AI Overviews Skip Most 'Near Me' Searches

A client called me in a mild panic last month after reading a marketing newsletter that said, roughly, "AI Overviews are eating local search — optimize everything or disappear." She runs a plumbing company. Her actual traffic problem is people typing "plumber near me" at 11pm with a burst pipe, not people asking an AI assistant to explain the history of trenchless pipe repair. She'd been about to pay someone to rewrite her entire site for AI Overviews before checking whether her actual customers' searches even trigger one.

They mostly don't. That's not a guess — it's measured.

What the data actually shows

Whitespark, a local SEO research firm, ran the study manually rather than scraping it: 540 individual searches across three cities and six industries — plumbers, personal injury lawyers, dentists, optometrists, medical clinics, and real estate agents — checking each query for whether Google returned a traditional local pack (the map plus three business listings), an AI Overview, both, or neither.

The overall average — AI Overviews on 68% of queries, local packs on 39% — is the number that ends up in headlines, because it sounds dramatic. It's also close to useless on its own, because it blends two completely different kinds of searches together.

Split the same 540 queries by what the searcher was actually trying to do, and the picture changes:

• Local intent ("nail salon near me," "plumber near me") — local pack appeared roughly 93% of the time, AI Overview only about 15%.
• Informational intent ("how long does an eye exam take," "what does a root canal cost") — AI Overview appeared roughly 92% of the time, local pack only about 6%.
• Hybrid intent (mixing a question with a location) landed in between, closer to the informational end.

The two intent types are nearly mirror images of each other. A "near me" search is still, overwhelmingly, a map-pack search in 2026 — not an AI Overview search. The informational question next to it is almost always the opposite.

Why the split matters more than the headline number

If you read "AI Overviews now answer most local searches" and concluded you need to restructure your whole site around getting cited in one, you'd be solving the wrong problem for a big chunk of your actual traffic. The searches most likely to turn into a phone call or a booking — the "near me," ready-to-choose queries — are exactly the searches where the traditional local pack still dominates and an AI Overview is the exception, not the rule.

That doesn't mean AI Overviews don't matter. It means they matter for a specific type of search, not for your whole keyword list. Someone researching "how much does a dental crown cost" before they've picked a dentist is deep in AI Overview territory. Someone typing "dentist near me" with a toothache right now is looking at the map pack, same as they were two years ago.

This is the same distinction we've drawn out before between ranking and being cited — the mechanics of getting pulled into an AI Overview are a real, separate skill. What this data adds is the missing piece of when that skill even applies. Spending a week rewriting your homepage's answer-box copy does nothing for the "near me" searches that were never going to trigger an AI Overview in the first place.

The mechanics: sorting your own queries

You don't need Whitespark's dataset to apply this — you need ten minutes and your own Google Business Profile insights or Search Console queries.

1. Pull your actual top queries. Google Business Profile's performance tab and Search Console's queries report both show what people are actually typing before they find you.
2. Sort each one into local, informational, or hybrid. "[Service] near me," "[service] in [city]," and anything with a clear "I'm ready to pick someone" tone is local intent. "How much does," "how long does," "do I need a," and similar research-phase phrasing is informational.
3. For the local-intent queries, the work is Google Business Profile hygiene — accurate hours, categories, photos, and review volume — because that's still what the local pack is scoring, and the local pack is still what's showing up.
4. For the informational-intent queries, the work is content — a page or section that answers the question directly, in plain language, near the top, because that's the format Whitespark and others have found AI Overviews actually pull from.
5. Recheck the split periodically, not once. Google has been known to test AI Overview placement differently by query and by region; a query that behaves one way in September isn't guaranteed to behave the same way by winter.

Google's own AI Mode local results are a related but distinct wrinkle — it can surface a different set of businesses entirely than the standard map pack for the same query, which is one more reason "check the actual result, don't assume" beats guessing.

What won't help

Rewriting your whole site to chase AI Overviews. If most of your real customer searches are local-intent "near me" queries, the return on that work is capped by how rarely an AI Overview even shows up for them. Spend the effort where the data says the searches actually land.

Treating the 68% headline number as your situation. It's an average across six unrelated industries and two opposite intent types. Your business isn't an average — it's whichever mix of local and informational queries your actual customers type, and that's worth checking directly rather than assuming from a press summary.

Ignoring informational content because "we're a local business, not a blog." The informational side of this data is exactly where AI Overviews show up almost all the time. A local business with no page answering "how much does X cost" or "how long does Y take" is leaving that near-92% territory to whoever bothered to write the answer.

Assuming last year's local pack tactics cover this. Local pack ranking factors — proximity, categories, reviews — haven't gone away, and this data shows they still matter enormously for near-me searches. But they were never built to win an AI Overview citation on an informational query, which runs on different signals entirely.

FAQ

Do AI Overviews really show up less for "near me" searches?

Yes, according to Whitespark's 540-query study — roughly 15% of the time for local-intent queries like "plumber near me," compared to roughly 92% of the time for informational queries like "how long does a plumbing inspection take." The traditional local pack still dominates the near-me category.

Should I stop worrying about AI Overviews for my local business?

No — just aim the worry correctly. If a meaningful share of how customers find you is informational research before they pick someone, AI Overview visibility on those queries is worth real attention. If almost all your traffic is "near me, ready to call," your Google Business Profile and local pack standing matter more.

How do I find out which type of search actually brings me customers?

Check your Google Business Profile performance insights and your Search Console queries report. Sort the list into "near me / ready to choose" versus "how much / how long / do I need" phrasing. That split is specific to your business — don't assume it from an industry average.

Does this mean local pack SEO and AEO are two separate jobs?

They're related but not identical, which is the broader case we've made for treating SEO and AI search as one connected effort rather than two teams working from different playbooks — the data here just shows which lever to pull depends on the specific search.

Is this Whitespark data brand new?

The case study itself was published in 2025, but it's still the most detailed public breakdown of AI Overview prevalence by local search intent, and it continues to get cited through 2026 because nothing more granular has replaced it. Treat the exact percentages as a snapshot from that study's methodology and cities, not a live daily figure.

What industries did the study cover?

Six: plumbers, personal injury lawyers, dentists, optometrists, medical clinics, and real estate agents, across Houston, Phoenix, and Denver. Results will vary by industry and location, which is another reason to check your own queries rather than applying the averages directly.

Will this split stay the same going forward?

Probably not exactly — Google adjusts how and when AI Overviews appear regularly, and local search in particular has been a moving target all year. The intent-based pattern (informational queries trending toward AI Overviews, transactional "near me" queries trending toward the local pack) is the more durable takeaway than any single percentage.

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Figuring out which of your searches actually need AI Overview attention — instead of rewriting a whole site on a headline stat — is exactly the kind of ongoing triage getting found on Google and AI is built around. The mix changes as Google keeps testing; someone has to keep checking which lever actually moves your traffic.