What Google’s AI Changes Mean for Your Local Search Visibility

August 11, 2025

There’s been a lot of noise lately about AI taking over the search world — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini — and whether you, as a business, should be throwing all your efforts into these platforms.

But here’s the reality: Google is still king. Let’s break down the data and what it means for your strategy.

People Still Trust Traditional Search Engines

According to Yext’s AI Search Archetypes report:

57% of people (across age brackets and continents) prefer traditional search engines for personal, medical, and financial research.
48% verify answers across multiple platforms, even if they use AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity.
Only 19% trust AI-generated answers vs. 45% who trust search engines.

That means, when it comes to trust and decision-making, search engines still have the edge.

Google’s Market Share Remains Dominant

According to SparkToro:

Google owns 93.57% of the search market.
While ChatGPT sees about 1 billion searches per day, Google gets over 43 billion.
Google’s search volume grew 21% last year, even with the rise of AI tools.

So yes, while AI is evolving fast, Google is growing too. And it’s still where people go to search.

AI Overviews Are Growing — But You Can Compete

Our own internal research of 1,600 local queries found:

AI Overviews appeared in 3% of transactional queries (e.g., “buy this,” “where to get that”).
They showed up in 29% of commercial and informational queries (e.g., “best dentist,” “how does XYZ work?”).
Importantly, 96% of AI Overviews cited a local business in the top three spots.

So yes — if you're a local business creating strong, optimized content, you can appear in AI Overviews. That’s a huge opportunity.

Don't Fall for the AI “Geo Services” Hype

There’s a rising wave of consultants and agencies selling “AI ranking” or “geo services” — claiming they can get you ranked in AI systems or layer some magical new strategy on top of your SEO.

Here’s the truth:

No one truly knows how AI systems “rank” content — and many don’t rank in a traditional sense at all.
Most of these services are just rebranded SEO — local optimization, structured data, content creation, etc.

If it sounds new, it’s probably just SEO — with a fancy label.

SEO Is Not Dead — It’s Just Evolved

Let’s break down some of the things agencies are pushing as “new AI strategies”:

Conversational search? Been doing that for years.
Entity building and knowledge graphs? That’s SEO.
Optimizing multimedia, infographics, and schema? Also SEO.
Creating content in specific formats for structured understanding? Still SEO.

What is different is how AI systems process and deliver information. But it doesn’t mean you need to abandon SEO — it means your SEO must align with how AI retrieves and displays answers.

Outdated Metrics Are Hurting Your Strategy

Let’s move past vanity metrics like:

Keyword rankings: With personalized search and proximity-based results, ranking tools can’t give you the full picture.
Raw traffic numbers: Traffic is being depreciated by AI engines that answer queries directly in the SERPs.

Instead, focus on:

Traffic to the right places.
Conversions and visibility in AI Overviews.
Structured, useful content that satisfies intent.

More traffic and more content do not equal better results anymore.

How AI Search Systems Actually Work

AI systems don’t just scan pages for keyword matches. They use complex processes like:

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation): Pulls relevant passages — not full documents — that answer a query.
Query Fan-Out: Rewrites and expands queries to better understand your intent (e.g., “best SUV” becomes “most reliable SUV for families”).
Intent Classification: Determines if you want a definition, comparison, fact, video, etc.
Specialized LLMs: Selects the best model for your specific query type and format.
Reasoning Chains: Builds better answers by simulating logical reasoning.

What does this mean for you?

AI systems reward clarity, structure, and content that aligns with user intent.

Final Takeaway: Don’t Panic. Adapt.

Yes — AI is changing search. But much of what works today still works tomorrow, if you're doing it right:

✅ Optimize for real people, not just machines.

✅ Use structured content that’s easy for AI and search engines to understand.✅ Focus on quality over quantity.

✅ Stay skeptical of silver bullet services that promise rankings in AI.

This isn’t the end of SEO — it’s the evolution of search.

Stay informed. Stay strategic. And most importantly — stay visible.