Guides · Updated October 31, 2026

ChatGPT vs Google AI Mode: why they recommend different products

The short answer: they're different machines reading different parts of the web. Google AI Mode runs about ten Google searches for every question and answers from Google's own index; ChatGPT decides whether to search at all, and when it does, reads from OpenAI's own crawl and other search results. Per question, the two cite the same website only about 6.5% of the time, and on "best X" questions ChatGPT, AI Overviews and AI Mode agree on the brands only 23% of the time. So a product can lead on one and be missing from the other. Getting into AI Mode is ordinary Google SEO, aimed at the follow-up searches it runs (alternatives, comparisons, pricing, use cases); getting into ChatGPT is about letting its crawler in and being named on the lists it reads.

Who wrote this: we make Askadia, which tracks whether AI assistants recommend a product. Nearly every study below comes from a company that sells AI-visibility tracking or SEO services, as we do; none is peer reviewed. We link each one with its sample.

Why ChatGPT and Google AI Mode recommend different products

AI Mode is the chat tab in Google Search. It breaks your question into sub-questions and runs them as Google searches at once (Google calls it "query fan-out"), then writes an answer on Gemini, Gemini 3.5 Flash since May 2026 (Google). One measurement found about 10.7 searches per question, from 3 to 28 (Seer Interactive via Surfer, 501 prompts). ChatGPT works differently at every step:

The consequence for a small product: AI Mode can cite you without you ranking for "best X software", as long as you rank for the sub-questions it writes ("X alternatives", "X vs Y", "X pricing", "X for agencies") or you're named on pages that do. Even Google's own two AI features differ: AI Overviews and AI Mode cite the same pages only 13.7% of the time (Ahrefs, 540,000 query pairs).

How much do ChatGPT and AI Mode disagree?

A lot per answer, much less over a whole market. The unit you count decides how big the gap looks:

Two things follow. The open "best X for Y" questions, where a small product finds new customers, are exactly where the assistants disagree most; comparisons name their products, so every engine answers with them. And some of the gap is noise: AI Mode cites the same pages as itself only about 9% of the time across three runs on the same day (SE Ranking), so one answer is one draw. The ChatGPT side isn't only noise, though: 76% of the sites ChatGPT cites are cited by no other assistant for that question (Wellows).

What each one reads

• AI Mode leans on Google's own and community sites. Reddit (17.9%), YouTube (17.8%), google.com (12.5%) and Facebook (10.2%) lead its top citations, with Quora and Wikipedia more than in AI Overviews (Ahrefs, Sept 2026).
• For software, Google's AI reads the vendors' own pages; ChatGPT reads what others say about them. About three quarters of the top cited domains were non-vendors for ChatGPT, and about three quarters were vendors for Google's AI; 14.5% of ChatGPT's software citations were spam or synthetic sites, against 0.16% for AI Overviews (Overthink Group, ~1,000 prompts in 250 G2 categories; Google's side there is AI Overviews and Gemini, not AI Mode itself).
• ChatGPT rarely credits your own site: about 12% of SaaS recommendations (DerivateX), and "best X" roundups are most of what it cites for software.
• AI Mode links more and names fewer products: 9.5 citations and 1.6 brands per answer, against 0.7 and 2.4 for ChatGPT (BrightEdge, 2025).
• How closely each follows rankings: AI Mode loosely (12–35% of its cited pages rank in Google's top 10 for the question, depending on the study); ChatGPT barely (about 8% in Google's or Bing's top 10) (Ahrefs). Both mostly cite pages that rank for the sub-questions they wrote.

Our numbers: one product, asked on three assistants

On October 31, 2026, we started asking our own product's 25 tracked buying questions on Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode as well as ChatGPT, every day, logged out, in the US. PodSeeker is a podcast database for PR agencies and bookers. The week to October 31, counted in questions (a question counts when most of its answers do):

It's early: ChatGPT's numbers rest on about a week of daily answers, Google's on one answer per question, and one answer is one draw. But the gap between ChatGPT and AI Mode is too wide to be chance, and the answers show why. On "what's the best podcast guest booking platform for a three-person PR agency?", AI Mode led with Rephonic and Podchaser Pro and backed them with three roundups that rank on Google (Rate This Podcast, Alex Berman and speak-up.pro), lists PodSeeker isn't on. ChatGPT reads PodSeeker's own pages a lot; AI Mode reads what ranks on Google.

AI Overviews sits in between, and on that first day it followed Google's ranking for the question itself much more closely than AI Mode did. Each AI Overviews answer comes with Google's results for the same search, so we could put the two side by side:

Ranking first didn't make PodSeeker the pick, though: on those non-branded questions AI Overviews put it second or third when it named it, and on one it left PodSeeker out entirely. All five of its top recommendations were "PodSeeker vs X" questions, each built from PodSeeker's own comparison page. Only 39% of the pages AI Overviews cited (54 of 140) were in Google's top 10 for the question, and after podseeker.co, the site it cited most was YouTube. One day of answers is too few to call any of this; we'll update these tables as the answers add up.

How big is Google AI Mode?

Big in reach, small in share, and Google's and outside numbers point different ways:

Both AI Mode pictures can be true: a billion people touch it in a month (AI Overview follow-ups lead into it, and so do the new Search box and Chrome's address bar), while few have made it a habit. Google is merging AI Overviews and AI Mode into "one seamless experience" (Alphabet, Oct 2026), so today the Google AI a buyer most likely sees is an AI Overview, with AI Mode one follow-up away. And AI Mode sends almost no clicks: an outside click on about 2% of queries, against 17–19% for classic search (Similarweb, reported secondhand). Being named in the answer is the outcome; it shows up later as searches for your name and direct visits.

How to get your product recommended in Google AI Mode

Google's own guide is plain: "optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO", with no special files, markup or chunking (Google, May 2026). For a small software product, that means:

1. Be indexed and snippet-eligible. Check your key pages in Search Console. noindex removes a page, nosnippet keeps it out of AI Overviews and AI Mode, and max-snippet limits how much can be used (Google).
2. Rank for the sub-questions, not only the head term. "[Competitor] alternatives", "[you] vs [competitor]", "[category] for [use case]", "[you] pricing". These are the searches the fan-out runs, and the #1 result is cited in about a quarter of AI Mode answers (seoClarity).
3. Get onto the pages Google's AI reads. Independent "best X" roundups that rank on Google, Reddit and Quora threads, YouTube videos. In the largest correlation study, Reddit and Quora mentions, links and site traffic went with more citations (about 3× from the smallest sites to the biggest), and pages updated in the last two months were cited more (SE Ranking, 2.3M pages). These are correlations: bigger brands have all of them.
4. Make your own pages specific. Google's AI cites vendors' own pages for software, so pricing, comparison and use-case pages that state plainly what the product does, for whom, and what it costs are worth keeping current. Google asks for "a unique point of view", not commodity content.
5. Skip your own "best X" list. In 100 B2B "best software" searches, 69% of self-promoting lists were cited without their author being recommended, and sites leaning on them were demoted in 2026 (Lily Ray, AI Overviews data). An honest "you vs them" page is safer.

Software has no product feed in AI Mode: Merchant Center powers shopping cards for physical goods, not SaaS. A Shopify app's listing is an ordinary indexed page, and often one of its strongest. Blocking Google-Extended doesn't affect AI Mode: it covers Gemini training and the Gemini apps, not Search (Google).

What's different for ChatGPT

The overlap is small but real: being named honestly on pages each engine trusts, and fresh pages that say plainly what the product is. A product that's on ChatGPT but not AI Mode usually has a Google ranking or roundup gap; one on AI Mode but not ChatGPT, check robots.txt for OAI-SearchBot first. More in how to rank in ChatGPT and how ChatGPT picks its sources.

How to measure it

Your own analytics can't tell you. Search Console counts AI Mode inside ordinary "Web" results, and its Generative AI report (from June 2026) shows impressions only, with no clicks or queries (Google); GA4 files AI Mode visits under Google organic. Neither says on which buying questions you're recommended, and who is instead. The only way to know is to ask the real questions on each assistant, several times, and count: one answer is one draw, and a ChatGPT number says little about AI Mode, especially on "best X" questions.

That's how we got the numbers above: we switched PodSeeker's 25 questions to all three assistants through the API, then read each overview with Google's results beside it.

Myths and risks

• llms.txt: "Google Search ignores them" (Google).
• Schema or "AI chunking" for AI Mode: not needed, by Google's word; FAQ schema showed no effect on citations (SE Ranking).
• Manipulating AI answers: since May 2026, Google's spam policies explicitly cover "attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search" (Google). Hidden text, paid slots on high-authority lists and templated pages by the hundred fall under existing spam rules too.
• "Do SEO and AI Mode follows": half true. Google ranking is the gate, but the rankings that count are on the sub-questions, and the pages it cites are often Reddit, YouTube and roundups, not yours.

Questions

What's the difference between Google AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini?

AI Overviews are the summary at the top of a normal Google results page. AI Mode is the chat tab in Google Search: a full conversational answer, with follow-ups and no list of blue links. Gemini is Google's separate assistant app. Google is merging AI Overviews and AI Mode into one AI Search.

What percentage of Google searches use AI Mode?

Google hasn't published one. An outside web panel put it at 0.34% of US Google searches in early 2026, but that panel misses the Google app; Google says AI Mode has over a billion monthly users.

Does blocking Google-Extended remove my site from AI Mode?

No. Google-Extended controls Gemini training and the Gemini apps. AI Mode follows Googlebot and the normal index; nosnippet and noindex are what keep a page out.

Does ChatGPT use Google?

Not directly: Google refused OpenAI access to its index. ChatGPT uses OpenAI's own crawl and other search results, which is one reason it cites different pages.

If I rank on Google, will AI Overviews recommend me?

More often than AI Mode, in our first day of answers: when PodSeeker ranked #1 for a question, AI Overviews named it 5 times in 6 and AI Mode once. Named isn't picked, though: on those questions it still led with a competitor. One day is too few to rely on.

If I rank on Google, will AI Mode recommend me?

It helps more than on ChatGPT, but it isn't enough: AI Mode cites pages that rank for its sub-questions, and it often recommends the products named on roundups, Reddit and YouTube rather than the vendor whose page ranks.

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