How does AI search work in India, in Hindi and other Indian languages?

Which Indian languages does AI search support?

Google launched AI Mode in India in June 2025 and added Hindi in September 2025. In October 2025 it added Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, and brought Search Live, a voice conversation with Search, to India in English and Hindi. Languages such as Gujarati and Punjabi were not on that list. Google keeps expanding it, so check the current one. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity also answer questions asked in Hindi.

How do Hindi, English and Hinglish queries differ?

People in India search in three common ways: English, Hindi in Devanagari script, and Hinglish, which is Hindi typed in Roman letters or mixed with English words. One need can arrive in all three forms.

Assistants generally understand mixed-language questions and can pull sources in either language. But far less Hindi and regional-language content is published than English, so an answer may quote English pages even for a Hindi question. A clear, accurate page in the customer's own language can face less competition.

How do voice and visual search change things?

Google says India has its largest voice and visual search user base. Voice queries tend to be whole questions, such as “Sunday ko kaun sa dentist khula hai?”, often with a place in them, and the assistant may read out one short answer. Visual search, such as pointing Google Lens at a product, matches a photo to pages.

• Give key pages a question heading and a direct answer of about 40 to 75 words in the language people would speak.
• Keep your address, phone number and opening hours as plain text, because a spoken answer needs facts it can read out.
• Give product and shop photos descriptive file names, alt text and nearby text with the product name in the language you sell in.

What should I do, step by step?

1. 1
   Choose languages from evidence

   Check the queries in Search Console, your WhatsApp and call history and your reviews. Add a language only if customers use it.

2. 2
   Write real Hindi or bilingual pages

   Have a fluent person write or edit them. Machine translation published without a human check reads awkwardly and is a quality risk. Give each language its own URL.

3. 3
   Mark the language

   Set the lang attribute on each page, such as hi or en, and add hreflang links between the versions, such as hi and en-IN, each pointing to the other and to itself. lang mainly serves browsers and screen readers; hreflang is what helps Google show the right version.

4. 4
   Phrase content the way people speak

   Use question headings in natural wording, short direct answers and the local spellings of place names, such as अहमदाबाद and Ahmedabad.

5. 5
   Complete your local SEO details

   Fill in your Google Business Profile: name, address, phone, hours, categories and photos, and reply to reviews in the reviewer's language. Keep the details identical everywhere they appear.

6. 6
   Test in every language you serve

   Run your fixed question set in English, Hindi and Hinglish on several assistants and log who is named. What AI visibility is and how to check it has the method.

What are the honest limits?

• Coverage is uneven. Which languages and features are available changes over time and differs between Google and other assistants.
• No special markup exists for Indian-language AI answers. Google's May 2026 guide says its AI features run on core Search ranking systems and the same fundamentals apply; how to appear in Google AI Overviews covers them.
• No volume figures are quoted here, because no reliable public ones exist for Hindi AI search.
• Tracking has gaps. Arcline's AI-answer tracking (Premium) generates its automatic questions in English. Premium tracks up to 25 questions per website, and you can add your own, including Hindi or Hinglish ones, but it cannot control how well any assistant answers in those languages. See the features page.