The short version
AI Overviews — Google’s answer summaries that appear above organic results — now surface on roughly 15% of all searches (per the latest Semrush research, ~March 2026). That number is growing, and it’s been volatile. For local service businesses, the question isn’t “is AI Overviews going to destroy local SEO?” It’s “which of my traffic is affected, and what, if anything, should I do differently?”
The short answer: a lot less than the doom-scrolling LinkedIn content suggests.
Where AI Overviews actually appear
Semrush’s AI Visibility tracker and Ahrefs’ coverage data both show a consistent pattern. AI Overviews appear most often on:
- Broad informational queries. “How does SEO work”, “what is local SEO”, “best exercises for back pain”.
- Comparison queries. “BrightLocal vs Whitespark”, “HubSpot vs Salesforce”.
- Definitional / explainer queries. “What is schema markup”, “how does Google rank local businesses”.
They appear much less often on:
- Transactional local queries. “plumber near me”, “HVAC repair Gilbert”, “best dentist Scottsdale” — these still default to map pack + local pack + organic.
- Branded queries. “ACME HVAC Gilbert reviews”, “Chris Brannan SEO” — Google doesn’t want to generate AI content about specific businesses without clear citation.
- High-stakes transactional. “ER near me”, “suicide hotline” — Google explicitly suppresses AI Overviews on YMYL queries with urgent intent.
For a typical local service business, the queries that drive 80%+ of revenue are in the “low AI Overview exposure” bucket. Your map pack, your service landing pages, your city pages — these still work the way they did 18 months ago.
Where you’ll see impact
For local businesses with a content marketing strategy, the informational end of your funnel is where AI Overviews bite.
A Phoenix HVAC company blog post titled “Why is my AC dripping water inside the house?” used to capture ~800 monthly visits from people at the top of the decision funnel. After AI Overviews rolled out, that post sees closer to ~500 visits — because roughly 30-40% of users get their answer from the AI summary and don’t click through.
The nuance: those AI summaries typically cite 3-5 sources. If you’re the #3 organic result AND you get cited in the AI Overview, you actually get more brand visibility than you did pre-AI. You just get fewer clicks per impression. Whether that’s net positive depends on whether your business benefits from brand visibility (long sales cycles, high-trust categories) or conversion clicks (low-consideration, commodity categories).
What to do about it
Three things, ordered by impact:
-
Keep doing what was already working. GBP optimization, citations, reviews, service-page and location-page SEO. AI Overviews don’t change any of this. The practitioner checklist at /tools/local-seo-checklist is still the answer.
-
Structure informational content for citation. Clear H2/H3 hierarchy. Answer the primary question in the first 100 words. Use FAQ schema where appropriate. These are the same practices that earned featured snippets pre-AI; they now earn AI Overview citations.
-
Track your AI Overview impressions + citations. Semrush and Ahrefs both now report on AI Overview exposure at the query and page level. Add this to your monthly reporting. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
What NOT to do: don’t panic, don’t abandon the playbook, don’t chase every “AI Overview ranking hack” thread on Twitter. The signal-to-noise ratio in AI SEO content right now is horrific.
The bigger picture
Google has always evolved. Featured snippets in 2014 did exactly the same thing AI Overviews do today — captured some top-of-funnel informational clicks. The response then was the same as it should be now: structure your content well, earn authority, and let the conversion-focused queries do the commercial heavy lifting.
Local SEO — the GBP, the citations, the reviews, the map pack work — remains the highest-ROI use of budget for every local service business I audit. AI Overviews don’t change that.