How Google’s AI Overviews Are Changing Local SEO

What Agencies Are Quietly Doing About It AI Overviews Are Reshaping Local Search Visibility

Google’s rollout of AI-generated answers has disrupted the way local service providers appear in search. Businesses that used to sit comfortably in the top three organic results are now pushed below AI summaries, map packs, and People Also Ask blocks. These changes affect law firms, contractors, dental offices, and agencies, all of which depend on organic local traffic to drive leads. In cities like Toronto, search results for “SEO agency near me” or “personal injury lawyer downtown” now display AI-generated text blocks above the fold. These pull from a range of sites, often including outdated forum posts or low-authority blogs. Unlike featured snippets, there is no clear source attribution. That means local businesses can lose visibility even when they were the original source of the insight. This isn’t about a minor algorithm tweak. It’s a structural shift in how Google is delivering information. Traditional SEO tactics focused on long-tail targeting and page-level optimisations are starting to underperform in markets where AI overviews dominate. Agencies that have seen traffic drops over the past six months are often the ones still relying on that playbook.

The Shift Toward Hyperlocal Entities and Schema Layers

To adapt, some SEO consultants have stopped publishing broad local pages like “SEO Services Toronto” and are instead building out hyper-targeted service-area content based on neighbourhoods, landmarks, or even zip codes. These pages don’t aim to rank on their own. They feed Google’s entity graph by reinforcing location signals across the site and across the web. Structured data has moved from a best practice to a core element of ranking in AI-driven SERPs. Agencies are layering multiple schema types like LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, and Review on each page, optimising not just for crawlability but for context. The goal is to influence what gets pulled into AI summaries even when a site isn’t ranking first. Some are even experimenting with Schema-based storytelling. Instead of generic service descriptions, they’re embedding client success stories or case outcomes into structured markup to influence how narratives surface in AI summaries.

Off-Site Content Is Now Part of On-SERP Strategy

Agencies have started reclaiming control of branded SERPs by publishing third-party content designed to rank. These include press releases with keyword-optimised headlines, thought leadership articles posted on contributor accounts, and high-authority directory listings. This is not old-school link building. It’s brand-layering across multiple sources to increase the odds that your content or commentary is included in AI answers. For local businesses, especially in competitive service markets, visibility now depends as much on what’s being said off-site as it does on traditional on-page SEO. Agencies are using this moment to rebuild off-site assets that feed directly into Google’s new content synthesis model. One agency that has leaned heavily into this approach is offering affordable SEO services in Toronto that focus on building durable visibility in AI-dominated SERPs.

Direct Traffic and CTR Are Replacing Rankings as Core Metrics

Some of the more aggressive agencies are moving away from reporting on keyword positions altogether. AI overviews make rank tracking unreliable, especially when zero-click behaviour is involved. Instead, they’re looking at direct traffic trends, branded search lift, and time-on-site metrics as primary KPIs. This is also changing how agencies pitch SEO. It’s no longer about “ranking for X keyword.” It’s about owning a footprint within a search journey that is increasingly influenced by machine-generated content, not ten blue links. And for clients, that requires a different conversation. One that ties SEO work to measurable engagement and leads, not vanity metrics that no longer reflect visibility.

What This Means for Small Agencies and Solo Consultants

Smaller teams without access to technical resources or large outreach budgets still have options. The smartest ones are publishing niche content clusters targeting low-volume, high-intent searches that aren’t triggering AI overviews yet. This gives them time to establish authority before those queries get absorbed into the generative layer. They’re also prioritising trust signals that AI models favour such as consistent branding, clear service descriptions, structured data, and external validation through reviews and citations. The goal isn’t to beat AI but to train it on the right signals. To become the source it pulls from rather than the site it replaces.

Staying Visible When Google Doesn’t Want to Send Traffic Anymore

The reality is that Google’s incentives no longer align with those of content publishers. AI overviews are part of a broader strategy to keep users inside the search results, not clicking out. Agencies that grasp this are rethinking the way they approach every part of SEO, from site architecture to content strategy to off-site outreach. The ones that don’t adapt will keep seeing gradual traffic erosion with no obvious cause. They’ll keep publishing blog posts, fixing title tags, and waiting for rankings that may never come back. The rest are already adjusting. Quietly, quickly, and with a very different playbook.