AI Overviews for small business: which searches really change

Google now answers many questions itself, above the first link. When it comes to AI Overviews for small business, the useful question is not whether they exist, but which of your searches they actually touch. The short answer: mostly the long questions, much less the short searches someone types when they already want to hire you.

The short answer

AI Overviews appear above all on long, question-shaped searches such as “how much does a new roof cost” or “what does a notary do when you buy a flat”. They appear far less often on short searches such as “electrician Bolzano”. For a small business this means: your guides and explainers are the most exposed, your service and contact pages much less so.

How often they appear

The share is rising quickly. According to Comscore's Q2 2026 AI Intelligence Report, 39.4% of Google desktop searches in the US showed an AI Overview in June 2026, up from 25.8% in July 2025. Comscore counts how often the box appears, not how many clicks it costs.

Which searches it appears on was measured by Pew Research Center, using the real browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025 (68,879 Google searches):

• 18% of all searches showed an AI summary.
• Only 8% of searches with one or two words did.
• 53% of searches with ten words or more did.
• 60% of searches that began with a question word such as “who”, “what” or “why” did.

The overall level has risen since then; the pattern is what matters for you. Neither study covers Italy or the German-speaking countries, so treat the figures as a direction, not as your local number.

What they do to clicks

Fewer people click through when an AI Overview is shown. In Pew's data, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary and in 15% of visits without one. A link inside the summary itself was clicked in just 1% of visits.

The strongest evidence so far comes from a field experiment by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Northeastern University, published as a preprint in August 2026 and not yet peer-reviewed. 1,100 US participants searched as usual for ten days while a browser extension changed what they saw. Sending every search to Google's AI Mode cut click-through to websites by 18.8 percentage points and lowered satisfaction and trust. Hiding AI Overviews raised click-through by an estimated 8.8 points; the extension only managed to hide about half of them, so this second figure rests on an assumption.

Google is changing the links in these answers. On 15 October 2026 Google announced more inline links, shown higher up in the answer, and a test with a dedicated section for official websites at the top. Google published no click figures with it; whether the 1% changes, only new measurements will show.

Fewer clicks are not automatically fewer customers. Why that is, and when it is not, we explain in Fewer clicks, better customers.

What this means for your pages

Think of your website in three kinds of pages:

1. Service and location pages (“tiler Merano”, “tax adviser Bolzano”). Short searches, rarely an AI Overview. Here your Google Business Profile, your reviews and a clear page per service still decide.
2. Guides and explainers (“how long does a building permit take”). These are the searches AI Overviews answer most often. Write these pages so that a machine can take a statement from them without guessing: one clear sentence per fact, figures with their source, no answer hidden in the fifth paragraph. Then your page has a chance of being named as a source.
3. Searches for your name. If Google shows an AI Overview for your business name, it shows what Google believes about you. Check it for wrong opening hours, old addresses or services you no longer offer.

What Google says you have to do

Nothing special. Google's documentation on AI features and your website states: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” A page has to be indexed and allowed to show a snippet in normal search.

Two details matter in practice:

• You now see where you appear, but not what it brings. Since 31 August 2026, Search Console shows every website its own insights on generative AI features: impressions, which pages appear and in which countries. Google has not announced separate click figures; clicks still count inside the normal “Web” performance report.
• You can opt out, but it rarely pays. Since 31 August 2026, a setting in Search Console lets every website decide whether it appears in AI Overviews and AI Mode at all, and Google says it is not used as a ranking signal for normal results. The price is stated just as plainly: “Sites that opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from our generative AI features.” The older rules nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet go further and apply to all of Search. For a small business that wants to be named, both usually mean giving up more than they protect.

A 15-minute check for your own searches

1. Open Search Console and note the 20 searches with the most impressions.
2. Search each of them in a private browser window.
3. Write down three things per search: AI Overview yes or no, your site named as a source yes or no, and the date.
4. Repeat once a month. The answers change, so a single check is a snapshot, not a result.

How to run a similar check for ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants is described in How do you check if an AI is actually citing you?

In short

AI Overviews take clicks above all from long questions. If most of your enquiries come from short searches for a service in a place, you are less exposed than the headlines suggest. If your website lives from guides, write them so they can be quoted, and check every month whether they are.

How btlabs Core shows Google results, AI mentions and visitors side by side, kept separate and without cookies, is explained under Measuring visibility.