How to Adapt Your Local SEO Strategy for Google's AI Overviews

What changed in Google's local search results?

Google now generates an AI Overview for most local business searches, and in a large share of cases that overview stands where the three-pack map listings used to sit. A May 2025 study by local SEO firm Whitespark manually checked 540 queries across six industries (plumbers, personal injury lawyers, dentists, optometrists, medical clinics, and real estate agents) in three US cities and found AI Overviews triggered on roughly 68% of local business queries on average, ranging from 57% to 80% depending on the industry and intent type.

The format is the change that matters most. The old local pack showed three businesses side by side with a map, a phone number, and a call button. The AI Overview instead synthesizes an answer, often naming one or two businesses inside a narrative summary rather than a ranked list of three. That is a smaller number of visibility slots built from a different set of inputs.

The click math backs up how material this is. Ahrefs analyzed 300,000 keywords, comparing Google Search Console click-through data before AI Overviews existed against December 2025 data, and published the results on February 4, 2026: pages ranking under an AI Overview now see roughly 58% lower average clickthrough than they would have without one, up from a 34.5% reduction measured about eight months earlier. The trend is not leveling off. It is accelerating.

Who does the AI Overviews shift affect?

Any business that depends on near-me search for calls, bookings, or foot traffic is affected, but not evenly. The businesses with the most to lose are the ones whose entire local SEO plan was built around ranking three positions in a map pack and hoping for a click.

Multi-location and franchise operators feel it in multiples. Every location's Google Business Profile, review set, and citation footprint now feeds a separate AI Overview for its own geography, so a gap in one location's data does not stay contained to that location. It shows up as an inconsistent, less-cited brand across every city an AI Overview covers.

Service categories where people research before they call (home services, healthcare, legal, and similar high-consideration verticals) are also where an AI Overview has the most raw material to summarize: reviews, pricing signals, service details, and FAQs. The more information-dense the buying decision, the more room an AI Overview has to answer the question before the searcher ever reaches a website.

Why does the map pack still matter?

Because the AI Overview is not pulling from a separate universe of data. It draws on the same Google Business Profile fields, categories, reviews, and citation signals that have always decided map pack rank, then compresses them into a written answer instead of a ranked list.

That means the fundamentals have not become optional. Complete and accurate business information, a steady flow of specific reviews, and consistent name-address-phone data across the web are still the raw inputs the AI Overview draws from. What has changed is that winning those fundamentals is now necessary but not sufficient.

The businesses that show up inside the AI Overview are, in practice, drawn from the same pool that already leads the map pack. Losing map pack position does not just cost you a listing anymore. It cost you the input data the AI Overview needed to consider you at all.

How should you adapt your content?

Write pages built to be quoted, not just ranked. An AI Overview lifts specific, well-structured facts: a price range, a service radius, a turnaround time, a direct answer to a direct question. Vague marketing copy gives it nothing to cite.

That is the same discipline behind Citation Share, the headline measure of how often relevant AI answers cite a given business or brand. A location page written to answer 'how much does X cost in city]' or 'how long does X take' in plain, specific language is a page an AI Overview can pull from directly, the same logic that applies across [answer engine optimization generally, not just local search.

Build out full location pages rather than a name, address, and a map embed. Include pricing ranges, service-area detail, FAQs answered in one or two sentences each, and testimonials or project examples tied to the specific location. Thin pages that repeat the same boilerplate across every city give an AI Overview nothing distinctive to say about any of them.

How should you strengthen your Google Business Profile and reputation signals?

Treat the profile as a data feed, not a listing. Hours, categories, services, service areas, and attributes all become raw material an AI Overview can summarize or ignore, and an incomplete profile gives it less to work with than a competitor's complete one.

Reviews carry more weight than a star average. Specific reviews that mention a service, a price, or an outcome give an AI Overview language it can echo back, which is a different job than reassuring a human skimming stars before a click.

Consistency across the web still matters as much as it ever did for local rankings. Name, address, and phone data that disagrees across directories, your website, and your profile creates the kind of ambiguity that keeps an AI Overview from citing you with confidence, and confidence is exactly what determines whether it names you or the business next door.

How do you know if your local AI Overviews strategy is working?

Track citation share on the prompts that actually matter to your business, not generic keyword rank. For a local business, that means checking how often you are cited on '[service] in [city]' style prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews, not just where you sit in classic organic results.

Watch answer presence alongside citation share: the breadth of the local question universe (pricing questions, comparison questions, 'near me' questions, 'is X good for Y' questions) where your business shows up at all. A business can win a handful of prompts and still be invisible across the rest of the questions its customers actually ask.

Finally, track share of voice against the specific competitors you lose deals to locally, not the market in general. A rising citation share in isolation tells you less than a rising citation share relative to the two or three competitors an AI Overview keeps naming instead of you.

Sources

AI Overviews triggered on roughly 68% of local business queries on average (range 57% to 80%), based on a manual sample of 540 queries across six industries in three US cities. Whitespark, 2025-05-12

Pages ranking under an AI Overview see about 58% lower average clickthrough rate, up from a 34.5% reduction measured roughly eight months earlier, based on an analysis of 300,000 keywords comparing pre-AI Overviews Google Search Console data to December 2025. Ahrefs, 2026-02-04