Website owners have traditionally tested Google’s understanding of their content by searching for keywords and seeing whether their pages appeared.
If you published an article about choosing a domain name, you might search for:
how to choose a domain name for a hobby website
Finding your page would show that Google considered it relevant to that query. But it would not tell you what Google thought your whole website was about, who it was intended to help or how its different sections fitted together.
Google AI Mode provides another way to investigate.
Instead of merely displaying a link, it may attempt to describe your website, identify its main subjects and explain what it offers. That answer is not a direct view into Google’s internal systems, but it can provide useful evidence when combined with Search Console and URL Inspection.
I think of this as triangulating Google’s current interpretation of a website.
Three Different Sources of Evidence
The method combines three signals:
| Source | What it can reveal |
|---|---|
| Search Console | The queries for which Google is displaying or testing your pages |
| Google AI Mode | A generated interpretation of what your website is about |
| URL Inspection | Whether an important page is indexed and when Google last crawled it |
Each source answers a different question.
Search Console shows how Google is interacting with the site. AI Mode shows how retrieved information may be synthesised into a description of it. URL Inspection helps establish which version of a page Google has stored.
No single source gives a complete answer, but together they can reveal patterns that would be difficult to see from rankings alone.
Testing What Google Thought Action With AI Was About
I began by searching:
site:actionwithai.com
AI Mode described Action With AI as a practical website helping beginners build useful hobby websites by combining AI with real human experience.
That was broadly accurate.
It correctly identified:
- the intended beginner audience;
- the focus on hobby websites;
- the importance of human experience;
- the argument against publishing generic content;
- the connection between the practical guides and the Google AI Mode experiments.
That was encouraging. Google appeared to understand the site’s overall direction.
However, the response also mixed together parts of the current visitor pathway with older and more technical areas of the site.
I therefore asked a more specific question:
What is the main structure of ActionWithAI.com?
This time, AI Mode described a four-part structure involving:
- a strategy framework;
- topic selection;
- content creation and workflows;
- technical and analytical architecture.
The problem was that this was not the pathway I had published.
The intended structure was:
- Choose Your Hobby
- Create Helpful Content
- Find Your Audience
- Earn From Your Site
AI Mode had recognised genuine themes, but it had reorganised them into a framework of its own.
Was That a Misunderstanding?
Partly—but the answer was not completely unreasonable.
Action With AI is still being developed. It already contains substantial material about:
- choosing a website topic;
- producing useful, evidence-led content;
- identifying AI synthesis gaps;
- testing Google AI Mode answers and citations.
There is currently much less content in the Find Your Audience and Earn From Your Site sections.
AI Mode could only work with the pages that had been published, indexed and retrieved. It therefore gave greater weight to the most developed parts of the website.
In that sense, the answer may have reflected the site as it currently existed, rather than the completed structure I intended to build.
This is an important distinction.
The test was not telling me to change direction. It was showing how the present balance of published content appeared from the outside.
As the remaining sections are developed, that interpretation may change.
An Unexpected Search Console Clue
Search Console had also shown impressions for searches related to an AI Mode analysis tool.
Action With AI does not offer an automated analysis application. It publishes written experiments examining Google AI Mode answers, citations and search behaviour.
At the time, the relevant category was called:
Google AI Mode Analysis
The category also had little explanation of what it contained. It was possible that terms such as AI Mode, analysis and tool were being associated loosely.
I therefore renamed the category:
Google AI Mode Experiments
I also added a description explaining that the section contained written tests, observations and case studies rather than software.
A few days later, I asked AI Mode:
Does ActionWithAI.com help people with a Google AI Mode analysis tool?
Its answer began:
“No, Action With AI does not provide a software tool.”
It then correctly described the section as a collection of written case studies and strategic breakdowns rather than a functional application.
The revised wording appeared to have become available to Google quickly enough to influence the new synthesis.
What This Result Proves—and What It Does Not
Unfortunately, I had not asked the same AI Mode question before changing the category.
I therefore cannot prove that AI Mode previously thought the site offered software. Nor can I prove that changing the category description directly corrected such a misunderstanding.
What I do have is a useful sequence of evidence:
- Search Console displayed impressions for software-tool-related queries.
- The category name and purpose may have been ambiguous.
- I clarified what the section actually contained.
- AI Mode subsequently distinguished the written experiments from a software tool.
- Future Search Console data may show whether the irrelevant queries decline.
That is not a controlled experiment, but it is more informative than relying on one isolated signal.
It also provides a better process for future testing: record Google’s interpretation before changing the website, then repeat the same questions after Google has recrawled the relevant pages.
Why Search Console and AI Mode Tell Different Parts of the Story
Search Console can reveal unexpected queries, but it does not explain why Google displayed a page.
An impression for “AI Mode analysis tool” could mean several things:
- Google was testing a loose match;
- the page contained several related words;
- the site’s wording created ambiguity;
- the result was shown briefly and then dropped;
- or Google had partially misunderstood the section.
The impression alone cannot tell us which explanation is correct.
AI Mode lets us investigate the possibility more directly by asking:
- Does this site offer a software tool?
- What is this website about?
- Who is it intended for?
- What are its main sections?
- What makes it different?
- What process does it recommend?
The answers still need to be checked critically. AI Mode may combine accurate facts with assumptions, omit important pages or impose a neat structure that the website owner never created.
Its citations are therefore as important as its wording.
Why URL Inspection Matters
AI Mode may generate a new response each time a question is asked, but that does not mean it necessarily reads every cited page live at that moment.
Google normally discovers pages through crawling, processes them and stores information about them in its search index. Its systems can then retrieve relevant indexed material when answering a query.
A useful description is:
Fresh synthesis from retrieved, indexed material.
This matters when testing website changes.
Suppose you update a category description and immediately ask AI Mode about it. The answer may still reflect the old wording if Google has not yet revisited and processed the page.
URL Inspection can help you check:
- whether the page is indexed;
- when it was last crawled;
- which canonical URL Google selected;
- whether Google’s crawled version includes the revised content.
The live URL test and the indexed version are not the same thing. A live test may show that Google can access the updated page, but that does not necessarily mean the change has already entered the index.
A Repeatable Google Interpretation Audit
The following process would make future testing more reliable.
1. Record unexpected Search Console queries
Save the query, affected page, impressions, clicks and date range.
Treat an unusual query as a clue rather than immediate proof of misunderstanding.
2. Capture AI Mode’s current interpretation
Ask several targeted questions, such as:
- What is this website about?
- Who is it designed to help?
- What are its main sections?
- Does it offer this product or service?
- What makes it different from similar sites?
Save the full answers and citations. Where possible, repeat the important questions to see whether the same interpretation appears consistently.
3. Compare the answers with the actual website
Check what AI Mode understood, omitted or invented.
Review the pages most likely to shape the site’s identity:
- homepage;
- navigation;
- Start Here page;
- About page;
- author page;
- category descriptions;
- hub pages;
- internal links;
- older pages that may describe a previous direction.
4. Check Google’s indexed evidence
Use URL Inspection on the most relevant pages.
Record whether each page is indexed and when it was last crawled. This helps establish whether Google had an opportunity to see the wording being tested.
5. Make a genuine clarity improvement
Do not change the site merely to force AI Mode to produce a preferred answer.
Only make an amendment if it also improves the experience for a human visitor.
That might involve:
- renaming an ambiguous category;
- adding a clear description;
- updating an outdated About page;
- clarifying the homepage message;
- strengthening a hub-page introduction;
- improving internal links;
- making it explicit that a section contains articles rather than software.
6. Repeat the same tests
After Google has recrawled the page, ask the same AI Mode questions again.
Using the same wording makes the comparison more meaningful.
Then monitor whether the related Search Console queries:
- continue;
- decline;
- become more relevant;
- or begin pointing to different pages.
How to Interpret a Mismatch
A difference between your intended message and AI Mode’s description can have several causes.
It may mean:
- the site’s positioning is unclear;
- older pages still describe a previous direction;
- an intended section has not yet been developed;
- recent changes have not been recrawled;
- an important page is not indexed or prominent;
- AI Mode retrieved an unrepresentative set of sources;
- or the synthesis itself was poor.
That is why one AI answer should not trigger an immediate redesign.
The response is evidence to investigate, not an instruction to obey.
In my case, the omission of Find Your Audience and Earn From Your Site did not mean those sections should be abandoned. It reflected the fact that they had not yet been populated to the same extent as the content and AI experiment sections.
The appropriate response is to continue building the planned site and observe whether Google’s interpretation changes as the published evidence grows.
From a Visibility Test to an Interpretation Test
Traditional search testing mainly asked:
Does Google display my page for this keyword?
This method asks a broader question:
What story has Google constructed from the pages it has found?
Search Console shows where Google is testing the site. AI Mode provides a visible synthesis of the information it retrieves. URL Inspection helps identify which version of an important page Google has stored.
Together, they allow a website owner to compare:
- the site they intended to build;
- the content currently published;
- the way Google describes it;
- and the searches for which Google displays it.
This does not provide access to Google’s internal reasoning. AI Mode’s answers can still be incomplete, inconsistent or overly confident.
But triangulating the available signals gives us a more useful picture than checking whether a link appears for a keyword and trying to guess what that result means.
Your website is already telling Google a story about what it is, who it helps and which parts matter most.
AI Mode now gives you an opportunity to hear part of that story repeated back. When it sounds different from the story you intended, Search Console and URL Inspection can help you investigate why.