Google confirmed on 28 October 2026 that ads inside AI Mode are expanding to Australia. That follows a change on 31 August, when Search Console began showing every website how often its pages appear in Google’s AI answers, with a switch to opt out. If your business relies on Google for enquiries, three things matter now: your ads can appear in AI answers, you can finally see whether your pages are being quoted, and the advice for earning those mentions is simpler than most of what is being sold. For hands-on help, see our SEO and digital marketing service.
What changed, and when
- 29 October 2024: AI Overviews, the AI summaries at the top of results, launched across Australia.
- 8 October 2025: AI Mode, Google’s chat-style search, arrived in Australia.
- 31 August 2026: the Search Console report on AI features, and the opt-out control, became available to all websites worldwide.
- 28 October 2026: Google said ads in AI Mode are expanding to Australia and nine other countries, labelled “Sponsored”.
Your ads can now show inside AI answers
You do not need a new type of campaign. According to reporting on Google’s help page, existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are eligible automatically, and there is no separate setting to target AI Mode or to stay out of it.
That means two checks. Watch where your ad spend goes over the next few weeks, and make sure the page each ad leads to answers the question clearly. People who arrive from an AI answer have usually asked something specific.
You can see how often Google’s AI quotes you
Open Search Console and find the generative AI performance report. It shows how many times your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, date and device. It counts appearances only. It does not show clicks or the questions people asked, so read it as a sign of which pages Google trusts enough to quote, not as a traffic report.
Should you opt out of AI answers?
Google now offers a control for the whole site that removes your links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the AI features in Discover. Google is plain about the cost: “You won’t receive any traffic or impressions from these features.” The setting does not change your normal rankings, and it does not stop your content being used to train AI models, which is a separate control.
For most service businesses, opting out hands those mentions to a competitor. It makes more sense for publishers whose income depends on people reading the full article.
| Control | What it does | What it does not do |
|---|---|---|
| AI performance report | Shows how often your pages appear in AI answers | Show clicks, or the questions people asked |
| AI features opt-out | Removes your site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover’s AI features | Change your normal rankings |
| Google-Extended | Stops your content being used to train Google’s AI models | Remove you from AI answers |
How much do AI answers cut clicks?
We could not find an independent Australian study, so be wary of anyone quoting a local percentage. The overseas evidence points one way. A Pew Research Center study of 900 US adults found people clicked a normal result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when it did not. Ahrefs measured a 58% lower click rate for the top result across 300,000 keywords.
The effect is uneven, though. In Ahrefs data from September 2025, AI Overviews appeared on about 21% of informational searches, but on fewer than 8% of local searches and about 2% of searches where someone was ready to buy. Other studies report different figures, but the pattern for a local service business is clear: “how do I” searches are affected far more than “near me” searches.
Source: Pew Research Center, 900 US adults, March 2025.
Source: Ahrefs, 146 million results pages, September 2025. Country not stated.
What Google says actually helps
Google’s own guidance on AI features says there are no extra requirements: no special optimisation, AI text files or special markup. The basics do the work:
- The page is indexed and allowed to show a snippet.
- Google can crawl it, and your other pages link to it.
- The important content is written as text, not locked inside images.
- Structured data matches what people can see on the page.
- The page loads well and has useful images or video.
- Your Google Business Profile is complete and up to date.
A checklist for this month
- Open the AI report in Search Console and note which pages are being quoted.
- Put a direct answer in the first two lines of each service page.
- Check your Google Ads reports for spend coming from AI Mode.
- Update your Google Business Profile: services, hours and photos.
- Leave the AI opt-out alone unless you have a clear reason to use it.
Facts checked on 12 November 2026. Google changes these features often, so check the linked pages for the latest.
Want to know how your site shows up in AI answers? Ask Notion Tech for a search review →
