AI search, AI Overviews and what small businesses should do

What's changed

Google now shows AI Overviews for some searches: a generated summary at the top of results with links to the sources it drew on. It also offers AI Mode, a more conversational search experience. Outside Google, people ask chatbots and AI assistants for recommendations, including which local business to use.

For a small business, this raises fair questions. Will fewer people click through? Can you appear in these answers? Do you need to do anything different?

What Google says

Google's documentation on AI features and your website is clear on the main point: there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special markup or files are needed. The same SEO best practices apply. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet in ordinary Google Search to be used as a supporting link.

That's useful because it means the work you'd do anyway still counts.

What this means in practice

Get the basics right

Pages that can't be crawled, indexed or understood won't appear anywhere. Make sure your important pages are indexed and that you haven't blocked Google with robots.txt or snippet controls you didn't mean to set.

Answer questions plainly

AI summaries often pull from pages that answer a specific question clearly. If a customer asks "how long does a boiler service take?", a page that says "about an hour for most gas boilers, longer if parts need replacing" is easy to understand and cite. A page that buries the answer under marketing copy isn't.

Be specific and first-hand

Generic content is what AI tools can generate on their own. What they can't generate is your experience: your prices, your process, your photos, your local knowledge. Google's guidance on helpful, reliable, people-first content rewards that.

Make your business easy to identify

AI tools and search engines need to be confident about who you are. Keep your name, address, phone number and services consistent across your website, Business Profile and key directories. Use the same business name everywhere.

Will AI answers reduce my traffic?

For some kinds of search, possibly. Simple factual questions, such as a tax deadline date for an accountant's clients, may be answered without a click. That's already been happening with featured snippets for years, a pattern called zero-click search.

But many searches small businesses depend on end in an action that an AI summary can't complete: booking, buying, calling or visiting. People still need to choose a business, check reviews and get in touch. For local searches, the map results remain prominent.

The sensible response is to measure what matters. Track enquiries and sales from organic search, not just clicks. Our guide to measuring SEO return covers how.

Things you don't need to do

• Buy "AI SEO" packages that promise placement. Nobody controls what AI tools say, and Google says there's no special optimisation required.
• Rewrite everything for chatbots. Clear writing for people works for both.
• Rely on llms.txt. It's a proposed file format some tools may read. Google doesn't use it for Search, and it's no substitute for good pages.
• Publish huge amounts of AI-generated content. Google's spam policies cover scaled content abuse regardless of how it's produced.

Checking whether you appear

There's no dedicated report for AI Overviews. Google includes AI feature traffic in the overall Search Console Performance report. To get a feel for it:

1. Search your main questions on your phone and look at whether an AI Overview appears and which sources it links to. 2. Ask a few AI assistants the questions your customers ask, such as "who are the best-reviewed accountants in Exeter", and note whether you're mentioned. 3. Look at which competitors are cited and what their pages do differently.

Treat this as research, not a scoreboard. AI answers vary from one search to the next.

A worked example

A physiotherapy clinic in Bath noticed AI Overviews appearing for questions like "how many physio sessions for a frozen shoulder". Its existing page on frozen shoulder was a short paragraph and a booking button.

The clinic rewrote it with a clear explanation of the condition's stages, what treatment involves at their practice, how many sessions people typically need and why it varies, written and checked by a chartered physiotherapist registered with the HCPC. They added the clinician's name and credentials. The page became more useful for patients whether or not it ever appeared in an AI answer. That's the right test.

The bottom line

AI search changes how some results look. It doesn't change what makes a business worth recommending: clear, accurate, specific information, a good reputation and a website search engines can read. Spend your time there.