Google's AI search — what started as the Search Generative Experience and now shows up as AI Overviews — puts a machine-written answer at the top of more and more searches, including the local ones your customers use to find businesses like yours. That changes where attention lands on the page, and what it takes to earn it. Columbus businesses feel it first in competitive categories, but the shift is national.
What's actually changing
Instead of scanning ten blue links, searchers increasingly read a synthesized answer first and click through only when they want more. For local intent, that means the businesses cited and summarized in that answer get the visibility — and the rest get scrolled past. The click that used to go to position three or four now goes to whoever the AI decided to name.
Why the AI cites who it cites
These systems lean on the same trust signals classic local search has always rewarded — but they read them more literally. A complete Business Profile, consistent name-address-phone data across the web, real reviews, and content that plainly answers a question are what make a business safe for the model to summarize and cite. Ambiguity gets you left out, not penalized — and in a one-answer world, left out is the penalty.
How to stay visible
- Keep your Google Business Profile complete, accurate, and active
- Write genuinely useful, specific content that answers real local questions
- Earn consistent reviews — they feed both ranking and the AI summary
- Use clean structured data so your hours, location, and services are unambiguous
- Make sure your name, address, and phone match everywhere they appear online
What not to do
Don't chase the algorithm with thin, AI-spun pages built to game the summary. The model is better than that, and so are your customers. The durable strategy is the boring one: be the most useful, most trustworthy result for the questions you want to win — in Columbus or anywhere you do business. That's the version of SEO that keeps working no matter how the results page gets rearranged next.