Google’s Pickier Click: What AI Overviews Mean for Small Business SEO

Ryan Haylett

Google didn't kill the click... but it absolutely turned it into a bouncer. Recent reporting on AI Overviews suggests click-through rate may actually be RECOVERING a bit, which is not the same as "everything's fine," but it's a big difference from the early panic where people acted like organic traffic had been dragged behind a shed.

Dave Rowley

That word -- recovering -- matters. Because if CTR is recovering, that means the click still exists, it's just choosing favorites now. Not everybody gets in the club.

Ryan Haylett

Exactly. And the favorites, at least from what we've been seeing through Google's recent core updates, look a lot like brands, official sources, and what I'd call destination content. Meaning pages people actually want to LAND on. Not weird intermediary pages that summarize six better pages and add nothing except, like, three stock photos and an email popup.

Dave Rowley

Ah yes, the sacred SEO relic: "Top 10 Tips" written by committee and a toaster. We should preserve one in a museum.

Ryan Haylett

Yeah. If your page reads like it was assembled by committee and a toaster, do not be shocked when Google says, "Cool, I can summarize this myself." That's the tension right now. AI Overviews are still stealing attention, no question. But the pages getting clicked are often the ones cited in the overview, the recognized sources, or the pages that solve the user's problem better than a summary can.

Dave Rowley

Let me try to explain that back. So the recent core updates didn't just shake rankings -- it also sharpened what kind of page deserves a visit after the AI answer shows up. And "deserves" now means specific, useful, probably trusted, and definitely not thin.

Ryan Haylett

That's it. The volatility from those updates was real, and a lot of people felt it. But the pattern wasn't random. Google seemed to favor official sources, recognizable brands, and deeper destination pages over thin intermediaries. So if you're a local contractor, a law office, a med spa, a niche B2B shop -- whatever -- this is not a sign to panic. It's a sign to stop making filler.

Dave Rowley

I wanna push on the "brands" part, though. Because a small business owner hears that and thinks, "Great, so unless I'm Nike or Mayo Clinic, I'm cooked." When you say brand, you don't just mean Fortune 500 logo recognition, right?

Ryan Haylett

Right, not at all. I mean brand in the practical sense: a business with a clear identity, a real point of view, visible proof, and pages that look like they came from actual humans who do the work. For a small business, "brand" can be as simple as a page that says, "Here's exactly how basement waterproofing works in Erie clay soil," or "Here's what Pennsylvania LLC owners need to know before filing this form." Specific beats generic.

Dave Rowley

Erie clay soil -- that's the thing. The local detail is what a generic content farm can't fake well. Anybody can publish "Signs You Need Waterproofing." Fewer people can say, "In northwest Pennsylvania, freeze-thaw cycles crack this exact type of foundation wall, here's a photo, here's what we see every March." That's destination content. That's a page I might actually click.

Ryan Haylett

Yes. And here's the analogy I keep coming back to: the old SEO game let a lot of sites survive by being highway billboards. Quick glance, vague promise, keep moving. AI Overviews are changing that. Now your page has to be more like a real store on Main Street. If someone walks in, they need to get an answer fast, see evidence, understand why YOU, and know what to do next.

Dave Rowley

And if they walk in and all they see is "Welcome to our comprehensive guide to solutions"... they're backing out slowly like they opened the wrong bathroom door.

Ryan Haylett

Correct. So the big takeaway on what's happening: AI Overviews still absorb a lot of attention, but the click isn't dead. It's getting pickier. Google is rewarding pages that are citable, trustworthy, and actually worth visiting after the summary. That's why this matters. If you're still publishing generic rehash content, you're competing directly with the machine's favorite task: summarizing mush.

Dave Rowley

So let's make this painfully practical. If I'm a small business owner and I have, say, one decent afternoon this week -- not a quarter, not a rebrand, one afternoon -- where do I start?

Ryan Haylett

Start with ONE page and ONE real question. Not "everything about HVAC." More like, "How much does AC repair cost in Pittsburgh?" or "Do I need a permit for a fence in Erie?" Put the direct answer near the top -- fast. Then support it with proof, local context, and next steps. That's the formula.

Dave Rowley

That phrase -- direct answer near the top -- is huge. Because a lot of pages bury the answer under a giant hero section, a stock image of two people high-fiving, and three paragraphs that basically say, "At our company, we value excellence." Which tells me nothing except you may own a Canva subscription.

Ryan Haylett

Yeah, cut the throat-clearing. If the page is about emergency plumbing, open with the answer. "Yes, we provide 24/7 emergency plumbing in X area. Typical response time is Y. Here's what counts as an emergency. Call here." Then build outward. Add proof -- reviews, photos, certifications, before-and-afters, or even one simple example. Add local context. Add a CTA that's so obvious a sleep-deprived person can still find it.

Dave Rowley

Let's get into the fundamentals, because these are not glamorous, but they matter. Tighter titles. Clearer H1s. FAQ sections. Internal links. Simple schema on service pages and local pages. None of that is sexy, but neither is wiring inside a wall and you still very much want it there.

Ryan Haylett

Exactly. Titles first. Your title tag should say what the page IS and who it's for. Not something clever. Clear beats clever. H1 next -- make it match the actual search intent. Then add a short FAQ section with the obvious follow-up questions. That's useful for users, and it helps search engines understand the page's scope without you writing a 2,000-word oatmeal blob.

Dave Rowley

On internal links -- because people hear that and think, "Okay, toss some links around." But the specific move is what? Link from broad pages to specific pages? Service to location? FAQ to service?

Ryan Haylett

Yes -- all of that, but with intent. If you have a service page for roof repair and a location page for Erie, those should reinforce each other. If you mention insurance claims, link to the insurance claims page. Internal links help Google understand the relationship between pages, and they help users continue the journey without hunting. Think of it like good signage in a building. Nobody praises the signage... until it's terrible.

Dave Rowley

"Good signage in a building" is gonna stick with me. Because that's exactly what a lot of websites are missing. The page exists, but nobody knows where to go next. And schema fits that same bucket. Not magic dust -- just clearer labels on the box.

Ryan Haylett

Perfectly said. Simple schema on service and local pages can help search engines understand what the page represents. It's not a rankings cheat code. It's clarity. And clarity is kind of the whole game right now.

Dave Rowley

Alright, quick wins. Give me the three things somebody can actually do this week before they get pulled back into the chaos of running their business.

Ryan Haylett

One: refresh a single page and put a direct answer in the first few lines. Two: add one local proof point -- a city-specific example, a case, a photo, a review, something real. Three: make the CTA painfully obvious. If the page should generate calls, put the phone number there. If it should generate form fills, make the button impossible to miss and make the form simple.

Dave Rowley

That second one -- one local proof point -- is the easiest miss. People will spend six hours tweaking adjectives and zero minutes adding the thing that actually makes the page believable. A named town. A project photo. A customer quote. One concrete detail can do more than twenty fluffy sentences.

Ryan Haylett

And that's the broader shift. We're moving away from content that merely exists toward content that earns the visit. For small businesses, that's actually good news. You do not need 500 blog posts. You need pages that answer real questions better than the generic sludge does.

Dave Rowley

Which is oddly encouraging. Because "be more useful than sludge" is a winnable strategy.

Ryan Haylett

It really is. So don't panic over AI Overviews, don't chase every ranking tremor from any single core update, and definitely stop publishing content that sounds like a blender full of other people's headings. Build pages people would still want even if Google summarized the first paragraph. If you want help doing that, go to modularity.us. We'll help you turn your site into something worth clicking.