AI Overviews: Adjusting Your Plan When Fewer Searchers Click

AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries Google places above the organic results, and they're why some searches now end without anyone clicking through to a website. If you run a small business in Greater Montréal or elsewhere in Québec and count on Google for leads, you may have noticed this in your numbers. I'm Marven Salgado, founder of Social Influence in Mascouche, and the first thing I tell owners is that fewer clicks doesn't always mean fewer customers. Some searches lose visits and still send calls. Others stop sending anyone. You need to know which is which before you cut a budget or rewrite your site, so this is how I sort them.

AI Overviews and what changes on a Google results page for a small business

AI Overviews put a written answer at the top of many results pages, before the regular links, so your business can keep its position and still be seen by fewer people.

Google's AI reads several websites, pulls out what it takes to be the answer and writes a short summary. On a phone, that block can push the first organic result below the fold, so a searcher has to scroll before your link appears. The regular links are still there. Google shows them alongside the summaries for many queries, and plenty of searches get no summary at all.

The summary changes where the visit happens. Someone with a quick question can read the answer on Google and move on, which takes a click away from the site that ranked for it. Someone looking for a company to hire still needs a phone number or a way to book, and a paragraph of text can't give them that. So a business can see visits fall on its informational pages while its calls hold steady.

French searches deserve a separate look. Google may summarize a French query in Québec differently from the English one, or show no summary for it, so search your own services in both languages instead of assuming one tells you about the other.

Click-through rate versus lead volume: what to measure in GA4 and Google Business Profile

Click-through rate tells you how many searchers visited; lead volume tells you how many contacted you, and the second is the number to watch in GA4 and Google Business Profile.

In GA4, mark the actions that mean a real lead as key events: a submitted form, a tap on your phone number, a completed booking. In Google Business Profile, the performance view shows the calls, direction requests and website clicks that came from your profile. Put those side by side each month and you have a lead count that doesn't depend on how many people clicked a blue link. Loi 25 applies to how you collect this data, so set the tracking up with proper consent and a privacy notice that explains it.

Before you worry about a drop in click-through rate, sort your queries by intent, because AI Overviews don't affect every search the same way.

Sorting your queries by intent: informational, local and ready-to-buy

Once you split your query list from Search Console by intent, you'll see why one metric can't describe all of it anymore. I put every query into one of these groups:

• Informational searches, like "how often should I seal a driveway," are the ones a summary is most likely to answer on the results page, so they tend to lose clicks first. They usually sit further from a purchase. Track impressions here, since visits will understate how often people see you.
• Local searches, like "driveway sealing Mascouche," still pull people toward the map results and your Google Business Profile, because the searcher still has to choose a business and contact it. Track calls and direction requests.
• Ready-to-buy searches, like "driveway sealing quote," matter most, since those clicks often lead straight to a form or a phone call. Track form fills and bookings.
• Branded searches, where people type your business name, show whether word of mouth and your other channels are working. Watch direct traffic alongside them.

Some queries mix intents. For those, the click-through rate trend is still worth following.

Google Business Profile as an entity signal AI summaries can rely on

Google Business Profile gives Google structured facts about your business (name, address, categories, hours, services), which makes it one of the clearest sources Google can draw on when a summary is about you.

I tell owners across Greater Montréal to treat the profile as a data feed that Google reads, and to keep it as current as their price list. Choose your categories carefully, keep your hours accurate, list your services, and write a description that says plainly what you do and which areas you serve. Add photos regularly and reply to every review, since both show that the business is real and active.

Then make the profile match everything else. When the name, address, phone number and services on your profile are the same as on your website and in local directories, Google has fewer conflicting versions of your business to sort out. Structured data (schema markup) on your site states those same details in a format machines read directly. Nobody can promise that a summary will cite you, but consistent details make you an easier business to describe correctly. That consistency is a large part of how I work on getting a business found on Google and cited by AI.

Service pages and original local content that AI answers tend to cite

Service pages that show specific knowledge, one page per service with the areas, process and local conditions spelled out, are the kind of pages AI answers tend to cite.

Your Google Business Profile tells Google who you are. Your service pages tell it what you know. AI tools pull answers from pages with real detail, and generic sales copy gives them nothing to quote. I ask owners in Mascouche and across Greater Montréal to write one page per service that names the neighbourhoods they cover, the steps they follow and the problems they solve. Then add the specifics a template page won't have, such as price ranges, typical timelines, materials, or local conditions that affect the job. For example, a driveway sealing company in Terrebonne could explain why it waits for warm, dry weather before sealing. That page answers a question people really search for.

That's the approach I take with SEO content writing for local businesses: one service per page, written from the questions customers ask.

French pages need the same care. With Loi 96 in force you need strong French content anyway, so write it from the questions French-speaking customers ask and the words they use, and avoid translating the English page line by line. Add local schema markup to both versions so the business details are stated the same way in each language.

Rebalancing channels: local search, paid, email and referrals

Rebalancing channels means spreading effort across local search, paid ads, email and referrals, so a drop in informational clicks doesn't leave your lead flow depending on one source.

Good small business SEO still matters, but it works best next to channels that keep bringing people in when search traffic dips. Local search, through the map results and your profile, reaches nearby people who are ready to act. Paid ads on Google or Meta give you traffic you control and can adjust week to week. They won't get you cited in an AI Overview, because the sources a summary cites come from organic pages, but paid search does put you on the page when someone is ready to book. Email reaches people who already trust you. Referrals skip search altogether.

Check which channel brings in booked jobs, using the tracking above, and move a little more budget toward it each month. Keep local search strong, and don't let it become your only source of leads.

A 30-day adjustment plan for a Québec small business

A 30-day adjustment plan breaks the work into four weekly steps: audit, fix, shift ad spend toward buyers, then set a baseline you can measure against next month.

When an owner asks me where to start, this is the plan I give them:

1. Days 1 to 7: audit your Google Business Profile, your website basics and your current ad spend. Search your main services on a phone, in French and in English, and note where a summary appears and whether your business shows up in it.
2. Days 8 to 14: fix the profile, add FAQ content to your service pages that answers questions customers really ask, and clean up your site's structure and structured data so AI tools can read it easily.
3. Days 15 to 21: move ad budget toward bottom-of-funnel keywords, the searches with clear buying or booking intent, and test tighter local targeting.
4. Days 22 to 30: review what changed, confirm that calls and form fills are being tracked, and record where you stand with an AI visibility check so next month has a starting point.

Google keeps changing how these summaries work, often without an announcement, so repeat the search check every month and put your effort where the bookings come from.