: 56% Model, 44 % Writer.

Google itself reveals up on buying duties:

• Retailer lookups to enterprise.google.com seem on Canvas Bag (7%) and Tidy desk cables (11%).

Take a look at the top-clicked domains by activity:

• Canvas Bag: llbean.com, ebay.com, rticoutdoors.com, enterprise.google.com.
• Tidy desk cables: walmart.com, amazon.com, homedepot.com.
• Subscription language apps vs free: pcmag.com, nytimes.com, usatoday.com.
• Bottled Water (Liquid Demise): reddit.com, liquiddeath.com, youtube.com.
• Ramp vs Brex: nerdwallet.com, kruzeconsulting.com, airwallex.com.
• Oura Ring 3 vs Apple Watch 9: ouraring.com, zdnet.com.
• VR arcade or sensible residence: sandboxvr.com, enterprise.google.com, yodobashi.com.

Firms want to grasp the enjoying area. Whereas traditional website positioning allowed principally any website to be seen for any consumer intent, AI Mode has strict guidelines:

• Manufacturers beat marketplaces when customers know what product they need.
• Marketplaces are most popular when choices are broad or generic.
• Evaluate websites seem for comparisons.
• Opinions spotlight Reddit and publishers.
• Google itself is most seen for native intent, and generally buying.

As SEOs, we have to contemplate how Google classifies our website primarily based on its web page templates, popularity, and consumer engagement. However most significantly, we have to monitor prompts in AI Mode and take a look at the location combine to grasp the place we are able to play.

Websites can’t and received’t be seen for all sorts of queries in a subject anymore; you’ll must filter your technique by the intent that aligns along with your website sort as a result of AI Mode solely reveals sure websites (like assessment websites or manufacturers) for particular sorts of intent.

Product previews present up in about 25% of the AI Mode classes, get ~9 seconds of consideration, and folks often open just one.

Then? 45% cease there. Many opens are fast spec checks, not a clickout.

Picture Credit score: Kevin Indig

You may simply see how some product suggestions by AI Mode and on-site experiences are fairly irritating to customers.

The post-click expertise is vital: traditional greatest practices like critiques have a huge impact on making essentially the most out of the few clicks we nonetheless get.

See this instance:

“It appears prefer it has a whole lot of optimistic critiques. That’s one factor I’d take a look at if I used to be going to purchase this bag. So this might be the one I’d select.”

In buying duties, we discovered that model websites take the vast majority of exits.

Compared duties, we found that assessment websites dominate. For popularity checks (like a immediate for [Liquid Death]), exits to manufacturers and publishers had been break up.

• For transactional intent prompts: Manufacturers take up most exits when the duty is to purchase one merchandise now. [Canvas Bag] reveals a powerful tilt to model PDPs.
• For popularity intent prompts: Model websites seem alongside publishers. A immediate for [Liquid Death] splits between liquiddeath.com and Reddit/YouTube/Eater.
• For comparability prompts: Manufacturers take a again seat. [Ramp vs Brex] exits go principally to assessment websites like NerdWallet and Kruze.

Given customers can now immediately checkout on ChatGPT and AI Mode, shopping-related duties would possibly ship even fewer clicks out.^[2, 3]

Subsequently, AI Mode turns into a very closed expertise the place even buying intent is fulfilled proper within the app.

Clicks are scarce. Affect is plentiful.

The info provides us a actuality examine: If customers proceed to undertake the brand new method of Googling, AI Mode will reshape search conduct in methods SEOs can’t afford to disregard.

• Technique shifts from “get the clicking” to “earn the quotation.”
• Comparisons are for belief, not visitors. They scale back exits as a result of customers really feel knowledgeable contained in the panel.
• Retailers ought to optimize for decisive exits. Give costs, availability, and proof above the fold to transform the few exits you do get.

You’ll must earn citations that reply the duty, then win the few, high-intent exits that stay.

However our research doesn’t finish right here.

Right this moment’s outcomes reveal core insights into how individuals work together with AI Mode. We’ll unpack extra to think about with Half 2 dropping subsequent week.

However for individuals who like to dig into particulars, the methodology of the research is included beneath.

Methodology

Examine Design And Goal

We carried out a mixed-methods usability research to quantify how Google’s new AI Mode modifications searcher conduct. Every participant accomplished seven reside Google search prompts through the AI Mode function. This design permits us to watch each the mechanics of interplay (scrolls, clicks, dwell, belief) and the qualitative reasoning contributors voiced whereas finishing duties.

The duties:

1. What do individuals say about Liquid Demise, the beverage firm? Do their drinks enchantment to you?
2. Think about you’re going to purchase a sleep tracker and the one two obtainable are the Oura Ring 3 or the Apple Watch 9. Which might you select, and why?
3. You’re getting insights in regards to the perks of a Ramp bank card vs. a Brex Card for small companies. Which one appears higher? What would make a enterprise swap from one other card: charge element, eligibility high-quality print, or rewards?
4. Within the “Ask something” field in AI Mode, enter “Assist me buy a water-proof canvas bag.” Choose one that most closely fits your wants and you’d purchase (for instance, a digital camera bag, tote bag, duffel bag, and so on.).
   • Proceed to the vendor’s web page. Click on so as to add to the buying cart and full this activity with out going additional.
5. Examine subscription language apps to free language apps. Would you pay, and in what state of affairs? Which product would you select?
6. Suppose you’re visiting a buddy in a big metropolis and wish to go to both: 1. A digital actuality arcade OR 2. A sensible residence showroom. What’s the identify of town you’re visiting?
7. 1. Suppose you’re employed at a small desk and your cables are a multitude. 2. Within the “Ask something” field in AI Mode, enter: “The machine cables are cluttering up my desk house. What can I purchase as we speak to assist?” 3. Then select the one product you assume can be the very best answer. Put it within the buying cart on the exterior web site and finish this activity.

Thirty-seven English-speaking U.S. adults had been recruited through Prolific between Aug. 20 and Sept. 1, 2025 (together with contributors in a small group who did pilot research).*

Eligibility required a ≥ 95% Prolific approval fee, a Chromium-based browser, and a functioning microphone. Contributors visited AI Mode and carried out duties remotely through their desktop pc; invalid classes had been excluded for technical failure or non-compliance. The ultimate dataset accommodates over 250 legitimate activity data throughout 37 contributors.

*Pilot research are carried out first in distant usability testing to establish and repair technical points – like screen-sharing, activity setup, or recording issues – earlier than the principle research begins. They assist refine activity wording, timing, and directions to make sure contributors interpret them appropriately. Most significantly, pilot classes affirm that the info collected will truly reply the analysis questions and that the methodology works easily in a real-world distant setting.

Classes ran in UXtweak’s Distant unmoderated mode. Contributors learn a activity immediate, clicked to Google.com/aimode, prompted AI Mode, and spoke their ideas aloud whereas interacting with AI Mode. They got the next instructions: “Assume aloud and briefly clarify what attracts your consideration as you assessment the data. Converse aloud and hover your mouse to point the place you discover the data you’re searching for.” Every participant accomplished seven activity sorts designed to cowl various intent classes, together with comparability, transactional, and informational eventualities.

UXtweak recorded full-screen video, cursor paths, scroll occasions, and audio. Classes averaged 20-25 minutes. Incentives had been aggressive. Uncooked recordings, transcripts, and occasion logs had been exported for coding and evaluation.

Three skilled coders reviewed every video in parallel. A row was logged for UI components that held consideration for ~5 seconds or longer. Variables captured included:

• Structural: Fields describing the setup, metadata, or construction of the research – not consumer conduct; embrace information like participant-ID, task-ID, machine, question, order of UI components clicked or visited in the course of the activity, sort of website clicked (e.g., social, neighborhood, model, platform), area identify of the exterior website visited, and extra.
• Characteristic: Fields describing UI components or interface elements that appeared or had been obtainable to the participant. Examples embrace UI aspect sort, together with buying carousels, service provider playing cards, proper panel, hyperlink icons, map embed, native pack, GMB card, service provider packs, and service provider playing cards.
• Engagement: Fields that seize energetic consumer interplay, consideration, or time funding. Contains studying and a spotlight, chat and query conduct, together with click on and interplay conduct.
• Consequence: Fields representing consumer outcomes, annotator evaluations, or interpretation of conduct. Annotator feedback, effort score, the place data was discovered.

Coders additionally marked qualitative themes (e.g., “pace,” “skepticism,” “belief in citations”) to assist RAG-based retrieval. The analysis director spot-checked ~10% of movies to validate consistency.

Annotations had been exported to Python/pandas 2.2. Placeholder codes (‘999=Not Relevant’, ‘998=Not Observable’) had been eliminated, and categorical variables (e.g., appearances, clicks, sentiment) had been normalized. Dwell occasions and different time metrics had been trimmed for excessive outliers. After cleansing, ~250 legitimate task-level rows remained.

Our retrieval-augmented technology (RAG) pipeline enabled three levels of study:

• Knowledge readiness (ingestion): We flattened each participant’s seven duties into particular person rows, cleaned coded values, and standardized time, click on, and different metrics. Transcripts had been retained in order that structured information (akin to dwell time) may very well be related to what customers truly mentioned. Objective: create a clear, unified dataset that connects conduct with reasoning.
• Relevance filtering (retrieval): We used structured fields and annotations to isolate patterns, akin to customers who left AI Mode, clicked a service provider card, or confirmed hesitation. We then searched the transcripts for themes akin to belief, comfort, or frustration. Objective: mix conduct and sentiment to disclose actual consumer intent.
• Interpretation (quant + qual synthesis): For every group, we calculated descriptive stats (dwell, clicks, belief) and paired them with transcript proof. That’s how we surfaced insights like: “external-site duties confirmed greater satisfaction however extra CTA confusion.” Objective: hyperlink what individuals did with what they felt inside AI Mode.

This pipeline allowed us to question the dataset hyperspecifically – e.g., “all contributors who scrolled >50% in AI Mode however expressed mistrust” – and hyperlink quantitative outcomes with qualitative reasoning.

In plain phrases: We will pull up simply the best group of contributors or moments, like “all of the individuals who didn’t belief AIO” or “everybody who scrolled greater than 50%.”

We summarized consumer conduct utilizing descriptive and inferential statistics throughout 250 legitimate activity data. Every metric included the depend, imply, median, customary deviation, customary error, and 95% confidence interval. Categorical outcomes, akin to whether or not contributors left AI Mode or clicked a service provider card, had been reported as proportions.

Analyses coated greater than 50 structured and behavioral fields – from machine sort and dwell time to UI interactions, sentiment. Confidence measures had been derived from a JSON evaluation of consumer sentiment through transcripts of all customers.

Every activity was annotated by a skilled coder and spot-checked for consistency throughout annotators. Coder-level distributions had been in comparison with affirm secure labeling patterns and inside consistency.

Thirty-seven contributors accomplished seven duties every, leading to roughly 250 legitimate duties. At that scale, proportions round 50% carry a margin of error of about six share factors, giving the dataset sufficient precision to detect significant directional variations.

Pattern dimension is smaller than our AI Overviews research (37 vs. 69 contributors) and is supposed to find out about U.S.-based customers (all contributors had been residing within the U.S.). All queries befell inside AI Mode, which means we didn’t immediately examine AI vs non-AI circumstances. Assume-aloud could inflate dwell occasions barely. RAG-driven coding is just as sturdy as its annotation inputs, although heavy spot-checks confirmed reliability.

Contributors gave knowledgeable consent. Recordings had been encrypted and anonymized; no personally figuring out information had been retained. The research conforms to Prolific’s ethics coverage and UXtweak TOS.

Featured Picture: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal