How Small Businesses Can Still Win In The AI-Search Era

AI Overviews often answer questions right on the results page. That means fewer people click through to your website.

For small businesses, this can feel like a sudden drop in traffic and leads. But it’s not the end of the road. The brands that win are doing simple things well, like giving clear answers, showing proof, and making pages easy for both people and machines to understand.

Here is how Small Businesses Can Still Win In The AI-search era:

What’s happening—and why it hurts SMEs first

AI answers increasingly absorb “how-to” and explainer intent. When Google answers a query directly on the results page, fewer people need to visit the source site, which hurts education-led businesses, publishers, consultants, and course creators. Independent analysis lays out both the risk and the adaptation paths.

The experience is expanding fast. By mid-2024, Google had rolled AI Overviews to hundreds of millions of users, with plans to reach over a billion, so the impact compounds as coverage grows.

Click behaviour has shifted in measurable ways. A study found users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared versus 15% when it didn’t. That delta is the new reality content teams must design around.

Google’s counter-position is that aggregate click volume from Search has been “relatively stable” year-over-year, though distribution varies by site type. Translation: some will lose, others will gain.

Accuracy risks you can’t ignore

Google has admitted AI Overviews can misinterpret content, and independent checks have found domain-specific errors in areas like personal finance and insurance. If the machine misstates your offer, you could lose leads or trust. Monitor your most important queries and report errors directly from the AI Overview pane.

What Google says does work

Google’s guidance to site owners hasn’t changed at its core: publish unique, helpful content that answers specific questions clearly, and structure it so machines can parse it. That means using relevant structured data such as FAQPage, QAPage, and HowTo where appropriate, and keeping technical SEO clean.