How to gain visibility in Google’s AI Mode

Google’s roll‑out of AI Overviews (the artist formerly known as the Search Generative Experience) on May 14 2024 marked the biggest single change to search visibility since the introduction of universal search in 2007. The Gemini‑powered layer now answers queries without the classic blue links ever appearing, and it is already available for hundreds of millions of U.S. users, with a global expansion roadmap in place. (blog.google, 9to5google.com)

Early user-testing shows many patients now open AI-search first for symptom triage. At the early stage of the search journey, what people are looking for is information, and what AI search promises is completely bespoke and personalised feedback on your questions. 

If you had a very specific symptom that you wanted to Google in the past, you would need to spend a lot of time reading different sources and assessing how closely what they’re describing fits what you’re feeling. In the new paradigm, you can describe what you’re feeling, and now AI will pull on the entirety of the internet to provide tailored and relevant answers. Expect query chains like ‘I’m a 45-year-old runner with hip pain—what should my next step be?’ to bypass traditional SERPs entirely. 

For brands that rely on organic visibility, especially in healthcare and other high‑trust verticals, the new interface changes the rules of engagement. Over the last few months our strategy team has run thousands of live tests inside AI Mode, and four clear themes have emerged.

1. From keywords to entities & experience signals

Observation: When we search a standard local search such as “hip specialist London” in standard Search we see a mixed pack of clinics and surgeons. In AI Mode the answer flips to an explicit list of named surgeons, seemingly ranked by Google Business Profile (GBP) review count and average rating, with proximity and accessibility pulled in dynamically.

This tells us Google is reading the query literally (“show me hip specialists”) and responding with entities (the surgeons) rather than URLs SEO’d to read “hip specialist London”. The ranking recipe appears to weight:

  • GBP review volume + rating

  • Location & travel time

  • Declared specialisms / treatments (schema‑marked services)

  • Convenience signals (e.g. flexible appointments, wait‑time claims)

What it means

  • Local SEO hygiene is table‑stakes. Every field in GBP needs to be utilised and continuously policed.

  • Soft proof points belong on the web. If you genuinely offer <24 hr MRI access, make that claim machine‑readable in page copy and structured data — because AI Mode is happy to quote it.

  • Reviews are now product content. Volume still matters, but narrative quality is equally potent: AI Mode often extracts snippets directly from patient stories.

Pro tip: Run the query in the standalone Gemini interface and click “Show your sources” — Google exposes the very attributes it harvested, a gift‑wrapped optimisation roadmap.

2. Authority could be reset

Observation: Link‑building has matured from anchor‑text roulette to topical authority, but AI Mode sometimes resurfaces thin “Top 10” listicles that would never make page one in classic Search. Worse, it wraps them in an authoritative AI polish that hides the lack of expertise.

Why the “listicle loophole” won’t last

With so few high-quality pages to triangulate, Gemini sometimes takes a single listicle at face value, letting brands slip themselves into the ‘top 10’ without scrutiny. Resist the temptation: Google’s spam systems and human raters are already flagging self-serving lists. What feels like a shortcut today could nuke trust signals tomorrow.

Two trends converge here:

  1. UGC platform bias. Reddit and Quora enjoy preferential surfacing (the former with specific thanks to Google’s $60 m per‑year Reddit licensing deal. (redditinc.com, reuters.com))

  2. Snapshot summarisation. Gemini ingests any page that answers “best X” and collates bullet‑points without re‑scoring the underlying E‑E‑A‑T.

How to future proof your authority

  • Expert commentary must be unmistakable. Author bios with medical credentials and evidence links are non‑negotiable.

  • Structured product/service round‑ups still work — but build them like systematic reviews, not affiliate fluff.

  • Earned media > paid links. Citations from national health bodies or peer‑reviewed journals are future‑proof currency.

3. Content for an audience of one

Observation: Traffic from top‑of‑funnel research content could collapse; AI Mode answers the question in‑line and the citation link sends negligible clicks. Yet the model still reads that content when deciding who to recommend further down the funnel.

In other words, you are writing for the algorithmic reader. The payoff is deferred: when the user later searches “book knee surgery London”, the system already knows your clinic excels at ACL reconstructions and surfaces you.

What it means

  • Depth still wins. Comprehensive pages train Gemini on your expertise even if humans never visit them.

  • Schema markup is your handshake. Procedure, medical specialty, accreditation, insurance accepted — label them all.

  • Measure the assist value. Track how often bottom‑funnel queries now trigger AI call‑outs that cite your domain.

4. Paid media becomes both the safety net and the shortcut

Observation: Google will not switch the world to AI search until it can monetise it like legacy SERPs. Expect sponsored call‑outs, not just links.

The loss of organic predictability makes precision paid placement more valuable:

  • Contextual injects inside AI answers (already visible in some retail queries).

  • Demand capture retargeting when classic Shopping units no longer appear.

  • Budget reallocation from broad match to surgical match keywords tied to AI surfacing gaps.

Paid and organic strategies must now be engineered together – the same attributes that raise your AI ranking can power higher‑quality ad feeds.

Medico digital’s verdict on AI Mode

Our take? This first-gen rollout is under-cooked for patients.

Google’s list of ‘top surgeons’ reads like a TripAdvisor ranking with great bedside-review metrics but without any nuance on clinical outcomes or underlying expertise. Until Google layers in validated quality data and is able to reach the same level of nuance it had begun to achieve in traditional search for surfacing the most authoritative sources, results risk nudging patients toward the loudest, not the best

Six‑point AI-mode action plan for healthcare brands

  1. Audit your Google Business assets weekly. Treat them like your homepage.

  2. Operationalise review capture at every patient touch‑point and incentivise narrative detail.

  3. Publish entity‑rich knowledge hubs (FAQ, procedures, clinician bios) with structured data.

  4. Author‑sign all clinical content with verifiable medical credentials.

  5. Monitor AI answer panels and tag when/where your brand is cited.

  6. Fall back on paid media to plug inevitable organic gaps.

The coming arms race

AI Overviews can weigh “soft” promises (e.g. same‑week surgery slots) that are not easily validated. If a single factor becomes over‑indexed, marketers will game it — just as they once stuffed title‑tags with “hip specialist London”. Expect Google to counter with triangulation from real‑world data (appointment APIs, anonymised EHR wait‑time feeds). The cycle of optimisation and counter‑optimisation is far from over; it is merely moving up the stack.

Key takeaways

  • Visibility is shifting from pages to people, places & proof points.

  • Traditional TOFU traffic KPIs will shrink, but conversion‑weighted visibility can grow if you feed the model the right signals.

  • Paid media is not a bolt‑on; it is now the control layer for certainty.

  • Agencies that integrate technical SEO, reputation management and precision media buying will own the next decade of search.

Ready to protect (and expand) your AI visibility?

We’re helping healthcare brands of all sizes re‑architect their content, data feeds and paid acquisition for the AI‑native SERP. If you’d like to pressure‑test your current strategy, drop us a line and we’ll share a bespoke AI‑Mode visibility snapshot and concrete next steps.