Google today expanded Search Live to every country and territory where AI Mode is available, bringing real-time voice and camera-based search to more than 200 locations worldwide. The announcement, made on March 26, 2026, was authored by Liza Ma, Director of Product Management for Search, on Google's official blog, The Keyword. The expansion marks a significant geographical milestone for a feature that spent several months in staged rollouts before reaching what Google describes as a truly global audience.

According to the announcement, the expansion is enabled by a new audio and voice model called Gemini 3.1 Flash Live. The model is described as delivering more natural and intuitive conversations compared to its predecessors. Crucially, it is also designed to be inherently multilingual - meaning users no longer need to interact in English to access the feature. People around the world can now speak with Search in their preferred language, according to Google.

What Search Live actually does

Search Live is a feature within Google's AI Mode that enables interactive, multimodal conversations with Search. Rather than typing a query into a text box, a user can open the Google app on Android or iOS, tap a Live icon beneath the Search bar, and ask a question out loud. The system provides an audio response. From there, the conversation continues - follow-up questions are possible, and Search surfaces relevant web links alongside its spoken answers.

The camera component adds a separate layer of functionality. By enabling the device camera, the user can show Search what they are looking at in the physical world. If someone is attempting to install a shelving unit, for example, they can point their camera at the components and receive guidance based on what the system sees. According to Google, Search can "see what your camera sees" and offer suggestions plus links to additional information on the web.

There is also a third entry point for users already using Google Lens. If a user is pointing their camera through Lens, a Live option appears at the bottom of the screen. Tapping it initiates a real-time, back-and-forth conversation about whatever is visible in the camera frame, without requiring navigation to a separate interface.

The Gemini 3.1 Flash Live model

The technical foundation of this expansion is the new Gemini 3.1 Flash Live model, which Google says powers more natural audio and voice interactions than previous implementations. The multilingual capability of the model is described by Google as inherent to its architecture rather than a post-hoc translation layer. This distinction matters for accuracy across languages, because a model trained to understand and respond in multiple languages natively tends to handle idiomatic speech, local vocabulary, and regional phrasing better than one that translates to and from a primary language as an intermediate step.

Google has not disclosed the specific number of languages the model supports at launch, but the announcement states it covers all languages and locations where AI Mode is available. As of October 2025, AI Mode had been expanded to over 40 countries and territories, reaching more than 200 total locations. That infrastructure now serves as the distribution layer for Search Live's global reach.

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A staged rollout reaching its final phase

The path to today's global expansion was gradual and deliberate. Search Live launched in English for all U.S. users on September 24, 2025, removing a prior requirement to opt in through Google's Labs experimental program. At that point, access was limited to U.S. users on Android and iOS. The feature had been announced in more limited form earlier in the year - Google first announced Search Live with video input on July 29, 2025, alongside Canvas functionality and enhanced Chrome desktop integration.

The September launch was itself the product of a wider acceleration across AI Mode's global footprint. Google expanded AI Mode to five new languages - Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese - on September 8, 2025. Then, on October 7, 2025, the company added more than 35 new languages and over 40 additional countries in a single rollout. The cumulative effect brought AI Mode to more than 200 countries and territories, laying the technical and geographic groundwork for the Search Live expansion now taking place.

Canada is one of the markets receiving the feature as part of today's rollout. Sabrina Geremia, Vice President and Country Managing Director at Google Canada, confirmed the availability in a LinkedIn post on March 26, 2026. According to Geremia, Canadian users can access Search Live in both English and French. She noted that she had spoken with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google, about the milestone. Fox commented on the post that he was "super excited that Canadians can now use Search Live in AI Mode."

Multimodal search: a long-building trend

The broader context for Search Live's global expansion is a sustained shift in how users interact with search engines. Google reported a 65% year-over-year increase in visual searches as of July 2025, with users increasingly relying on cameras, screenshots, and voice input rather than typed queries. Robby Stein, who leads Google's AI Search team, attributed much of this growth to younger users who move naturally between different input modalities.

The trend predates AI Mode entirely. In October 2024, Google introduced voice input to Google Lens and added video understanding capabilities, signaling the direction the company was heading. Lens, which now serves more than 1.5 billion monthly users according to data presented at Google I/O 2025, has become a foundational layer on which features like Search Live are built.

AI Mode itself opened to all U.S. users in May 2025, when Google dropped its waitlist requirement and added visual place and product cards to AI responses. The feature is powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.5 and processes queries that are typically two to three times longer than traditional keyword searches. Circle to Search gained AI Mode integration in July 2025, extending the feature to more than 300 million Android devices. By December 2025, Google was testing seamless transitions from AI Overviews into AI Mode directly from search results pages on mobile devices globally.

A Google guide distributed to marketers in March 2026 described queries in AI Mode as now being three times longer than traditional searches, with a meaningful share generating follow-up questions within the same session. The guide framed the shift as structural - not simply faster searches, but qualitatively different interactions where users ask conversational questions combining text, voice, camera, and gestures.

Implications for digital marketing

For marketers and publishers, the global expansion of Search Live introduces considerations that go beyond language localization. The feature's reliance on real-time audio responses changes the nature of how information is surfaced. Rather than returning a ranked list of ten blue links, Search Live synthesizes a spoken answer drawn from web content - and then provides links for deeper exploration. What that means for click-through rates, publisher traffic, and advertising visibility in voice-delivered responses remains an open question, and one that the industry has not fully resolved even in the U.S. market where the feature has been live since September.

The camera component adds further complexity. Users pointing their devices at physical products, storefronts, menus, or packaging may receive information about those objects directly from Search, without visiting any specific website. For local businesses, the quality and completeness of their Google Business Profile data becomes particularly relevant, as that data can feed directly into responses generated by Search Live when users point cameras at their locations.

The multilingual architecture of Gemini 3.1 Flash Live matters for global advertisers as well. Previous expansions of AI Mode to non-English languages required separate engineering work and often launched with limited functionality. A model that is inherently multilingual theoretically delivers more consistent performance across languages from day one - though Google has not published benchmarks or accuracy comparisons to support or challenge that characterization.

Search Console began tracking AI Mode clicks and impressions in June 2025, giving publishers data on how their content performs within AI-powered results. That reporting framework will now need to accommodate voice-delivered interactions across hundreds of markets and dozens of languages - a measurement challenge that the advertising and analytics industry has not yet established standards for.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google, announced by Liza Ma, Director of Product Management for Search. Sabrina Geremia, VP and Country Managing Director at Google Canada, and Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google, provided additional commentary on LinkedIn.

What: Google expanded Search Live - a feature enabling real-time, multimodal conversations via voice and camera within AI Mode - to all languages and locations where AI Mode is available. The expansion is powered by a new audio and voice model, Gemini 3.1 Flash Live, which is described as inherently multilingual. Users can access the feature through the Google app on Android or iOS by tapping a Live icon under the Search bar, or from within Google Lens.

When: The announcement was made on March 26, 2026.

Where: Search Live is now available in more than 200 countries and territories - all locations where AI Mode is currently active. Canada is among the newly supported markets, with access in both English and French.

Why: Google's rationale, as stated in the announcement, is to bring real-time search assistance to more people in their preferred languages. The underlying driver is a sustained shift in search behavior toward multimodal, voice, and camera-based queries, a trend reflected in the 65% year-over-year growth in visual searches reported in July 2025. The inherently multilingual architecture of Gemini 3.1 Flash Live makes this broad geographic and linguistic deployment technically feasible in a single rollout rather than through a prolonged market-by-market expansion.

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