Short excerpt from a talk by Jeff For Local Marketing warning that AI-driven search results (AI overviews + responses) are already reshaping user behavior: users often stop after seeing an AI-generated answer, which risks excluding unprepared local businesses from visibility and customers. The speaker emphasizes urgency — the change is happening now and affects organic traffic and other channels.
90% or more of local businesses a have no idea this is coming. And it's not coming. It's here. It's happening today. I challenge you to pick up your phone, put in a search term and see what comes back. It'll come up with an AI overview and then it will give you some responses. But we as humans are kind of naturally lazy. When we get a response or an answer that feels like, okay, that satisfy what I need people, guess what? I'm done. I don't even see what's below the line. I don't even see what's below that. I now move on and I decide, hey, I'm going to go to that company or that information, I'm going to follow up with it and that's who's going to get my business or attention for that period of time. Well, when a local business is not prepared for that, guess what? We're not going to see you. It's affecting everything. I'm talking about not just organic traffic, but I'm talking about also.
