If you’ve checked your website traffic recently and noticed it quietly drifting down, even though your rankings look fine, you’re not imagining it. There’s a real, identifiable cause — and it’s not something you’ve done wrong.
It’s Google’s AI Overviews: the AI-generated summary that now appears at the top of many search results, answering the question directly before anyone scrolls down to the actual list of websites.
For a lot of searches, that summary is enough. The person gets their answer, and never clicks through to any website at all — including yours, even if you’re ranked first underneath it.
Why this matters more for local businesses than it might seem
It’s easy to assume this only affects informational searches — “what are the symptoms of X” or “how does Y work” — where a quick AI summary genuinely answers the question. But local, service-based searches are increasingly affected too. Questions like “best local SEO agency in York” or “do I need planning permission for a conservatory” are exactly the kind of thing AI Overviews now attempt to answer directly.
The result is fewer clicks overall, even when your rankings haven’t moved. It can feel like something’s broken, when really the goalposts have shifted.
What you can still control
The good news is that this isn’t a problem you can do nothing about — it just changes where the effort needs to go.
- Being the source the Overview pulls from. Google’s AI Overviews are themselves generated from existing content. Clear, well-structured, genuinely informative pages are more likely to be the source cited or summarised — which still puts your business in front of the searcher, even without a click.
- Owning the searches that aren’t easily summarised. Broad, generic questions get swallowed by AI Overviews. Specific, local, decision-stage searches — “[service] in [specific area] reviews,” “[service] cost near me” — are harder to answer with a generic AI summary, and still drive real clicks.
- Doubling down on your Google Business Profile. As organic clicks become less reliable, your GBP becomes even more important, because map pack results sit largely outside the AI Overview and remain a direct route to a call or a visit.
- Building presence beyond your website. The same logic from AI chat tools applies here — reviews, directories, and mentions elsewhere all help you show up in the answer itself, not just the list of links underneath it.
The shift in mindset
The instinct when traffic drops is to chase rankings harder. But if the issue is fewer people clicking at all, better rankings alone won’t fix it. The businesses adapting well to this aren’t necessarily ranking higher — they’re making sure they’re impossible to summarise away, and making the most of the local search real estate that AI Overviews don’t touch.
It’s a genuinely different way of thinking about visibility, and one we’re building into how we approach local SEO for clients now, rather than waiting for it to become obvious in everyone’s traffic numbers.
Missed it? Last time we looked at why ranking well on Google doesn’t guarantee you show up when customers ask ChatGPT for a recommendation — a related shift worth understanding alongside this one.