AI Overviews and your Google traffic

For local services, yes — because the person asking intends to hire. Someone asking "who can pressure-wash my driveway in Cathedral City" isn't browsing; they want a name and a number. When the AI's answer includes yours, that's a lead with zero ad cost. The volume is smaller than classic Google today, but it's growing, the callers are warmer, and almost none of your competitors are competing for it yet. Early beats perfect here.

It's the answer box Google now writes at the top of many searches, assembled by AI from sites it trusts — above the map, above the ads sometimes. If your traffic changed in the last couple of years, this is a likely reason: people get answers without clicking. You can't opt out; you can only be quotable. The upside: sources the Overview cites get named at the very top. The FAQ-style pages in these guides exist exactly to be that source.

If your ads profitably ring a phone that gets answered, keep them — nothing about AI changes math that already works. But two honest cautions. Ads stop the moment you stop paying, while an answered question keeps working for free. And an ad that sends people to a site that can't book them burns money at any budget. My order of operations: fix the site so every lead converts, then buy ads to pour into it — not the reverse.