If you’ve searched for anything on Google recently—especially a question—you may have noticed something new: AI-generated answers at the top of your results page. These are part of Google’s AI Overviews, a feature that’s reshaping how users interact with search, and more importantly, how they discover local businesses.

But how exactly do these AI Overviews work? Are they accurate? Where are they getting their information from? And how are they impacting other search engines and AI platforms like Gemini and ChatGPT?

Let’s unpack everything you need to know about Google AI Overviews and what they mean for local SEO and discovery.

What Are Google AI Overviews?

Google AI Overviews are part of the search engine’s ongoing integration of generative AI into the search experience. They aim to provide a summarized answer at the top of the results page, based on the context of the search, drawing from a variety of web sources and Google’s own knowledge graphs.

Instead of a traditional list of blue links, users now see a concise, conversational answer that might include product suggestions, local recommendations, or how-to steps. In many cases, the AI Overview includes citations to the pages it used for the summary.

How Fast Do AI Overviews Update?

AI Overviews rely on Google’s search index, which is one of the most frequently updated and extensive in the world. However, unlike traditional snippets that pull exact text, Overviews synthesize information based on large language model inference, meaning changes in local business data like a new opening hour or phone number may not appear immediately.

Here’s how updates typically flow:

• Google My Business (GMB) changes can take 24–72 hours to propagate in search results based on Google Business Profile Help Forums.

• AI Overviews refresh based on the latest crawl and indexing cycle, but may lag days or weeks behind live edits unless manually triggered by spikes in search interest.
  
• Reviews, schema updates, and authoritative content (like FAQs) can speed up re-indexing.
  

For businesses, this means your web presence needs to be consistent and well-structured to influence how and when Overviews mention you.

Where Is Google Getting Its Sources?

Google’s AI Overviews pull from a mix of:

• Top-ranking webpages (as determined by the Google algorithm)
  
• Google’s Knowledge Graph (structured entity data)
  
• Structured markup like Schema.org on websites
  
• Google Maps, Google My Business, and Reviews
  
• Product and local directories with strong trust scores
  

The AI essentially scans the semantic intent of content across high-ranking sources and tries to blend them into a coherent summary.

This raises two critical issues for local businesses:

1. Businesses might be mentioned in an AI Overview without their website being clicked.
   
2. If business data is inconsistent across sources, they might get overlooked entirely.
   

How Are Local Searches Being Affected?

This is where it gets tricky—and interesting.

Google’s move to prioritize AI-generated answers impacts local business visibility in several ways:

• Fewer clicks to websites: If the AI Overview answers a query directly, users might never scroll down to local listings.
  
• Higher competition for inclusion in summaries: Only a handful of sources are cited or considered in the Overviews.
  
• Rich get richer: Businesses with authoritative, consistent, and optimized listings across Google and third-party platforms are more likely to be mentioned.
  

Example:

A user searches “best vegan bakery near me.” Instead of scrolling through the Google Maps pack, they might see a summarized AI Overview listing 3 recommended spots, potentially skipping others with less optimized profiles, even if they have better reviews.

The implications?

• Local SEO now includes optimizing to influence AI summaries, not just map packs and traditional organic listings.
  
• Structured data, fresh reviews, and content strategy are now essential to even be considered.
  

Search Engine Comparison: Google vs Bing vs Others *Infographic

Let’s zoom out and compare how major search engines handle AI integration and local results.

Despite Bing’s innovation with ChatGPT, Google remains dominant because of its massive data ecosystem—Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Android—which feeds its AI models with real-world behavioral signals.

Do Other AI Platforms Use Google AI Overviews? 

This is a subtle but important point.

Google AI Overviews are not open data. They’re proprietary to Google Search, and other tools like Gemini (Google’s own chatbot) and ChatGPT do not have direct access to them.

However:

• Gemini may align with AI Overviews because it is trained on similar Google-indexed web data.
  
• ChatGPT, when browsing is enabled, pulls information from the open web, including pages that may have been cited in Google Overviews, but not the summaries themselves.
  
• Perplexity AI and You.com offer their own synthesis-based search layers with citations, but are independent from Google’s data.
  

This means businesses cannot optimize for AI Overviews and expect the same output across other AI platforms.

You need a cross-channel content strategy to show up consistently across:

• Google SGE
  
• Gemini
  
• ChatGPT’s browsing
  
• Bing Chat
  
• AI-powered voice assistants (like Alexa or Siri)
  

Key Takeaways for SaaS Teams Managing Multi-Location Online Presence

In a search landscape increasingly shaped by AI-driven results, your visibility strategy needs to evolve. Here’s what to prioritize across your clients’ locations:

• Keep Google Business Profiles optimized — Ensure every location’s profile is fully filled out and accurate to maintain eligibility for AI-generated overviews.
  
• Implement structured data at scale — Use schema markup to tag key details like business type, hours, location, and FAQs across all sites or location pages.
  
• Focus on recent, high-quality reviews — Encourage ongoing review activity on Google and other platforms to strengthen signals AI tools rely on.
  
• Track brand mentions across third-party publishers — Many AI systems pull data from beyond your website, so monitoring these sources is crucial.
  
• Expand beyond Google — Optimize visibility across a wider range of AI-enabled local discovery tools to reduce overreliance on one platform.
  

Google AI Overviews are a powerful shift in the way search works, especially for local businesses. They aim to answer rather than direct, meaning less traffic but potentially more qualified visibility if your customers’ businesses are included.

AI is not killing local search—but it is demanding that you level up your strategy to stay in the game.