For twenty years local discovery was stable: someone searched, a map appeared with three listings, and they picked one. Keep your Google Business Profile tidy, collect reviews, hold your spot. Imperfect, but workable.
It is no longer the only front door. People increasingly type a plain question — “who fixes a burst pipe near me,” “best dentist in town that takes my insurance” — and get a short written answer naming two or three businesses. If you are not in that answer, the customer never sees the map.
The practical question local marketers argued about all October: does a well-kept profile get you into those answers? Two studies published this year say it depends on which AI surface is answering.
TL;DR
Google’s AI Mode leans heavily on Google’s own business data. AI Overviews lean heavily on your own website. Neither one carries a business alone, and when your profile and your site disagree, an assistant picks a version of you without asking which is right.
Two AI answers, two different sources
The clearest data comes from a study by Ben Fisher at Steady Demand, published in August 2026 and revised in September. His team ran roughly four thousand local-service searches through each surface and classified 86,645 citations across 50 metros and 10 service verticals.
On local-intent queries the split was dramatic. AI Mode sent 79.8% of its citations to Google Maps or Google Business Profile data, and only 12.8% to the business’s own website. AI Overviews went the other direction: 70.7% of citations pointed at the business’s own website, 3.1% at Maps or the profile.
Read that twice, because it changes the advice. A spotless profile with a thin website is covered on one surface and largely invisible on the other. A good website with a neglected profile has the opposite problem.
The correction worth knowing about
The study was independently reviewed after publication. Two citation figures were wrong, one finding was withdrawn, and the authors state that their appearance-rate numbers — how often an AI answer shows up at all — did not survive manual validation. Treat those as artifacts of the collection method, not real rates for Google users. The full citation set is published so anyone can check it.
Separately, a Whitespark study reported by Search Engine Journal in July found AI Overviews appearing on 68% of local searches versus a local pack on 39% of the same queries — a 29-point gap where people got an answer without ever seeing the map.
Hold both like this: distrust the exact percentages, take the pattern seriously. Two teams, two methods, one direction. The map pack is no longer the only place a local decision happens.
Why the website half is the hard part
If a summary is built from your website, the site has to contain quotable facts. An assistant cannot pull “we serve Beverly and McConnelsville, we open at eight, we take emergency calls” out of a hero image and a contact form. It needs sentences.
Pages that get cited read like a competent answer already: what you do, a service area written as towns rather than a radius circle, hours as text, a phone number in the page body, and specifics — types of work, typical turnaround, who you do not serve.
Google’s own documentation is unglamorous here. Its guidance on AI features says search fundamentals still apply, that you need no new files or special markup, that structured data should match the visible text, and that Business Profile information should be kept current. There is no secret file. There is only the boring work of stating things clearly.
The thing that actually decides it: agreement
This is where small businesses lose, and no optimization trick is involved. The profile says one set of hours, the site another. The footer carries the old suite number. The service list includes work you stopped taking in 2023.
When those disagree, an assistant summarizing you picks one. The version it picks may send someone to a locked door.
What to check this week
Ask the question yourself. Phrase it three ways a customer would, on your phone, and note whether you appear and what the answer says about you. That is your storefront window now.
Compare the profile and the site. Name, address, phone, hours, services. Every difference is a decision someone else makes about you.
Make the phone number and town text. Not baked into an image. Plain, selectable words on the home page and the contact page.
Check structured data against what people see. Google’s Rich Results Test will confirm your markup parses. Then read it. If it lists hours the page does not show, fix one or the other.
Ask two recent customers how they found you. If the answer is “I asked my phone,” that is the whole trend in one sentence.
What this is not
It is not a reason to buy an “AI SEO” package. Google says you need no special files or markup, and neither study shows a shortcut past the underlying work. Nobody has published a reliable measure of how much reviews or photos weigh here, so anyone selling a formula is guessing.
The takeaway
For a shop in Beverly, McConnelsville or Marietta, the answer stays dull: write down what you do and where you do it in plain sentences on your own site, keep the Google Business Profile saying the same thing, and look at what an assistant says about you each quarter. That costs an afternoon. Losing calls you never knew were being made costs more.
If you would like help getting the facts on your website and your Google profile to agree — and seeing what the AI answers currently say about your business — that is a normal part of our free 30-minute IT review.