Google AI Overviews: what changes for a London business

Search "is Canary Wharf a good place to open a gym" or "how much does a loft conversion cost in Wandsworth" and the first thing on the page is often an answer written by Google, with a few links beside it. That is an AI Overview. Open the AI Mode tab and ask a longer question, and the whole page becomes a written answer with links. For a London business the question is simple and slightly alarming: if Google answers the question, does anyone still click, and if they do, how do you become one of the links?

This guide answers both parts with what Google has published and with one independent study, and says which is which. The wider field (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, and the crawler decisions that go with them) is covered in our guide to AI search and GEO.

What AI Overviews and AI Mode are

AI Overviews are the generated summary that appears above some results, with links to the pages it drew on. Google brought them to the UK in August 2024, naming the "six new countries: United Kingdom, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil" in its announcement, and by May 2025 said they were "available in over 200 countries and territories, and more than 40 languages". Google’s documentation says they are "only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search", which is why many searches, especially the ones where someone wants a business rather than an explanation, still show a plain results page.

AI Mode is a separate tab on the results page where the entire response is generated. Google introduced it in the UK on 28 July 2025 and described it as "particularly helpful for exploratory questions and for more complicated tasks like comparing products". The same post says early users were "asking questions that are two or three times the length of traditional search queries", and that where Google lacks high confidence "you will see a set of web search results" instead.

Both draw on Google’s ordinary index. Google’s documentation explains that they may use "query fan-out", issuing several related searches to gather a wider set of pages, that the two can use different models so their links differ, and that the only eligibility requirement is a page that is indexed and can be shown in Search with a snippet. Most of what follows is the ordinary work to a higher standard.

Which London searches get an AI answer

Google does not publish a list of query types that trigger an AI Overview, and the behaviour changes, so treat any table of trigger rates with suspicion, including one from us. What Google has said is what the features are for: AI Overviews for understanding a topic, AI Mode for exploring, comparing and multi-step tasks. Applied to the searches a London customer makes, that gives a usable pattern.

The practical reading: the research searches before a purchase (what, how much, which, versus) are where AI answers appear most and where your explainer and pricing pages do the work, while "find me one now" searches still run through the map pack and the Business Profile.

What happens to clicks: the published evidence

Separate what Google says from what independent data shows. Google’s August 2024 announcement said that showing "links to supporting web pages directly within AI Overviews is driving higher traffic to publisher sites", without a figure. The one large independent study we would rely on is from the Pew Research Center, which tracked the browsing of 900 US adults across 68,879 Google searches in March 2025. It found that 18 percent of searches produced an AI summary; that users who saw one clicked a traditional result in 8 percent of visits, against 15 percent when there was no summary; that a link inside the summary itself was clicked in 1 percent of such visits; and that users ended their browsing session on 26 percent of pages with a summary, against 16 percent without.

Two cautions before you apply that to a Lewisham garage or a Farringdon law firm. The Pew data is American and from March 2025, so UK figures today may differ, and it averages every kind of search, most of which are not commercial. What the study establishes is the direction: where an AI summary appears, fewer people click any result, and very few click the summary’s own links.

Three consequences follow. Being named accurately in an answer has value without a click, because the person may walk in, call, or search your name next. The pages that still earn a click offer what the summary cannot: your price, your booking form, your availability, your photographs of the work. And reporting has to move from clicks alone to impressions in AI features, brand searches and enquiries.

How Google chooses the pages it links

Google’s Search Relations team published its advice in May 2025, and it reads like an ordinary SEO brief with the standard raised. The post asks for unique, valuable content for people; a great page experience; content Google can access; sensible preview controls; structured data that matches the visible content; and images and video as well as text. On preview controls it is explicit: "More restrictive permissions will limit how your content is featured in our AI experiences." On structured data it asks for "all the content in your markup" to be visible on the page, in line with Google’s general rule that "your structured data must be a true representation of the page content".

Google also says there are no new requirements: "You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features." That sentence rules out most of what is sold as "AI Overviews optimisation". What is left is the work that was always worth doing, done to the standard an answer engine demands:

• The question answered in the first paragraph under a heading that matches it. A page about loft conversion costs in Wandsworth that opens with the range, the drivers and the planning constraints is quotable; one that opens with the firm’s history is not.
• Facts stated as facts: prices, times, capacities, areas covered, qualifications. Google’s helpful content guidance treats trust as the most important of its four qualities, and a page that will not commit to a number is hard to trust.
• A named author and a visible date, with a short line on why they are qualified to say it. The guidance asks whether it is "self-evident to your visitors who authored your content".
• Images and video that support the text (the work, the premises, the people), with descriptive alt text, because Google says its AI experiences are multimodal.
• A fast page on a phone that is crawlable and rendered on the server. The technical SEO checklist covers the audit.
• Agreement between your site, your Business Profile and the pages that describe you, so Google’s query fan-out finds the same facts wherever it looks.

The guide to content that ranks sets out the page structure in full. The short version is that a page written to be quoted is a page written to answer, and that is also the page that converts.

The controls you have

Because AI Overviews and AI Mode are part of Search, the controls are the ordinary Search controls, and Google documents their effect on the AI features. Several London sites we review have opted out by accident with a setting added years ago.

The audit takes five minutes: view the source of your home page, your main service page and one guide, and search for "nosnippet" and "max-snippet". If either is present and you did not put it there, remove it. Then read robots.txt and any bot rules on your CDN, and make the Google-Extended decision knowing it does not affect your place in Search.

Reading the effect in Search Console

Until mid-2026 the only way to see AI features in Search Console was inside the ordinary totals. Google’s help centre explains that "clicking a link to an external page in the AI Overview counts as a click", that "an AI Overview occupies a single position in search results" shared by all its links, and that AI Mode position "follows the same methodology as a Google Search results page". The Performance report included the AI traffic but did not separate it; anyone who told you what share of your clicks came from AI Overviews was estimating.

That changed on 3 June 2026, when Google announced Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, "designed to give you dedicated views of your impressions within generative AI features on Search", with a separate Discover view. The reports show impressions, the pages that appeared, countries, devices and dates. They were rolled out "to a subset of websites" first, and a note on the announcement says they reached all websites on 31 August 2026. Two limits to keep in mind: the dedicated report is about impressions, with clicks still counted in the ordinary report, and the data starts from when the report began, so there is no history to compare against.

These go in the monthly report beside the ordinary search figures, with measured numbers and our interpretation kept apart. The reporting guide shows the format.

What this means for a London business, by type

The effect is not uniform, and the response should not be either.

Local services (trades, dentists, clinics, garages)

The "find one now" searches still run through the map pack and the Business Profile, so local SEO remains the main job. The change is in the research searches ("how much", "is it worth", "what does it involve"), where a page that states prices and process for your part of London becomes the cited source. A Croydon electrician with a plain page on EICR costs for landlords is quotable; the one with "competitive prices" is not.

Restaurants, bars and hospitality

Recommendation searches ("best", "for a group", "near the Barbican") are AI Mode territory, answered from reviews, guides and your own pages. Menu, prices, capacity and booking terms need to be in HTML, the reviews real and recent, and the Business Profile and site must agree on hours.

Professional services (law, accountancy, architecture, finance)

The research searches are long and specific, which suits AI Mode. Pages that explain a process or a cost for a London context, signed by the person who does the work, are the ones cited. Regulatory wording (SRA, FCA, ARB) must match your registrations, because consistency across sources is part of how you are identified.

Ecommerce, retail and software

Product comparisons, "best X for Y" and "versus" searches are summarised from product pages, reviews and guides, and they quote stale or competitor-written pages if yours are not clear. Product structured data with live price and availability, specification tables in HTML, a current pricing page and buying guides linked to categories are what the engine reads. The ecommerce SEO guide covers the structure.

The AI Overviews checklist

1. List the research searches your customers make before they choose you (what, how much, which, versus) and check by hand which ones currently show an AI Overview or an AI Mode answer; screenshot and date them.
2. For each, identify or create the page that answers the question in its first paragraph for your part of London, with a named author and a date.
3. State prices, ranges, times and terms as facts; move menus, price lists and brochures out of PDFs and images.
4. Check the source of your key pages for nosnippet and max-snippet; remove any you did not choose.
5. Validate structured data and remove markup for anything a visitor cannot see on the page.
6. Add photographs and video of the real work, premises and people, with descriptive alt text.
7. Reconcile your site with your Google Business Profile and the pages that describe you: name, address, hours, services, prices.
8. Open Search Console’s Search Generative AI performance report and note which pages already earn AI impressions; watch brand searches and enquiries beside clicks.
9. Re-run the hand checks monthly and report named or not, accurate or not, and which page was cited.

If you would like this done for you, the free SEO audit includes the AI search check: two assistants asked five of your customers’ questions, with what they said and which pages they cited, delivered by a person within two working days. The ongoing work is described on the AI search optimisation page and sits inside the higher managed SEO tiers; what drives the price is on the pricing page, and any figure there is indicative until confirmed in writing. On guarantees: Google says "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google", and an answer generated afresh each time is less predictable than a ranking, not more. We do not guarantee a citation and we have not yet published an AI search case study.

Get your free SEO auditA person reviews your site within two working days: the AI search check, the technical blockers and the three fixes that matter most, written as instructions your developer can follow.