Gemini now answers AI-visibility prompts without live web search

Live search grounding was 91% of what an AI-visibility scan cost to run — on a 24-prompt scan, a single prompt fanned out into roughly eleven separate search queries — and the provider offers no way to bound that. The Gemini engine now answers from the model itself, which changes what it measures: how present your brand is in what the model already knows, rather than what a grounded answer surfaces today. That is a narrower signal, and a slower-moving one, which suits tracking a trend over months. Two things follow. Gemini no longer contributes cited sources, so citation share of voice now comes from Google AI Mode — the engine built to carry it, with a real URL behind every reference — and from Perplexity. And scans cost roughly a tenth of what they did, which is what makes tracking more brands, more often, worth offering at all.