[The Engines]
What New SEO Tactics Are Needed for AI-Dominated Local Searches?
A May 2025 study found AI Overviews now outpace local packs on local business searches by a 29-point margin. Here is what changed, who it hits hardest, and the new tactics that win citations on both sides of the split.
The short answer
Google's AI Overviews now answer most upper-funnel local questions (cost, comparisons, 'best of') before a searcher ever reaches a website, appearing on 92% to 97% of informational and hybrid local queries. Local packs still dominate bottom-funnel, transactional searches like 'plumber in Houston' at 93%. The fix is not abandoning local SEO, it is building the informational content that earns a citation in the answer, alongside the NAP work that still wins the map pack.
What changed in local search since Google's AI Overviews arrived?
Google's AI Overviews launched in the US on May 14, 2024, replacing the ten-blue-links answer with a synthesized summary for a growing share of queries. Fifteen months later, local search shows the clearest fault line yet. A May 2025 study by Whitespark ran 540 real searches across Houston, Phoenix and Denver in six service industries (plumbers, personal injury lawyers, dentists, optometrists, medical clinics, and real estate agents) and found AI Overviews now appear across an average of 68% of local business searches, ranging from 57% to 80% depending on the city and industry. The local pack, the three-listing map block searchers used to treat as the default answer, showed up in only 39% of the same searches. That is a 29-point gap in favor of the AI-generated answer.
The gap is not uniform, and a second study explains why. Broader keyword research from Ahrefs, reported by Search Engine Journal in November 2025 from a sample of 146 million search results, found AI Overviews trigger on just 7.9% of local searches overall, against 20.5% of all keywords. That is not a contradiction of the Whitespark number, it is a scope difference. Ahrefs measured every geo-modified keyword in a general dataset. Whitespark isolated the specific 'near me' and '[service] in [city]' searches a local business owner actually competes on, then split them by intent. That split is where the real strategic shift shows up.
Why does the split between local-intent and informational queries matter?
Whitespark's 68% average breaks into three intent buckets, and the pattern is the before-and-after that should drive strategy. On pure local-intent queries, like 'plumber in Houston', AI Overviews appeared just 15% of the time and the local pack still owned 93%. Google still trusts map data, reviews, and proximity to answer a 'find me one now' question. On informational queries, like 'how much does a root canal cost', AI Overviews appeared 92% of the time and the local pack fell to 6%. Hybrid queries that mix intent, like 'best dentist for veneers near me', saw AI Overviews at 97% and the local pack at just 17%.
Before AI Overviews existed, none of this distinction mattered: every one of those query types resolved to organic links and, for local intent, a map pack underneath them. Now the local search funnel has effectively split in two. The transactional bottom of the funnel, the map-pack territory, still runs on the fundamentals: citations, reviews, and NAP consistency. The educational top of the funnel, cost questions, comparisons, and symptom or eligibility checks, has moved almost entirely into a zone where Google is quoting one or two sources instead of linking to ten. If your content only exists to win the map pack, you have ceded the entire upper funnel to whoever Google decides to quote.
- Local intent ('plumber in Houston'): AI Overviews 15%, local pack 93%
- Informational intent ('cost of a root canal'): AI Overviews 92%, local pack 6%
- Hybrid intent ('best dentist for veneers near me'): AI Overviews 97%, local pack 17%
- Overall average across all intents and six industries: AI Overviews 68%, local pack 39%
| Query intent | Example query | AI Overview appearance | Local pack appearance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local intent | plumber in Houston | 15% | 93% |
| Informational | cost of a root canal | 92% | 6% |
| Hybrid | best dentist for veneers near me | 97% | 17% |
| Overall average | all six industries combined | 68% | 39% |
Who does this shift affect most?
The businesses most exposed are the ones that built their entire local SEO program around Google Business Profile optimization and map-pack ranking factors, with little or no content answering the questions a prospect asks before they are ready to call. In Whitespark's six studied verticals, that describes most independent plumbers, dentists, optometrists, and personal injury lawyers competing against national aggregators who already publish cost guides, comparison pages, and FAQ content at scale. Real estate stood out as an exception: agents saw AI Overviews on only about 50% of local-intent queries, evidence that the pace of this shift varies by vertical rather than applying evenly.
It also affects any business that assumed rankings and citations were the same thing. A page can hold a strong local pack position and still be invisible in the AI Overview above it, because the overview is built from whichever pages Google's model judges as clearly, factually answering the informational half of the query, not from map data. Businesses that never built that content have nothing for the model to cite, regardless of how well their Google Business Profile is optimized.
How should you respond with new local SEO tactics?
The response is not to abandon map-pack fundamentals, since local-intent queries still send 93% of searches there. It is to build a second layer of content aimed at the informational and hybrid queries now dominated by AI Overviews, structured so a model can extract and cite it directly.
- Build genuine informational content: cost guides, comparison pages, 'what to expect' explainers, and FAQ pages for the questions prospects ask before they search for a provider by name.
- Keep location pages complete, not thin: name, address, phone, service area, hours, pricing ranges, testimonials, and project examples on every page, since Rabbit Rank's July 2026 analysis of this same shift found sparse location pages are the ones losing AI citation share fastest.
- Write direct, extractable answers: put the one-sentence answer in the first line under each question-shaped heading, then support it. That format is what gets lifted into an AI Overview.
- Keep NAP and citation consistency intact across directories and your Google Business Profile. It still drives the 93% of local-intent traffic the local pack owns.
- Track answer presence, not just rank position: check whether your business is actually named inside AI Overviews for your top cost, comparison, and best-of queries, not just whether you rank on page one underneath them.
What should you measure now that visibility splits across two SERP features?
A rank tracker built for ten blue links cannot tell you whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google's own AI Overview cited your business by name. That is a different metric: Citation Share, the percentage of relevant AI answers in your category that cite you, tracked separately for local-pack visibility and for AI Overview and other-engine citations. The two numbers will diverge, sometimes sharply, for the same business, and both need reporting because the searchers behind them are at different points in the decision.
The overall trend line points one direction. Ahrefs' November 2025 sample already put AI Overviews on 20.5% of all keywords, up from a far smaller share a year earlier, and question-format queries, the format most local informational searches take, trigger AI Overviews 57.9% of the time. Local search is not exempt from that trend, it is simply arriving unevenly by intent. Businesses that build the informational layer now are the ones a model will have something to cite when the local-intent share starts moving too.
Source: Whitespark, 'The Prevalence of AI Overviews in Local Search', 2025-05-12
Key takeaways
- AI Overviews now appear across an average of 68% of local business searches, versus 39% for local packs, per a May 2025 study of six industries in three US cities.
- The 68% figure hides a sharp split: local-intent queries still show a local pack 93% of the time, but informational and hybrid queries show an AI Overview 92% to 97% of the time.
- Google's own AI Overviews launched in the US on May 14, 2024, meaning this entire shift has played out in roughly a year.
- Broader keyword data puts local AI Overview triggering lower (7.9%) than Whitespark's business-query sample (68%), because the two studies measure different query sets, not because the trend is smaller than it looks.
- The winning response is additive, not a replacement: keep NAP, citations, and Google Business Profile work intact for the local pack, and build informational content for the AI Overview layer.
- Track answer presence and citation share for AI engines separately from local-pack rank, since a business can hold one and lose the other.
Omnicite Editorial. "Local SEO Tactics for AI-Dominated Search Results" The Citation Report, Omnicite. https://omnicite.co/blog/what-new-seo-tactics-are-needed-for-ai-dominated/
Sources
AI Overviews averaged 68% appearance across local business searches versus 39% for local packs, with a breakdown by local, informational, and hybrid intent Whitespark, 2025-05-12
AI Overviews appear on 20.5% of all keywords and 7.9% of local searches specifically, based on a 146-million-keyword Ahrefs analysis Search Engine Journal, 2025-11-10
Google's AI Overviews launched in the United States in May 2024 Wikipedia, 2024-05-14
News reaction context on the Whitespark data and strategy recommendations for local business location pages Rabbit Rank, 2026-07-22
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of local searches now show an AI Overview instead of a local pack?
It depends on intent. Whitespark's May 2025 study found AI Overviews averaged 68% across local business searches overall, but only 15% on pure local-intent queries like 'plumber in Houston', where the local pack still appeared 93% of the time. Informational and hybrid local queries showed AI Overviews 92% to 97% of the time.
Does this mean local pack optimization no longer matters?
No. Local-intent searches, the ones closest to a phone call or a visit, still show a local pack 93% of the time. NAP consistency, reviews, and Google Business Profile completeness remain the fundamentals for that layer. What changed is the informational layer above it, which now needs its own content strategy.
Which local businesses are most affected by AI Overviews?
Whitespark's study covered plumbers, personal injury lawyers, dentists, optometrists, medical clinics, and real estate agents, and found the shift consistent across those industries except real estate, where AI Overviews appeared on only about 50% of local-intent queries. Any business without informational content, cost guides, comparisons, or FAQs, has the least to be cited from in the AI Overview layer.
What content should a local business build to get cited in an AI Overview?
Direct, extractable answers to the questions prospects ask before they search by name: cost ranges, what-to-expect explainers, comparison pages, and FAQ sections, alongside complete location pages with pricing, service area, and testimonials. Put the direct answer in the first line under each heading.
How is this different from the local pack ranking factors most SEO tools track?
Local pack ranking is measured by position in the three-listing map block. AI Overview visibility is measured by whether a model actually names your business in its answer, a separate metric sometimes called citation share or answer presence, and it needs to be tracked independently because the two can diverge for the same business.
When did Google's AI Overviews launch, and how fast has local search changed since?
AI Overviews launched in the US on May 14, 2024. By November 2025, Ahrefs research found they appeared on 20.5% of all keywords generally, and Whitespark's May 2025 local-specific study already had them ahead of local packs on two of three local search intents, so the shift has moved fast, in roughly a year and a half.