Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: what local businesses can and can't control

Google now answers many searches with AI before it shows any links. There are two versions of this, and they behave differently:

• AI Overviews is the summary that appears at the top of an ordinary Google results page for some searches, with links to the pages it drew on.
• AI Mode is a separate, conversational mode of Google Search, where the whole answer is AI-written and you can ask follow-up questions. Google started rolling it out to everyone in the US in May 2025 (external site).

For a local business, these two matter more than any other AI product, simply because they sit inside Google, where most of your customers already search. This article sets out what Google has said publicly about them, what it hasn't, and what you can do.

What Google says

Google has published a guide to AI features for site owners (external site) and a blog post on succeeding in AI search (external site). Taken together, the main points are:

There's no special trick. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode and no special optimisation needed. To be shown as a supporting link, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. The usual basics apply: let Googlebot crawl your site, make sure pages load properly, and put important content in text.

No special schema is needed. Google says plainly that there's no special schema.org structured data you need to add for these features. If you do use structured data, it must match what's visible on the page.

Answers are built from several searches. Both features may use what Google calls "query fan-out": breaking the question into subtopics and running several related searches, then building one answer. For a local question, that means the answer can draw on pages that would never have appeared in the top ten results for the exact words the customer typed.

Keep your Business Profile current. In its AI search post, Google asks site owners to make sure their Business Profile information is up to date. For a local business, that is the most direct instruction Google gives.

The traffic is counted with normal search. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in the Performance report in Search Console, under the "Web" search type. They aren't broken out separately.

They can be wrong. Google's help page for searchers (external site) says AI Overviews "can and will make mistakes", and that the feature can't be turned off, only filtered with the Web results view.

What Google hasn't said

• How businesses are chosen for an AI answer. Google has published how local results work in general: its local ranking help page (external site) names relevance, distance and prominence, and says more reviews and positive ratings can help. It has not said whether AI Overviews and AI Mode pick businesses the same way.
• Which Business Profile details appear, and how much they count. We don't know whether the AI features read your category, services, description or reviews, or in what proportion.
• How personal the answers are. Google said in May 2025 that AI Mode would offer personalised suggestions based on past searches. How much that changes a local shortlist for a given person isn't published.

The temptation is to fill those gaps with confident advice. We'd rather tell you they're gaps. What follows is the list of things you control that fit everything Google has said.

What you can control

1. Your Google Business Profile

This is the single most important thing for local visibility in Google, AI or not. Check it against Google's guidelines for representing your business (external site): the real business name (no keywords added), the right primary category, accurate hours including holiday hours, your phone number, your website, and the areas you serve if you travel to customers. Add your services, written the way customers describe them.

2. Reviews

Google says reviews and ratings help local ranking. Ask happy customers to leave one; Google's tips to get more reviews (external site) cover how to share a review link. Reply to reviews, including the critical ones. Don't buy reviews or offer incentives; that breaks Google's policies and puts the profile at risk.

3. Your website's basics

Because AI Overviews and AI Mode build on ordinary Google Search, the ordinary basics count:

• Googlebot isn't blocked (check your robots.txt; see Should you block AI crawlers?).
• You don't use nosnippet or a very small max-snippet on your main pages unless you mean to. Google says more restrictive snippet settings limit how your content appears in its AI features.
• Each service you offer, and each area you cover, is described in plain text somewhere on the site, not just in images or a PDF.
• Your name, address, phone and hours match your Business Profile exactly. LocalBusiness structured data can state these clearly; see LocalBusiness schema in plain English.

4. Answers to the questions customers ask

Query fan-out means Google may look for pages that answer the sub-questions inside a customer's question: "Do they do weekend call-outs?", "Do they cover Horsforth?", "How much does a boiler service cost?" A short, honest FAQ on your site that answers these in your own words gives those searches something to find. Google's advice is to write content that's genuinely useful to people, not pages made for search engines; its guide to helpful content (external site) has a self-check you can use.

5. The other sites that describe you

AI answers often cite listing and review sites as well as business websites. Make sure the directories that matter for your trade in your area list you, with the same details as your Business Profile.

What you can't control (and shouldn't pay to)

You can't pay Google for a better place in local results; its local ranking page (external site) says so in as many words. You can't opt a local question out of AI Overviews. And you can't make Google's AI describe you a particular way. Be wary of anyone who promises any of these.

How Saymeter measures this

Saymeter reads Google AI Overviews and AI Mode from the results Google shows for your customers' questions in your area, several times a week, alongside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. You see how often each one names you and your competitors, and which sites each one cites. The details, including how we set the location, are on our methodology page. Try a free scan to see your current position.