Google AI Overviews: what changes for shops

What is an AI Overview?

An AI Overview is the answer Google writes above the regular results, with a few links to the pages that back it up. It appears on some searches, not all, and it can change from one day to the next.

Google began rolling out AI Overviews to everyone in the US in May 2024^[1], and later added AI Mode, a conversational version of search. For a local business the consequence is simple: on part of the searches, the first thing a customer sees is no longer a list of links but a paragraph that names a few businesses.

Are local businesses affected?

Yes, especially on searches phrased as questions. A two-word search rarely triggers an AI Overview; a full sentence does so far more often.

Pew Research Center analysed nearly 69,000 Google searches made by 900 US adults in March 2025. Only 8% of one- or two-word searches produced an AI summary, against 53% of searches with ten words or more, and 60% of those starting with “who”, “what”, “when” or “why”^[2]. That is exactly how your customers are starting to search: “which game store in Denver is good with beginners?” rather than “games Denver”.

For very local searches, the ones with “near me” or a neighbourhood name, Google still shows its map and business profiles. The AI Overview sits on top of that; it does not replace it. Your business profile remains the first thing to get right.

Does traffic drop when an AI Overview appears?

Yes, clicks to websites fall when a summary is shown. In Pew’s study, people clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without one^[2].

Links inside the summary itself were clicked in just 1% of visits^[2]. In other words, being cited in an AI Overview matters mostly because your name gets read, not because it brings clicks. For a neighbourhood business that cuts both ways: fewer visits to your site, but a visible recommendation before the customer even starts comparing.

These figures date from 2025. They give an order of magnitude, not a forecast for your trade: measure your own traffic before and after.

How do you get cited in an AI Overview?

There is no AI-specific recipe: Google says there are no additional requirements, beyond being indexed and eligible to show a snippet in Search^[3]. The work is good SEO, applied to your customers’ actual questions.

Google also explains that AI Overviews and AI Mode may run several related searches across subtopics, a technique it calls “query fan-out”, and that they show a wider and more diverse set of links than a classic search^[3]. A page that precisely answers a sub-question has a chance, even if it does not rank first.

• Answer the question in the first sentence of each section, then go into detail.
• Keep your pages indexable: no accidental “noindex”, and a robots.txt that lets Googlebot in.
• Make sure your structured data matches the visible text of the page, as Google asks^[3].
• Look after the sources Google likes to link: in Pew’s study, Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the most linked sites, in summaries and regular results alike^[2].

AI Mode: what changes on top

AI Mode turns search into a conversation: the customer asks a question, then follow-ups, and Google answers with an exchange rather than a page of links. It takes the logic of AI Overviews one step further.

For a store, the question no longer stops at “where to buy board games in Denver”. It goes on: “which one is open on Sunday?”, “which one runs game nights?”. Each follow-up is a chance to be named, provided the information exists somewhere, on your site or your profile.

Based on Google’s documentation on AI features in Search.

What you can do this week

You can act without a tool or a budget: list your questions, check your profiles and rewrite the two or three pages that answer them. The rest is a matter of tracking.

• Write down ten questions your customers really ask, at the counter, on the phone or by message, and type them into Google to see which ones trigger an AI Overview.
• For each one, note who is cited and which sites are linked under the answer: those are the sources to work on.
• Check that your Google profile shows the same hours, address and services as your website.
• Rewrite the page on your site that should answer the most frequent question: the answer in the first sentence, the detail after.
• Do it again in a month, with the same questions, to compare.

What can you measure in Search Console?

Search Console counts appearances in AI Overviews and AI Mode, but does not isolate them: they are included in the Performance report under the “Web” search type^[3]. You see the overall effect, not the AI share.

So compare impressions and clicks for your key pages over the weeks before and after a change you care about. Rising impressions without rising clicks is the classic sign of an AI Overview answering in place of your page.

To know whether you are cited, and next to whom, you have to read the answers themselves. The free test does that on a few questions; our article on six metrics explains how to follow the trend, and iPand’s methodology sets out what is measured.

Sources

1. Google — Generative AI in Search (May 2024 announcement) — blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/ , accessed October 23, 2026, page dated May 14, 2024
2. Pew Research Center — Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears — www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/ , accessed October 23, 2026, page dated July 22, 2025
3. Google Search Central — AI features and your website — developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features , accessed October 23, 2026, page dated December 10, 2025