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I went looking for data on how service providers are doing in Google’s AI Overviews. Doulas. Coaches. Copywriters. Photographers. The people I work with every day.
I couldn’t find any.
So I collected my own: 262 Google searches across eight kinds of service providers, plus every source Google’s AI cited along the way.
Here’s where I landed. I don’t think AI Overviews are bad news for service providers. Yes, they take some clicks from people who are early in their research. But someone who’s ready to hire still clicks. They want to look at your website, check your prices and decide whether you’re their person. And they’re more likely to click on the sites Google put in the answer.
You can’t be vetted if you’re not in the answer.
The good news? Getting into the answer looked a lot less like a big-brand game than I expected. Whether a small business got cited depended less on its size and more on who else was competing for that search.
And none of what got providers cited was an AI trick. It was SEO basics, done well.
Key takeaways
- Ready-to-hire buyers still click, and they’re more likely to click the providers named in the AI Overview.
- Search interest in these services held steady in the first year of AI Overviews.
- Small sites can get cited. Independent business websites earned 49% of AI Overview citations, and who you’re up against mattered more than how big you are.
- Online providers like copywriters, web designers and ads managers usually get an AI Overview but no map, so their website is the whole storefront.
- About half of the business pages that got cited didn’t rank on page one.
- What got providers cited was SEO basics: a page for each service, prices on it, a strong Google Business Profile for in-person providers, and blog posts that answer buyer questions.
Are Google AI Overviews bad for service providers?
No. Google AI Overviews may take some clicks from people early in their research, but buyers who are ready to hire still click through, and they click on the providers Google names in the answer.
Fewer clicks, but not fewer people looking
People do click less when Google answers with AI. Pew Research Center tracked the searches of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025: they clicked a regular result on 8% of searches with an AI summary, and on 15% without one.
But fewer clicks isn’t the same as fewer people looking for you. In this study, Google Trends showed search interest in these eight kinds of providers holding flat in the first year after AI Overviews launched in the U.S. Across the 39 searches with enough Trends data, the median change was 0.1%.
People are searching for doulas, coaches and copywriters as much as they were. They’re just clicking less often.
The clicks that disappear are mostly early research
So which clicks are going away? Mostly the ones from people who are still learning.
That’s where AI Overviews show up most. In January 2025, 91% of the searches that triggered an AI Overview were informational, according to Semrush’s tracking of more than 10 million keywords. By October 2025, that share had dropped to 57%, still more than half. This study found the same pattern: question searches like “what does a doula do” got an AI Overview almost every time, and searches for the service itself got one less often.
Someone asking what a doula does can get their answer without visiting your site. That person probably wasn’t ready to hire yet anyway.
Buyers ready to hire still click, and they favor whoever's cited
The person who is ready to hire behaves differently. They aren’t choosing a doula off a paragraph. They’re checking you out.
That shows up in how people use AI. In a Semrush survey of 1,030 U.S. adults who use AI tools, 77% use AI and traditional search together, and 68% visit brand websites as often as before or more.
And when they do click, they’re more likely to click on whoever’s in the AI Overview. Seer Interactive found brands cited in the AI Overview earned 35% more organic clicks than brands that weren’t. (Seer can’t prove the citation causes those clicks, since stronger brands may just get cited more often.)
So AI Overviews aren’t shrinking the number of people looking to hire you. They’re deciding who those people see first.
This study at a glance
This small study looked at 262 Google searches people use to find, compare and learn about eight kinds of service providers, and at every source Google’s AI cited in the answers.
The eight provider types came straight from the people I work with: doulas, prenatal and postpartum personal trainers, photographers, coaches, nutritionists and dietitians, copywriters, web designers and ads managers. Some work with clients in person, some work entirely online, and some do both.
For each one, I checked three main kinds of searches:
- Hiring searches, like “birth doula,” “copywriter” or “photographer near me”
- Comparing searches, like “best life coach” or “family photography prices”
- Question searches, like “what does a doula do”
I ran every search on Google on September 22 and 23, 2026, recorded whether an AI Overview or a map showed up, and logged all 1,863 sources the AI Overviews cited. On October 1, I re-ran the “near me” searches from Seattle, Chicago and Atlanta to see how they behave in a real city. The full methods, and what this study can’t tell you, are at the end.
The first thing that jumped out at me wasn’t the AI Overviews themselves. It was what showed up next to them, and what didn’t: the map.
Online service providers get the AI Overview but not the map
When someone searches for a copywriter, a web designer or an ads manager, Google usually answers with an AI Overview and usually leaves out the map.
That’s where service providers part ways with the local search research I found. In Synup’s 2026 local search study, the so-called “map pack” showed up on 91% to 97% of results pages. For a lot of the providers in this study, it didn’t show up at all.
To compare fairly, I looked at the 69 hiring searches phrased the way most people search for a service: just the name of it, with no “near me” and no “online.” The AI Overview showed up on 81% of them, and the rate didn’t change much from one kind of provider to the next.
The map was a different story.
| Provider | AI Overview | Map |
|---|---|---|
| Photographer | 4 of 6 | 6 of 6 |
| Personal trainer | 4 of 6 | 6 of 6 |
| Nutritionist | 4 of 6 | 6 of 6 |
| Coach | 9 of 10 | 9 of 10 |
| Doula | 8 of 9 | 7 of 9 |
| Web designer | 6 of 10 | 5 of 10 |
| Copywriter | 11 of 11 | 3 of 11 |
| Ads manager | 10 of 11 | 1 of 11 |
So the kind of provider you are barely changed your odds of seeing an AI Overview. But it changed your odds of seeing a map a lot.
Providers who usually meet clients in person got a map almost every time. Photographers, personal trainers, nutritionists, coaches and doulas saw one on 34 of their 37 searches. Providers who mostly serve businesses online didn’t. Web designers, copywriters and ads managers saw one on 9 of 32.
In SEO, we like to say every Google search is a local search, because Google uses your location to shape the results. That’s still true. But a result shaped by your location isn’t the same as a map. The map showed up when the search read as “someone nearby,” and for copywriters, web designers and ads managers, it mostly didn’t.
That changes where you need to show up.
If you see clients in person, you’re competing in two places at once: the map and the AI answer. In this study, 41 of the 116 hiring searches showed both on the same page, and the AI answer was always on top.
If you’re a copywriter, web designer or ads manager, there often is no map. The same goes for anyone who works online, including online personal trainers and virtual doulas (more on that below). If that’s you, your website is the whole storefront.
Adding "online" or "virtual" takes the map away
Even providers who normally get a map lose it the moment the searcher says they want to work remotely.
Nine searches in the study included “online” or “virtual” (six hiring searches and three comparing searches), like “online personal trainer” and “virtual doula.” All nine showed an AI Overview. None showed a map. The same kinds of providers, searched without those words, got a map 28 out of 31 times.
So if you offer virtual sessions, your Google Business Profile can’t help you on those searches. Your website has to do it alone.
Which raises the question every solo provider asks sooner or later: can a small website actually get cited?
Who you're up against matters more than how big you are
Yes, a small website can get cited. Whether yours does depends a lot on who else is competing for that search.
You’ve probably heard that AI search favors the best-known brands. Ahrefs found that brands mentioned most often around the web show up in AI Overviews far more than less-mentioned brands. But in this study, independent business websites earned 49% of all AI Overview citations, and 204 of the 213 AI Overviews with sources cited at least one independent business site.
That share wasn’t the same everywhere, though. It swung widely depending on the kind of provider:
| Provider | Citations to independent business sites | Biggest other source |
|---|---|---|
| Photographer | 75% | Reddit, Quora and social (14%) |
| Ads manager | 57% | Reddit, Quora and social (18%) |
| Copywriter | 55% | YouTube (18%) |
| Doula | 52% | Directories and associations (19%) |
| Personal trainer | 50% | Directories and associations (14%) |
| Coach | 50% | Directories and associations (16%) |
| Web designer | 37% | YouTube (31%) |
| Nutritionist | 26% | Directories and associations (37%) |
Photographers are mostly up against other photographers, so their websites get cited. Nutritionists are up against health publishers, hospital systems and big directories, which took 64% of their citations between them.
YouTube was the single most-cited site in the study. It showed up in 57% of AI Overviews, and in 74% of the ones on question searches.
That’s the “best-known brands win” story, but only where those brands are actually in the running. If they aren’t in yours, you have a real shot.
It also didn’t take a page-one ranking. Only about half of the independent business websites that got cited also ranked in Google’s top 10 for that same search.
One note on the numbers: “independent business site” here means a business’s own website, as opposed to a directory, publisher, video or social site. It includes agencies and franchises, so it measures who owns the site, not how big the business is.
So who you’re up against decides how good your odds are. Whether there’s an AI Overview to get into in the first place comes down to something else: how people search.
How someone searches decides whether they see an AI Overview
The words someone types decide whether Google shows an AI Overview at all. The closer a search gets to “I need someone nearby, now,” the less likely an AI answer becomes.
Here’s how that played out across the study:
- Question and comparing searches (“what does a doula do,” “best life coach”): an AI Overview 96% to 100% of the time, for every kind of provider.
- Hiring searches phrased as the service (“birth doula,” “copywriter”): 81%
- “Near me” plus a specific need (“overnight doula near me,” “prenatal personal trainer near me”): 34%
- Plain “near me” (“doula near me,” “photographer near me”): 11%
Whitespark and Synup saw the same pattern in their local search research. Whitespark found AI Overviews on 92% of informational local searches but only 15% of searches for a local business. Synup saw them on just 4% of plain “near me” searches. Informational searches pull AI answers. Plain “near me” searches mostly don’t.
"Near me" searches almost always get the map
“Near me” searches got the map almost every time, whether or not an AI Overview showed up. When I ran them from Seattle, Chicago and Atlanta to see what someone in a real city would get, the map showed up on 113 of 116.
When a "near me" AI Overview appears, it names local businesses
The AI Overviews that did show up on “near me” searches looked different from the rest. Most of them named specific local providers, usually with star ratings and review counts. Of the 25 I could inspect, 17 showed ratings, reviews or directions for named businesses, and at least 5 more named a business without them. Some cited no websites at all.
That looks like it comes from business listings, the same place the map gets it. So for local providers, your Google Business Profile likely isn’t only feeding the map. It’s feeding the AI answer, too.
So the search decides whether there’s an AI answer, and for local searches, your business listing helps decide whether you’re named in it. The rest comes down to the page Google finds when it looks at your website.
What Google's AI cites when someone wants to hire you
When someone searches to hire, Google’s AI mostly cites a page about that one service. Not the home page, and not a blog post.
On hiring searches, 71% to 76% of the business website pages that got cited were dedicated service pages. Home pages came a distant second, at 12% to 18%.
The pattern held across the other kinds of searches, too. Google cited the page that matched the question. Question searches like “what does a doula do” cited blog posts 74% of the time. And when the search was about cost, the cited pages put the price in writing: in a follow-up check of 16 of those searches, every one of the 87 business pages Google cited listed actual prices.
That doesn’t mean you need a separate pricing page. For most providers, the service page and the pricing page are the same page. The study can’t say whether a combined page does better or worse than a separate one. It can say the pages that got cited didn’t make people ask for a quote to find out what something costs.
(These page types come from the web addresses of the citations where the full address was recorded. More on that in the methods section.)
Put that together with everything above, and the to-do list for a service provider gets short.
How to rank in Google AI Overviews as a service provider
To rank in Google AI Overviews as a service provider, give each service its own page, put your prices on it, keep your Google Business Profile strong if you see clients in person, and answer your buyers’ questions in blog posts.
Here’s what each of those looks like, and what in the study points to it.
- Give every service its own page. On hiring searches, 71% to 76% of the business pages Google cited were dedicated service pages. If you offer birth doula support and postpartum doula support, that’s two pages, and your services overview page can point to each one.
- Put your prices on it. Real numbers or a starting range, plus what’s included. In a check of 16 cost searches, every business page Google cited had prices in writing. You don’t need a separate pricing page to do this.
- If you see clients in person, keep your Google Business Profile strong. In-person providers got a map on 34 of 37 hiring searches, and the “near me” AI answers named local businesses with their ratings. Your profile shows up in both places. (My Google Business Profile tutorial walks through setup.)
- If you work online, treat your website as the whole storefront. Copywriters, web designers and ads managers rarely got a map, and no one got one on “online” or “virtual” searches. One caution: Google only allows a Business Profile if customers can visit you or you travel to them, so don’t create one just to chase the map.
- Answer your buyers’ questions in blog posts or videos. Question searches cited blog posts 74% of the time. Those readers are earlier in the process, but a post that answers “what does a doula do” is often (in my experience) how they first find you. If you’re comfortable on camera, a short YouTube video answering the same question gives you a second way in. About a third of the cited videos I could trace came from working providers, including a dietitian, an ads agency owner and a web design studio.
Quick Win: Pick the service you book most. Check that it has its own page, and that the price, or a starting price, is written on it.
If that list looks familiar, it should.
Is any of this specific to AI Overviews?
No. Every item on that list is traditional SEO advice. Nothing in the data called for an AI-only tactic.
What’s different is the setting those basics play out in:
- Whether there’s an AI answer at all depends on the wording of the search. Question searches almost always get one. Plain “near me” searches rarely do.
- A page-one ranking isn’t required. About half of the independent business websites that got cited didn’t rank in the top 10 for that search.
- Local AI answers appear to draw on business listings. Some “near me” AI Overviews named providers and their ratings without citing a single website.
Let’s talk limitations. This study didn’t test AI-specific tactics like schema markup, llms.txt files or special formatting, so it can’t tell you whether they help. What it can tell you is that the service providers who got cited were doing the basics.
This is exactly why I’m a broken record when it comes to SEO foundations. The providers who got cited weren’t doing anything fancy. They had a clear page for each service, their prices written down and a Google Business Profile that was actually filled out.
That’s work you can do this month, without learning a single new AI acronym. Save the AI-specific stuff for after.
Which brings me to how the study was done, and what it can and can’t tell you.
How this study was done
This study is a snapshot of 262 Google searches for eight kinds of service providers, checked between September 22 and October 1, 2026, along with every source their AI Overviews cited.
What was searched
What was searched
The searches covered doulas, prenatal and postpartum personal trainers, photographers, coaches, nutritionists and dietitians, copywriters, web designers and ads managers.
116 were hiring searches: 69 phrased as the service itself (“birth doula”), 41 with “near me,” and 6 with “online” or “virtual.” The other 146 were comparing, question and do-it-yourself searches. Monthly U.S. search volume for each came from SE Ranking.
How results were collected
How results were collected
- Desktop results: every search was run on Google (U.S., English) through SE Ranking’s search results tool on September 22 and 23, 2026. For each one I recorded whether an AI Overview appeared, which sources it cited, and whether a map appeared. These searches used a nationwide U.S. setting rather than a specific city, so map rates on hiring searches are likely a floor.
- Repeat check: 39 searches were run a second time within about three hours. Whether an AI Overview appeared matched 87% of the time, and whether a map appeared matched 95%. AI Overviews change from one search to the next, so treat any single result as a snapshot.
- Mobile check: 51 hiring searches were also run on mobile through SerpApi. Mobile showed fewer AI Overviews than desktop (19 versus 26).
- City check: on October 1, 2026, the 41 “near me” searches were re-run on desktop from Seattle, Chicago and Atlanta. 116 of the 123 checks returned results.
- Search interest: Google Trends data (through SerpApi, U.S., five years, weekly) was pulled for 90 searches, and 39 had enough data to use. I compared the first year after AI Overviews launched (June 2024 to May 2025) with the year before. Trends data after June 2025 was left out, because unrelated control searches jumped in that window.
Who did what
Who did what
I designed the study and chose the searches. Claude (Anthropic’s AI) ran the searches through SE Ranking and SerpApi, sorted the results using the rules below, and ran the calculations. More on how I use AI.
How citations were sorted
How citations were sorted
- Citations: 1,863 sources across 213 AI Overviews. Google’s own links were left out.
- Site type: each cited site was matched against a list of directories, marketplaces, associations, major publishers, health systems, video and social sites. Everything else counted as an independent business site, which includes agencies and franchises. That makes the 49% independent share an upper limit.
- Page type: service page, home page, blog post or pricing page was assigned from the web address, for the 584 citations where the full address was recorded, plus a follow-up check of 16 cost searches.
- Comparing provider types: differences in map rates between provider types were statistically significant. Differences in AI Overview rates on hiring searches were not.
What this study can't tell you
What this study can't tell you
- It shows what got cited, not why. Every finding is a pattern, not proof of cause.
- It’s a few days of results in the U.S. only. AI Overviews change often.
- Some groups are small. Each provider type had 6 to 11 hiring searches phrased as the service.
- Page-type findings come from the citations with full web addresses, not all 1,863.
- It didn’t test AI-specific tactics like schema markup or llms.txt.
The full dataset is available to download here.
None of those limits change the main point, though.
You can't be clicked if you're not in the answer
People who are ready to hire are still searching, still clicking and still checking you out before they reach out. AI Overviews haven’t changed that. They’ve changed where the checking starts.
When Google answers with AI, the providers it names get looked at first. In this study, the ones it named were mostly doing the unglamorous work: a page for each service, prices in writing, a Google Business Profile that’s filled in and blog posts that answer the questions clients actually ask.
And a lot of them weren’t big brands. They were business websites, in fields where the big sites weren’t crowding them out.
You’re too good to be this hard to find. Start with the service you book most: make sure it has its own page, with the service clearly defined and the price on it.
Ready to put this to work?
The providers who got cited in this study got there with the basics, one page at a time.
The SEO Kickstart Kit helps you do the same. It’s five practical checklists that help service providers show up in search and get found by the right clients. It’s free, and you can start with that one service page today.
