One model family, three surfaces

  • Gemini app (750M+ MAU, Feb 2026) — the conversational assistant. Grounds with Google Search when answers need current or specific facts.
  • AI Overviews / AI Mode (2.5B+ / 1B+ users) — Gemini 3 (then 3.5 Flash) generating answers inside Search itself. Same grounding machinery, different product surface.
  • Workspace surfaces — Gemini inside Docs, Gmail and Drive answering with web grounding for enterprise users. The surface brands forget: procurement research increasingly happens inside the tools where the work lives.

Google-Extended: the misunderstood control

Google-Extended is a robots.txt token controlling whether your content trains Gemini and future models — it does not remove you from Search or AI Overviews grounding, which rides the normal search index. This split lets publishers opt out of training while remaining in answers. For brands, the default should be inclusion everywhere; the token matters mainly for content businesses, not for companies that want to be known.

How grounding differs from classic ranking

Classic ranking orders documents; grounding selects passages. A page can rank modestly yet supply the winning passage if its chunks are cleaner than the #1 result's. Grounding also leans on the Knowledge Graph for entity facts — brands with clean Knowledge Graph presence get stated correctly; brands without one get paraphrased from whatever the index offers.

Optimization checklist

  1. Everything from the AI Overviews checklist applies — same index, same grounding machinery.
  2. Knowledge Graph hygiene: Organization schema + sameAs, Wikidata where eligible, consistent facts across sources Gemini retrieves.
  3. Decide Google-Extended deliberately — default allow; document the decision either way.
  4. Test in the Gemini app, not just Search — conversational follow-ups expose different retrieval paths than one-shot Overview queries.

Sources: Alphabet disclosures (Gemini app MAU, Feb 2026); Google documentation on grounding with Google Search and the Google-Extended control; Google I/O 2026 announcements.

Frequently asked questions

Is optimizing for Gemini different from optimizing for AI Overviews?
Largely shared — same index, same grounding family. The differences are at the margins: the app is conversational (follow-ups matter), Workspace surfaces pull enterprise contexts, and Overview trigger logic doesn't apply to app chats. Do the AI Overviews work first, then test conversationally.
Does blocking Google-Extended remove me from AI Overviews?
No. Google-Extended controls training-data use. AI Overviews grounding rides the standard search index, governed by normal Search controls. You can opt out of training and remain fully present in answers.