What Google AI Overviews Mean for Local Business Traffic in 2026

Look, I've had three conversations this week with business owners in Hitchin and Stevenage who are watching their traffic numbers drop and they can't figure out why. Their rankings haven't changed. Their site's still there. Google still likes them, apparently. But the clicks? Down 20%, 30%, in one case nearly 40% since last summer.

The culprit's pretty obvious if you know where to look. Google's AI Overviews.

What's actually happening with AI Overviews right now

Right, so AI Overviews, the big AI-generated answers that sit at the top of Google results. They rolled out properly in the UK mid-2024, been testing and tweaking ever since. By 2026, they're showing up on something like 60-70% of searches where Google thinks it can give you an answer directly.

Which sounds fine until you realise that "searches where Google thinks it can give you an answer" includes a hell of a lot of local service searches.

"Best plumber in Baldock" used to give you a local pack and some organic results. Now? You get an AI Overview that pulls from a few sources, gives you three or four names, maybe mentions some criteria, and for a lot of people... that's enough. They don't scroll. They pick one from the AI answer and they're done.

I pulled data from about fifteen local service clients last month. Across the board, informational searches still drive traffic. But anything that looks remotely like someone's ready to pick a business? That's where the drop-off is happening.

The bit that's actually worse for local businesses

Here's what's doing my head in about this whole thing.

National brands and aggregators are still getting traffic. Your Checkatrades, your Rated Peoples, your big directory sites. They've got enough authority and enough mentions across the web that the AI Overviews pull from them constantly. They're in the answer, they're cited as sources, people click through.

But your local roofer in Letchworth who's been doing solid work for twenty years? The accountant in Royston with a decent website and good reviews? They're getting mentioned less. Or they're getting mentioned in the AI Overview but people aren't clicking through because they got enough information right there in the answer.

You're being used as a source without getting the visit. Which is brilliant.

And the traffic you do get is different. It's either people who scrolled past the AI Overview, which means they're probably more skeptical or doing deeper research. Or it's people searching for your business name directly because they already know about you.

New customer discovery through Google? That's the bit that's taking a kicking.

What actually works (from what we're seeing)

OK so I'm not going to pretend I've got this completely figured out. No one does, really. Google's still changing how these things work every few months. But there are patterns in what's holding up better.

Getting cited in the AI Overview matters more than ranking

Used to be all about that number one position. Get to the top of page one, you win. Now? If you're ranking #3 but you're the source the AI Overview quotes, you're probably getting more visibility than position one.

We've been doing AEO work, answer engine optimisation, basically making sure when AI systems are looking for information about local services, they're finding clear, structured answers from our clients. That means schema markup done properly. Clear answers to obvious questions. Content that actually tells AI systems what you do and where you do it without making them work for it.

One of our clients, a heating engineer covering North Hertfordshire, restructured their service pages to be more answer-focused. Not "Welcome to our boiler repair service" fluff. More "We repair boilers across Hitchin, Stevenage, and Letchworth. Emergency callouts within 2 hours. Gas Safe registered for X years."

Three months later, they're showing up in AI Overviews for about 40% of the local heating searches we tracked. Their overall traffic's down about 15% year on year, which sounds bad until you realise most of their competitors are down 35-40%. And their actual enquiry rate from that traffic? Up, because the people who do click through are more qualified.

Being specific about location and service seems to help

Vague doesn't work anymore. "Serving Hertfordshire" gets you nowhere. The AI Overviews seem to favour businesses that are specific about exactly what they do and exactly where they do it.

We've seen better results when businesses mention actual towns, actual postcodes, actual coverage areas. Not just once on a "areas we cover" page that no one reads. Throughout the site, naturally, in the context of actually answering questions.

Which makes sense if you think about it. The AI's trying to give someone a useful answer. "This business serves Hertfordshire" isn't as useful as "This business does boiler repairs in Stevenage and Hitchin with same-day availability."

Reviews and citations matter more, not less

This surprised me a bit, but businesses with consistent reviews across multiple platforms seem to show up more in AI Overviews. Google's pulling from everywhere now. Your Google reviews, yeah, but also Trustpilot, Yell, Facebook, industry-specific review sites.

If you've got recent reviews that mention what you do and where you are, that's signal. The AI systems are using that to verify you're legitimate and active in your area.

One client in Baldock, they'd been ignoring reviews for ages. Got them to start asking for reviews properly, responding to everything, building it up across platforms. Four months in, they're appearing in AI Overviews they weren't in before. Can't prove causation, but the timing's interesting.

The stuff that definitely doesn't work anymore

Writing content for SEO in the old way. Keyword density, exact match phrases repeated awkwardly, that whole game. The AI systems don't care. They're looking for actual information.

I've seen sites that rank well traditionally get completely ignored by AI Overviews because their content reads like it was written for a robot. Which, to be fair, it was. Just the wrong type of robot.

And those local landing pages where you just copy the same content and swap the town name? "We're the best plumber in Hitchin" / "We're the best plumber in Stevenage" / "We're the best plumber in Letchworth." That's not getting you anywhere. The AI systems can tell it's template content. They're smarter than the old algorithm about that stuff.

What this means for you, practically

If you're running a local business and you're seeing traffic drop, it's probably this. And sitting around waiting for it to go back to how it was... that's not a plan.

You need to be optimising for how people are actually finding businesses now. Which is through AI answers first, then maybe clicking through. Maybe.

That means structured information. Clear answers. Being specific about what you do and where. Building up signals across multiple platforms that confirm you're real and you're good at what you do.

It's AEO more than SEO at this point. The ranking still matters, but being the source that gets cited matters more.

Worth saying, this isn't going backwards. Google's all in on AI Overviews. They're expanding them, not pulling back. Every month there's more searches getting the AI treatment. So this is the game now, basically.

If you're in Hertfordshire and this is hitting you, we've been working on this specific problem for local businesses for the last couple of years. Got some frameworks that seem to be working, at least as much as anything's working in 2026.

Book a call if you want to talk about what this looks like for your business specifically. Or if you're in North Herts, we've put together a proper breakdown of AEO in North Hertfordshire that goes deeper on the local angle.

Either way, don't just watch the traffic drop and hope it comes back. It won't.