The businesses most affected by Google’s AI Overviews aren’t usually tradies or health practices. They’re websites that earn their traffic by answering general questions. A local electrician’s site gets most of its value from people searching for an electrician. A how-to blog about wiring gets most of its value from people searching for answers, and that’s exactly the traffic AI Overviews absorb.
That distinction matters, because it tells you where to worry and where not to.
What AI Overviews are
AI Overviews are the AI written summaries that sometimes appear at the top of Google results, above the normal links. They answer the question directly, then show links to the pages Google used. Google rolled them out across Australia on 29 October 2024, after a US launch earlier that year.
Since then Google has added AI Mode, a separate tab that works more like a chat, with follow up questions. It arrived in Australia in October 2025. AI Mode and AI Overviews use different models and can show different links, but both draw on Google’s normal search index.
Which searches trigger them
Google says AI Overviews only appear when its systems decide they add something beyond the normal results, so many searches don’t show one.
The best independent data we’ve seen comes from a Pew Research Center study of 900 US adults’ real browsing in March 2025. About 18% of their Google searches produced an AI summary. Longer, question style searches were far more likely to: 53% of searches of ten words or more showed one, compared with 8% of one or two word searches.
That matches what we see when we check client keywords. Broadly:
- Likely to show an AI Overview: “how long does a hot water system last”, “what does a psychologist do in the first session”, “is concrete grinding dusty”.
- Less likely, in our checks: “plumber Ballina”, “physio near me”, “concrete grinding Lismore”. These tend to show the map pack and business listings first.
Things shift, and Google is testing constantly, so check your own important searches rather than relying on any list.
What happens to clicks
The same Pew study found that people clicked a normal search result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when there wasn’t one. They clicked a link inside the summary itself on only 1% of visits. They were also more likely to end their browsing session altogether after seeing a summary.
Google disputes the framing. Its documentation for site owners says clicks from results pages with AI Overviews tend to be higher quality, with people more likely to spend time on the site. Both things can be true. Fewer people click, and those who do click are more serious.
For a small business, the practical reading is this: if your site relies on informational traffic (blog posts answering general questions), expect fewer visits from those pages. If your site relies on people searching for a service in a place, the effect so far is smaller.
How to tell whether it’s affecting you
Don’t guess. Look.
- Open Google Search Console and compare clicks and impressions for the last three months against the same three months a year earlier.
- Sort by page. Are the drops on blog posts and guides, or on service and contact pages? The first is likely AI Overviews. The second is more likely something else, such as a technical problem, a competitor, or seasonal change.
- Check the Generative AI performance report in Search Console. It shows impressions your pages earned in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google says it’s available for all sites as of 31 August 2026, though it only shows up once your site has enough AI impressions.
- Search your top ten queries yourself, in a private window, and note which show an AI Overview and whether you’re linked in it.
A pattern we often see: impressions for informational pages hold steady or rise (because you’re appearing in the overview) while clicks fall. That’s AI Overviews at work.
How local businesses still win
The map pack hasn’t gone anywhere
For “service + town” searches, the map pack and your Google Business Profile are still where most local customers make their choice. AI Mode and AI Overviews also pull from Business Profile data when they mention local businesses. A complete profile with steady reviews is still the single most useful piece of local SEO a business can do on Google. We go into why in your Google Business Profile matters even more in AI search.
Be the source the overview cites
If an AI Overview is going to answer “how much does a split system install cost in NSW”, it might as well cite you. Pages that get cited tend to answer the question directly near the top, with specific details and honest caveats. A page that hedges everything and makes the reader scroll past three paragraphs of introduction rarely gets used. We show what that looks like in practice in writing content AI tools can quote.
Being cited won’t bring the same traffic a top ranking used to, but it puts your name in front of the searcher, and some of them will look you up.
Write about what you know first hand
General answers are exactly what AI can produce without you. “Five signs you need a new roof” has been written ten thousand times. “What we found when we inspected 30 roofs after the 2022 floods in Lismore” (if you’ve actually done that) hasn’t. First hand experience, local detail and real examples are what Google’s guidance keeps pointing to, and they’re also harder for an AI summary to replace.
Make the click worth it
When fewer people click, the ones who do arrive matter more. They’ve usually already read a summary, so they’re further along. Your page should give them what the summary couldn’t: prices or price ranges, photos of real work, availability, and an easy way to get in touch. A site that loads quickly and puts the phone number where a thumb can reach it converts that smaller audience better.
Get searched for by name
In our checks, brand searches (“Smith Electrical Ballina”) seldom show an AI Overview, and the person searching already wants you, so they usually click through to your site or profile. Everything that makes people remember your name (signage, vans, word of mouth, social media, local sponsorship) feeds into search, even if it doesn’t feel like SEO.
Should you opt out?
You can. Since late August 2026, Search Console has a site-level control under Settings, then Search generative AI, that takes your pages out of AI Overviews and AI Mode without touching your normal rankings (Google’s help page explains it). The older snippet controls, nosnippet and data-nosnippet, also work but strip your normal search snippets too, which is why we rarely recommend them. For most small businesses, being cited is better than being absent. The exception might be a business that sells detailed information as its product, and even then the trade off needs careful thought.
The decision in front of you
Look at your Search Console data and sort your pages into two groups: pages that win customers searching for your service, and pages that answer general questions. Protect and improve the first group first. For the second, keep the posts that show genuine expertise and lead naturally to your services, improve them so they’re worth citing, and stop writing generic ones.
Before anyone sells you an AI fix for falling traffic, read what’s real and what’s hype in generative engine optimisation. Sorting pages into those two groups is a standard first step in our AI search work, and when the service pages need rebuilding, our web design team handles that side.