Gemini is Google’s AI assistant, which can ground its answers in Google Search results and other Google services when responding to queries. This is a platform reference page for the assistant itself, distinct from Google’s in-Search AI surfaces, AI Overviews and AI Mode, which are covered on their own pages. Facts here are verified at the review date below.
In one sentence
Gemini answers from what it learned in training unless it grounds in Search, so brand presence in it is really two problems: the training corpus and the live index.
How Gemini retrieves and cites
The Gemini app is generative by default: answers draw primarily on trained knowledge, with Search grounding engaged for queries that need current information, at which point retrieved results steer the answer and supporting links appear. Google’s own framing of grounding is connecting model output to verifiable sources to reduce invention, and that is the mode in which published pages can influence Gemini’s answers directly. Ungrounded responses, by contrast, reflect entity associations formed in training, which move slowly and cannot be cited.
What determines inclusion, and the control that confuses everyone
There is no Gemini crawler. Googlebot fetches the web as it always has, and a robots.txt token called Google-Extended governs the downstream use: whether crawled content may be used to train future Gemini models and for grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI. Google states that Google-Extended does not affect a site’s inclusion or ranking in Search, and it does not govern AI Overviews or AI Mode, which run on standard Search crawling and snippet controls. The practical read for a brand wanting Gemini visibility: keep Googlebot access clean, leave Google-Extended unblocked, and treat trained-knowledge presence as the slow layer that third-party footprint builds over time.
Why this surface matters
Gemini is the assistant arm of the largest search company, and its split personality is instructive to measure: the gap between what it says ungrounded and what it says grounded, run against the same prompt set, is a direct read on how a brand’s training-data presence compares with its live retrievability.
Related concepts
References
- Google Cloud, Grounding overview: docs.cloud.google.com
- Google Search Central, Optimising your website for generative AI features on Google Search: developers.google.com
Author: Harpal Singh · Last verified: 7 August 2026