Why AI is changing how customers find local businesses

Something shifted in how people find businesses, and it happened faster than most people noticed.

A couple of years ago, when someone needed an HVAC company or a plumber, they typed into Google, looked at the top results, maybe checked a few reviews, and made a call. That process still happens. But a growing number of people now skip straight to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's built-in AI summaries and just ask: "Who are the best HVAC companies near me?"

The AI gives them an answer. Usually two or three names. They pick one and move on.

If your business isn't one of those names, you weren't in the running.

The numbers are real

This isn't a small trend. According to BrightLocal's 2025 research, 45% of consumers now use ChatGPT and similar AI tools for local business recommendations. That's nearly half of your potential customers at some point in their search process.

ChatGPT reached nearly 900 million weekly active users as of early 2026, according to TechCrunch — making it one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history. Perplexity, a search-focused AI built around live web results, has become a go-to for research queries, with its citation-first format increasingly shaping how people discover businesses.

And then there's Google AI Overviews — the summary boxes that appear at the very top of Google search results, before any regular links. A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that 58% of U.S. adults had already encountered an AI-generated summary in their Google searches — meaning this is now part of the mainstream search experience, not a fringe feature.

What this actually does to your website traffic

Here's the part that stings a little. When AI gives someone a direct answer, they often don't click anywhere. Research from Search Engine Land and SparkToro found that nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a single click to any website. And the Pew Research study confirmed users click on traditional results only about half as often when AI summaries are present.

Bloomberg documented the impact in 2025: major publishers were reporting organic traffic declines of 30 to 55 percent as AI-generated answers absorbed clicks that previously went to websites. That's not a rounding error. That's a structural change in how the web works.

The businesses that adapted — the ones that figured out how to get mentioned by AI, not just ranked by Google — are the ones still getting calls.

Why Google rankings don't automatically help you here

This is the part most people don't expect. You can rank #1 on Google for your service area and still be completely invisible to AI tools.

Traditional search ranks pages. AI selects sources — typically 3 to 5 answers it considers authoritative and trustworthy. Being ranked highly on Google doesn't automatically get you into that group. The criteria are different. AI prioritizes businesses with clear, structured information, strong review signals, and consistent presence across multiple platforms. It's looking for evidence that you're a real, credible business — not just a website that knows the right keywords.

The gap is significant. Most local businesses haven't made the changes that help AI systems confidently recommend them — and the ones that have are capturing a disproportionate share of the recommendations being generated every day.

What local businesses can do

The good news: most of this is fixable, and it doesn't require rebuilding your website from scratch. A few things matter more than everything else:

• Your Google Business Profile needs to be complete and active. AI tools pull heavily from GBP data. If yours is incomplete, outdated, or unclaimed, you start at a disadvantage.
• Your reviews need to be recent. Not just numerous — recent. AI reads recency as a signal of relevance. A business with 12 reviews from 2024 looks more relevant than one with 200 reviews from 2019.
• Your website needs to answer questions clearly. AI looks for pages that directly answer what someone is searching for. If your site is mostly marketing language and not much useful information, it's hard for AI to cite you.
• You need consistent information across platforms. Name, address, phone number, services — if these differ between your website, GBP, Yelp, and anywhere else you're listed, AI gets confused and often skips you.

None of this is complicated. It's mostly attention and consistency. The businesses winning in AI search right now aren't the ones with the biggest budgets — they're the ones who made sure their information was clear, complete, and credible.

The bottom line

Search hasn't gone away. But it's changed. Customers are using AI as the first stop — or at least an early stop — in how they find services. If your business isn't showing up there, you're missing a conversation that's already happening without you.

The shift is still early enough that getting ahead of it isn't hard. A year from now, it will be.