Google's AI answers now work in about 100 languages. Does your site?

What changed in twelve months

Google's AI answers are no longer an English-first feature. AI Overviews reached more than 200 countries and territories and more than 40 languages in May 2025. AI Mode, the chat-style search tab, followed in steps. By February 2026 it covered close to 100 languages, among them German, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Korean, Japanese and both forms of Chinese.

Two rows matter most for a small exporter. The language list means a buyer in Lyon, Kraków or Busan can now ask a long question in their own language and get an AI answer with links. The August change means that answer takes more of the screen. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Roundtable that for some queries AI Overviews "may dynamically expand" where its systems judge that most useful, which pushes the classic blue links further down.

For your company: the question is no longer whether AI search reaches your markets. It does. The question is whether there is a page in the customer's language for it to link to.

AI answers link to pages Google can already rank there

Google's guidance on AI features is short: no special markup or submission. To be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet (Search Central, updated 10 December 2025), and the site must not have switched off the new generative AI setting in Search Console. The same page explains that the answers use a "query fan-out" technique, running several related searches across subtopics before writing a response.

At Google I/O in May 2026, Head of Search Liz Reid told NDTV that Google uses its existing web ranking systems to ground AI Mode answers, and that answers adjust to where the person searches (reported by Search Engine Journal on 25 May 2026).

Google has not published how often an answer in German links to a page written only in English. What it has documented is how it reads your language: from the visible text on the page, not from the lang attribute or the URL. It also asks site owners to put each language on its own URL, and not to redirect visitors automatically by IP address or browser language, because that can stop people and Googlebot from reaching the other versions.

For your company: a language switcher that swaps text on one URL, or a site that forces every German visitor onto /de/ with no way back, gives Google fewer pages to rank and cite. One real page per language, on its own address, is the entry ticket. Telling Google which version belongs to which country is a separate job, and a topic for another column.

Measure AI visibility by country, now that you can

Until June there was no way to separate AI visibility from ordinary search in Search Console. On 3 June 2026 Google introduced Search Generative AI performance reports, and a note added to that announcement says they reached all websites worldwide on 31 August 2026. The Search report counts impressions of your links in AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, device and date. It does not show clicks or the queries behind the impressions, and Google says a site with too few AI impressions may not see a report at all. The same rollout added a setting to keep a site out of these features; for most sellers that simply means giving up the impressions.

For your company: the Countries view is the useful part for an exporter. Put it next to your normal Performance report and check three things: which countries see your pages in AI answers, which pages they see, and whether those pages are in that country's language. If Austria shows AI impressions only on your English homepage, your German product pages are not the ones being picked. If your main export market is missing from the list altogether, start there.

Write the page the long question needs

In October 2025 Google said people ask AI Mode questions nearly three times longer than traditional searches. A long question carries details a short keyword never did: the country, the delivery time, the certificate, the order size. Picture a buyer who types welcher Hersteller liefert Edelstahl-Thermoskannen mit Logo in kleinen Mengen nach Österreich (which manufacturer ships stainless steel flasks with a logo, in small quantities, to Austria). An English page that says "worldwide shipping" answers none of that. A German page that states the minimum order, the delivery time to Austria and the price in euros answers most of it.

Do not overdo it. Google's guide to generative AI features (updated 10 July 2026) warns that building separate pages for every variation of a question, mainly to influence AI answers, breaks its scaled content abuse policy. The same guide says Merchant Center feeds and Business Profiles can help products and services appear in AI responses.

For your company: for each market, write down five questions customers actually ask your sales team, in their language, and check that your existing pages answer them in plain visible text, not in a PDF or an image. Then check that the shipping countries and prices in Merchant Center match those pages.

Where to start this month

You do not need a new site in ten languages. You need the two or three languages where your buyers already are, each with a handful of pages that answer their real questions, and a monthly look at the country report to see whether it is working. If you want an outside view first, HB Crossborder's free visibility check tests five real customer questions on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and reports where you appear, in English, German, French, Korean or Chinese. See our services, or send one URL and get a free visibility check within 48 hours.