Search for almost anything complicated on Google now and there is a good chance the first thing you see is not a list of links but a written answer with a handful of sources tucked beside it. Click the AI Mode tab and the whole page becomes a conversation. If you run a small business, the obvious question is whether your website still matters, and what you should be doing differently.

For this post I only used what Google itself has published: Search Central documentation, Search Console help and Google’s own blog. Where I add an opinion, I’ll say it’s mine. Where Google makes a claim about its own product, I’ll say so.

What AI Overviews and AI Mode actually are

AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries that appear at the top of some results pages. Google announced on May 14, 2024 that they would begin rolling out to everyone in the U.S. Google describes them as a way to “help people get to the gist of a complicated topic or question more quickly, and provide a jumping off point to explore links to learn more,” in its AI features and your website guide.

AI Mode is the fuller version: a separate, conversational search experience where people can ask follow-up questions. Google announced on May 20, 2025 that it was rolling out AI Mode in the U.S. with no Labs sign-up required. The same AI features guide says AI Mode is “particularly helpful for queries where further exploration, reasoning, or complex comparisons are needed.”

Two details from that guide matter most:

  • Query fan-out. Both features “may use a ‘query fan-out’ technique,” which Google defines as issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources to build a response. So your page can be pulled in for one sub-question rather than the original search.
  • They don’t always appear. Google says AI Overviews “are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search, and as such, often don’t trigger.”

What Google says you need to do to appear

Google’s documentation is blunt: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.”

The technical requirement is the same one you already had. To be eligible as a supporting link, “a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet,” meeting the normal Search technical requirements.

On extra files and markup, the same page says: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features. There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add.”

The things that matter are the ones that always did. Google’s guide lists them:

  • Allowing crawling in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure
  • Making content easy to find through internal links
  • Providing a great page experience
  • Making sure important content is available as text
  • Supporting text with high-quality images and videos, where it fits
  • Making sure structured data matches the visible text on the page
  • Keeping Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date

That is most of my technical SEO checklist for small businesses. In my experience, small business sites rarely lose out for lack of an AI trick. They lose out because a staging rule blocks crawlers, the services page is one image with text baked in, or the site is slow on a phone.

Note the CDN line. Crawling has to be allowed by your hosting infrastructure, not just robots.txt. A bot protection layer configured too aggressively can turn away Googlebot while robots.txt looks fine. Google’s May 2025 Search Central post on succeeding in AI search spells out what “accessible” means: Googlebot isn’t blocked, the page returns an HTTP 200 status code, and the page has indexable content. The quickest check I know is URL Inspection in Search Console.

What kind of content Google says it wants

In that same May 2025 post, Google’s John Mueller wrote that site owners should focus on “unique, non-commodity content that visitors from Search and your own readers will find helpful and satisfying.” He also noted that in AI search experiences, users are asking “longer and more specific questions,” plus follow-ups.

I read that as good news for small businesses. A generic “Our Services” page about quality and customer care is commodity content; any competitor could have written it. A page that explains what you do, who it’s for, where you work and what people ask before hiring you answers exactly the long, specific questions Google describes.

A few things I do on the sites I build because of this:

  • One page per real service. If someone can buy it separately, it gets its own page with its own explanation, instead of being one bullet on a long list.
  • Answer the questions you hear on the phone. The things customers ask before booking are the follow-up questions AI Mode is built to handle. If the answer only lives in your head, nothing can cite it.
  • Keep key facts as text. Prices, hours, service areas and policies belong in HTML, not inside a flyer image or a PDF that nobody updates.

On AI-written pages, Google’s guidance on generative AI content warns that using generative AI to produce many pages without adding value for users may violate its spam policy on scaled content abuse. It also says it is “critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content” before publishing. My view: use AI to draft and structure if it helps you, but the specifics have to come from you.

Your Business Profile matters more than it used to

Google’s AI features guide names Business Profile in its best practices, which I think is the most practical takeaway for a local business. There’s a second reason. On July 16, 2025, Google announced AI-powered calling to local businesses in Search: a customer searches something like “pet groomers near me,” chooses “Have AI check pricing,” and Search calls businesses for pricing and availability on their behalf. Google said this was starting to roll out to all Search users in the U.S.

Google’s Business Profile help page on automated calls and texts from Google explains how this works from your side:

  • Google may call to book appointments, check restaurant wait times, or confirm the price and availability of products and services.
  • If you have already shared in-store product details through Merchant Center, Google says it will use that information and won’t call to ask about inventory.
  • In the U.S., the help page says the feature is available in all states except Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana and Nebraska.
  • You can turn these features on or off in your Business Profile under More, then Business Profile settings, then Advanced settings, in the section called “Google automated calls and text messages.” Your business has to be verified to opt out.

Whether you leave this on is a business decision. My advice is to make it on purpose and tell whoever answers your phone these calls exist. The same help page notes Google will never ask for payment, card details or passwords, which is worth telling staff too.

If you work in home health or home care, my guide to local SEO for home health agencies in Texas goes deeper on setting up a Business Profile properly.

How to measure it without fooling yourself

Google doesn’t give you a separate AI Overviews traffic number. According to the AI features guide, traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the Performance report in Search Console, within the “Web” search type, alongside everything else.

Google’s Search Console help page on how results are counted explains the rules:

  • AI Overviews: a click on an external link in the overview counts as a click, standard impression rules apply, and the whole AI Overview occupies a single position. Every link inside it gets that same position.
  • AI Mode: a click on an external link counts as a click, standard impression rules apply, and a follow-up question is treated as a new query, with its impressions, positions and clicks counted against that new query.

That single-position rule is worth understanding. If your page is the fourth link inside an AI Overview at the top of the page, Search Console can report it at the same position as the first link.

Google also makes a claim about traffic quality. Its AI features guide says that when people click from results pages with AI Overviews, “these clicks are higher quality (meaning, users are more likely to spend more time on the site).” In its May 2024 announcement, Google said links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query. Those are Google’s statements about its own product; I’d check them against your own data.

Google’s own suggestion in the May 2025 post is to look beyond clicks at “various indicators of conversion on your site, be it sales, signups, a more engaged audience, or information lookups about your business.” For a small business I’d make that concrete: calls, form submissions and booking requests.

Controlling what Google shows from your pages

If you’d rather Google didn’t summarize your content, the AI features guide points to the existing preview controls: nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex, documented in Google’s guide to controlling snippets. The May 2025 post adds that “more restrictive permissions will limit how your content is featured in our AI experiences.”

Remember the eligibility rule, though: a page has to be eligible for a snippet to appear as a supporting link, so these controls cost you visibility too. For most small businesses, I wouldn’t use them.

There is a separate control people confuse with this one. Google-Extended is a robots.txt product token that manages whether content Google crawls can be used to train future Gemini models and for grounding in Gemini apps. Google states that it “does not impact a site’s inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search.”

What I would actually do this month

Here’s the order I’d work in:

  1. Confirm Google can reach you. Run your homepage and main service pages through URL Inspection. Check that your host or firewall isn’t blocking Googlebot.
  2. Fix your Business Profile. Hours, services, service area, phone and photos. Then decide on purpose whether to keep Google’s automated calls on.
  3. Rewrite your thinnest service page. Add who it’s for, how it works and common questions.
  4. Check your structured data matches the page.
  5. Look at page speed on a phone. See my Core Web Vitals guide.
  6. Change what you report on. Track calls, forms and bookings next to Search Console clicks.

This is the same plain groundwork I focus on for the Lonestar Home Healthcare website, where I work as Solutions Architect: clear pages for each service, facts written as text, and a site that loads fast on a phone. If you’re moving platforms at the same time, read my guide to migrating from WordPress to Next.js without losing SEO first.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need special optimization to appear in Google AI Overviews?

Google says no. Its documentation states there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations needed for AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet in normal Search.

Do I need an llms.txt file or special schema for AI Mode?

Google says you don’t need new machine readable files, AI text files or markup, and there is no special schema.org structured data to add.

Can I see AI Overview traffic separately in Search Console?

Not as its own report. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic is included in the Performance report under the “Web” search type.

Will blocking Google-Extended remove me from AI Overviews?

Google says Google-Extended does not affect inclusion in Google Search and isn’t a ranking signal. It manages use of your content for training Gemini models and grounding in Gemini apps. To limit what Search shows from your pages, Google points to nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex instead.

Can Google call my business using AI?

Yes, in supported areas. Google’s Business Profile help says it may call on a customer’s behalf to book appointments or confirm pricing and availability. A verified business can turn this off under Advanced settings in Business Profile settings.

Want me to look at your site?

Most small business sites don’t need an “AI strategy.” They need the basics done properly. If you’d like an honest read on where yours stands, get in touch.