I tested Google AI Mode vs. Google Search. There’s a clear winner

If you’re a regular user of Google Search (which you almost certainly are), you’ve likely noticed Google’s consistent push for more AI features on the search engine.

At last year’s Google I/O, Google launched AI Overviews for everyone in the US, adding AI-powered summaries at the top of search results. At last week’s I/O 2025 keynote, Google went a step further and announced that AI Mode is now widely available in Search. Where AI Overviews are an addition to the “normal” Google Search experience, AI Mode is an entirely new interface that exclusively shows AI-powered results.

So, is AI Mode any good? And, more importantly, is it better than the regular Google Search experience?

The way I conducted this test was pretty simple. I took a search term, put it through AI Mode and Google Search, and compared the results from each one. Whichever search result I think is the best/most helpful is what I’m considering the “winner.”

To get inspiration about what to search for, I asked Google’s very own Gemini to give me some of the most popular Google Search terms/phrases. The searches you see below obviously don’t cover everything, but I think they do a good job of showing what each search mode is capable of — and, more importantly, the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

Finally, I performed all of these searches via the Google app on the Pixel 9 Pro.

Let’s start with one of the most common search queries: the weather. Even with numerous weather apps available, sometimes, the easiest way to look up the forecast is Google. And right away, there’s an immediate difference between AI Mode and the standard search experience.

Searching “weather new york,” AI Mode shows the current forecast, the current chance of rain, wind conditions, and current humidity in the first paragraph. As you keep scrolling, there’s a section dedicated to the weekend forecast. There’s also a section about the forecast for Memorial Day, which, considering how many people have outdoor gatherings that day, is helpful!

All of the information you could want is here, and it’s organized nicely. However, the all-text layout isn’t particularly easy to parse through, nor is it visually pleasing.

The same search term in regular Google Search, comparatively, is a night-and-day difference. There’s a dedicated weather UI with various tabs for digging into specific parts of the weather. As you keep scrolling, you get weather results from The Weather Channel and AccuWeather, plus a travel widget showing expected weather conditions in New York for the next couple of months. Plus, everyone’s favorite weather frog is here. This one isn’t even a competition.

As much as I don’t like looking at the news these days, Google is an essential tool for finding it. How does AI Mode perform here? Starting with a simple “news headlines” search, AI Mode does a really good job. It breaks down the available news into a handful of categories (such as Politics & Policy and World News) and then includes the biggest stories for each one.

Each story is nicely summarized into a single sentence, and related URLs for all the stories are included at the top and bottom of the page. For quickly catching up on the biggest headlines, I actually quite like this.

Going to regular Google Search, a “Top stories” carousel at the top shows some of the most popular news articles, which is helpful, but the giant “People also ask” widget isn’t. Further down the page are links to CNN and Google News, plus a widget rounding up the biggest local news stories.

While the standard Google Search got an easy win with the weather test, it’s not nearly as helpful in this scenario. Google Search’s results may be more visually interesting, but the neatly summarized and organized bullet points in AI Mode are far easier to digest. So long as you’re double-checking the sources to confirm the AI summaries are accurate, AI Mode is a much better experience.

There’s only so much news I can take in one sitting these days, so let’s move to something more enjoyable: finding a good pizza place to eat at. Searching “pizza near me” in AI Mode, the results look a lot like the other ones we’ve already seen: a bullet list of recommendations.

It’s a bit wordy, though the content is solid. The description for Jac’s is on point (their thin-crust pizza is fantastic), and I wasn’t even aware of Kalako, so now I’ve got a new pizza joint to check out. At the bottom of the list are small widgets for the mentioned restaurants, plus a map showing their locations.

Interestingly, when I performed the exact search in AI Mode just a minute later, the widgets and map were missing, and the recommendations were completely different — including a very questionable choice of listing Jet’s Pizza as the second best result.

Back in regular Google Search, we’re once again treated to a much richer page of results. The top has a map of pizzerias, followed by a list of recommendations. I don’t love the sponsored Domino’s inclusion at the top, but the other results are spot-on. There are more specific categories as you keep scrolling, followed by a couple of helpful Reddit threads.

AI Mode didn’t perform horribly here, but between the inconsistent information and lack of helpful visuals, the standard Google Search experience takes the cake (or, in this case, pizza).

Sticking with food for a bit, let’s move from looking up restaurants to looking up recipes. I’m in the mood for some good old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies, so let’s see what we get with a “chocolate chip cookie recipe” search.

Rather than bombarding us with multiple results, AI Mode instead displays a recipe front and center, including ingredients, step-by-step instructions, and extra tips on how to make your cookies taste even better.

The Google Search results for this test continue to show the strengths of the normal search experience. It starts with a couple of the best organic search results, accompanied by a list of additional recipes paired with photos, reviews, and the estimated time each recipe takes.

AI Mode’s result is undoubtedly the cleanest and easiest to read, especially considering how many recipe websites are bombarded with ads and unnecessary fluff. But I also appreciate how the standard search results present the various recipe options. Additionally, it’s unclear which website AI Mode is pulling its generated recipe from, which I don’t love.

If you just want to use the first recipe you see, AI Mode has you covered. But if you like looking at a few different options and picking the recipe that sounds best to you, I think regular Google Search still has the upper hand.

Let’s do one last test to close us out. Everyone has used Google at some point to look up how to do something, and when you do, you want a clear, easy-to-find answer.

Searching “how to tie a tie” in AI Mode, we get precisely what you’d expect by now: a bullet list of talking points with a lot of paragraphs. AI Mode offering steps for a few different tie styles is nice, as are the extra tips at the end. But as a visual learner, I don’t find any of this particularly helpful.

Thankfully, traditional Google Search has my back. The first result is a YouTube video that’s time-stamped to start exactly when the instructions begin, giving me an immediate visual to see what I should be doing. There are more YouTube videos as you keep scrolling, followed by some helpful “People also ask” prompts and additional short-form videos.

Leveraging YouTube for these types of searches is one of Google’s best strengths, so it’s bizarre that AI Mode ignores it entirely. I’d much rather watch an instructional video on how to do something rather than read five paragraphs about it. If you do too, Google Search remains the best option.

Does all of this mean that AI Mode is a complete failure? I wouldn’t go quite that far at all. Depending on how you use Google Search, AI Mode can actually be really helpful. My colleague Ryan Haines used it for more research-heavy questions a few months ago, and he came away rather impressed. If you have long, complex questions that you want answered, AI Mode may work better for you.

But for more common everyday searches, it’s pretty apparent to me that regular Google Search is still the best. Its results are richer, more glanceable, and ultimately more helpful.

AI Mode is only bound to get better as time goes on, and there may be a day when it’s the superior way to interact with Google. But, at least for right now, the standard Google Search experience is what I’ll be sticking with.