AI Overviews: the answer that sits above your business.
Google is placing an automatically generated AI answer at the top of the results for more and more searches. For handymen, painters, gardeners and installers, that raises one question: will I still be found? This guide gives the honest answer. What AI Overviews are, which customer questions trigger them, what you can and cannot steer, and why your Google Business Profile matters more than ever. No scare figures: everything here is either publicly documented or explicitly labelled as an estimate.
- Unpack the zip into
~/.claude/skills/(or.claude/skills/in your project). - Claude then recognises the skill on the topic automatically.
- Or call it directly with
/ai-overview-sensitivity.
- Go to Customize and then Skills.
- Upload the zip there as a skill.
- Or paste the contents of SKILL.md into a Project's instructions.
- Open the SKILL.md file from the zip.
- Paste the contents into your
AGENTS.md, or place it as a separate file in your repo and refer to it fromAGENTS.md. - Codex reads that in on every session.
What an AI Overview is, and when you see one
reg. A.001An AI Overview is an automatically generated answer that Google places at the top of the search results, along with links to the sources the answer leans on. The system reads several pages, distils an answer out of them and pushes the ordinary blue results down. Google itself says such an overview appears when it adds more value than separate results, especially for informational and multi-part questions. Here is what that looks like for a typical trade question.
A boiler lasts on average fifteen years. Its lifespan depends on maintenance, use and water quality.
Annual servicing extends the lifespan and keeps the warranty valid. For a boiler older than twelve years, it pays to start planning a replacement.
Not every customer question is equally sensitive
reg. A.002The most important insight in this whole guide: AI Overviews do not appear everywhere. Google says they mainly turn up for questions where a composed answer adds something. For you as a tradesperson, that means: sort your customer questions before you panic. The bars below are an estimate based on how Google itself describes the system, not a measurement, and it can play out differently per keyword.
What you can and cannot steer
reg. A.003A lot gets sold around AI Overviews that does not exist. So here is the complete control panel, limited to what Google itself documents. On the left, what you genuinely have in your hands; on the right, what nobody can deliver you, however much is charged for it.
Four habits that keep working, whatever Google does
reg. A.004You cannot switch off AI Overviews, but you can make sure your business is everywhere the searcher ends up: in the map pack, in the citations and in the customer's memory. That is not a weekend project but a rhythm. These four steps describe your work, not what Google does with it or when.
three places where the searcher ends upwhich habit feeds which place
Four habits, three places plus your own page. Pick a habit to see which place grows from it.
The click question, answered honestly
The question every tradesperson asks: how many customers is this costing me? The internet is full of confident percentages, but none of them can be substantiated. What does exist: two public sources that contradict each other. Google itself states that total organic click volume to websites has stayed stable since the arrival of AI Overviews, and that the clicks that do come through are more valuable. Independent research by the Pew Research Center from 2025 found the opposite in a US sample: participants clicked an ordinary result considerably less often for searches with an AI summary than for those without: 8 per cent of visits versus 15 per cent without a summary.
Both sources have their limitations: Google does not publish the underlying data, and Pew's sample is American and does not measure your market.
What that means for you
First: distrust anyone who predicts you a fixed click-loss percentage, especially if a quote is attached to it. Second: your own Search Console is the only source that is actually about your business. Look at impressions and clicks per page over the past months. If impressions stay level while clicks fall, something is shifting in how the search page looks, and AI Overviews are a likely suspect. If both fall, something else is going on, and you want a general analysis first; our free SEO scan checks 24 points and a manual audit of five pages is also free.
And third, the perspective missing from the panic stories: some of the clicks that disappear are clicks that never earned anything anyway
Whoever only wanted the answer to a trivia question was never going to be your customer. The searcher who needs an engineer still has to call, and still ends up at a business through the map pack, your profile or your service page. The only question is: which business. That is why the rest of this guide is not about limiting loss, but about being present in the places that remain.
Your Business Profile is the anchor of your local visibility
For local searches, the most important spot on the search page is not the AI answer but the map pack: the map with businesses, reviews and phone numbers. Whoever is in the top three there gets the call. Google documents three factors that determine your position in that pack.
Relevance: how well your profile matches what is being searched for, which you steer with your category, your services list and your description
Distance: how close you are, which you can do little about except being honest about your service area. And prominence: how well known your business is, online and offline, where reviews, mentions and your website all weigh in. Watch the naming: it has been called Google Business Profile for years now; whoever still calls it Google My Business is working from outdated information. Everything about the profile itself is in our article on the Google Business Profile.
Reviews deserve most of your attention here, because Google says two things about them explicitly: the number and the score of reviews weigh into your local position, and responding to reviews is recommended because it shows you value your customers. What Google says nowhere: that a reply by itself raises your position, or that there is a magic number of reviews. So build a steady stream, ask after every job, and reply to everything, even that one customer's angry review. Your profile is also increasingly becoming a source for AI systems that write about local businesses; why that works is covered in your Business Profile as an AI business card.
Where you currently stand, you can measure in two minutes with our local visibility checker NL: it checks your profile on the points you genuinely control and only counts what is actually measured. If you get stuck, or want someone who does this daily to take a look, that is exactly the work that falls under an ongoing SEO plan at 250 euro a month; all rates are on the pricing page NL and the approach is covered under improving your SEO.
What to put on the page for an AI-sensitive question
Say you have used the sorting from Section 02 to find a question that is highly sensitive: an explainer question where Google is likely to place an AI answer above the results. What do you then put on that page?
First, the answer itself, at the top, in two or three sentences
Not after three paragraphs of run-up, not behind a form. It feels counterintuitive, as if you are giving your knowledge away, but it is exactly the opposite: a page that gives the answer straight away is usable as a source and convinces the reader who does click through. After that, you go deeper: the factors that change the answer, the cases where it works differently, and what you as a tradesperson see that a general answer misses. That last part is your edge, because an AI answer is by definition general.
Add the sub-questions customers ask, visibly, each with a short answer, and keep the structure clean: one H1, logical subheadings, short paragraphs.
Be honest about prices with a range and the factors behind it; transparent pages are more usable as a source and build more trust with the reader
And keep the page current: a year mentioned in the text that is three years old is a reason for both reader and machine to lose interest. To check how your page looks when summarised, use our AI snippet previewer. For anyone who wants to go further into how AI systems read your site, there is the article on llms.txt: an honest account, because there too, less is certain than sellers claim.
Finally, the question of who is going to do this
It can perfectly well be done yourself: the knowledge base is full of step by step plans, and the skill at the top of this page sorts your customer questions for free. Want to outsource it? Then this work sits within an ongoing plan and the agreement stays simple: we promise work and explanation, not positions and not percentages. What AI can do for your business beyond this, from automation to training your team, is covered under AI and automation.
Frequently asked questions about AI Overviews
Do AI Overviews appear in the Netherlands too?
Yes. Google introduced AI Overviews in the United States in May 2024 and then expanded in phases; since 2025 they have also been appearing in the Netherlands and in Dutch. They do not sit above every search: you mainly see them for informational questions where a composed answer adds something. For local searches with a place name, Google usually shows the map pack with business profiles first.
Can I sign my business up for AI Overviews?
No. There is no submission form and no paid placement in the AI answer itself. Google chooses sources automatically, based on the same systems that assemble the ordinary search results. What you can do is improve the odds that your page is usable as a source: answer the question concretely and directly, keep your content current and make sure your site is technically readable. Nobody can guarantee you a citation.
Can I block AI Overviews for my site?
Only with blunt tools. Google documents that the ordinary preview settings also apply to AI features: nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex. But whoever shields their text that way also loses their ordinary snippets, and noindex removes your whole page from the results. The Google-Extended setting only concerns training Google's AI models, not AI Overviews. For a tradesperson who wants to be found, blocking is therefore almost never wise.
How many clicks does an AI Overview cost me?
Nobody knows in advance, and distrust anyone who promises you a fixed percentage. Google itself states that total click volume to websites has stayed stable. Independent research by the Pew Research Center from 2025 found that participants clicked an ordinary result less often when an AI summary was present: 8 per cent versus 15 per cent. The honest answer: it differs by search and by site. Measure your own situation in Search Console, by tracking impressions and clicks per page over time.
Is my Google Business Profile now more important than my website?
They do different jobs and you need both. For local searches, your Business Profile determines whether you appear in the map pack; Google documents three factors for that: relevance, distance and prominence. Your website is where informational questions get answered, and is therefore your candidate source for AI answers. The profile brings the caller, the website proves your expertise. Neglect either one and you pay for it on the other side.
What does help from us cost with this?
The free SEO scan checks 24 points of your site, and a manual audit of five pages is also free. Ongoing SEO support costs 250 euro a month, a one off extensive audit 750 euro, and separate work 65 euro an hour. If you specifically want to know how visible you are in AI answers, there is the AI visibility report at 75 euro. Our service rates are open and public on the pricing page, with no hidden costs; the subscription prices for Jarvis and the MyParcel Dashboard are on their own product pages.
No panic, but a plan
AI Overviews are not a reason to stop working on your website, and not a reason for panic contracts. They are a reason to sort: which customer questions are sensitive, where does the map pack win, and where does a better page still make the difference. Start today with the two free measurements: the local visibility checker NL for your profile and the free SEO scan for your site. Then sort your customer questions with the skill at the top of this page. And if you would rather think it through out loud for your situation, we can simply book a call; for everything else there is the contact page, and for the reader who wants more there is the knowledge base.