AI Overviews on Adelaide searches: what we saw on seven queries, and what it means locally.

Short answer: on the Adelaide searches we checked, an AI Overview appeared on four of seven, always below the map box, and the map box appeared on all seven. People Also Ask boxes appeared on every one. For a local business the practical order of importance has not changed: map box first, then organic, then the question boxes and the AI summary, which draw on the same pages anyway.

What appeared on each search

Two things stand out. The AI Overview showed on the broad, slightly informational searches (“seo adelaide”, “seo agency adelaide”, “seo services adelaide”) and not on the ones with a clearer buying intent (“seo company”, “seo consultant”, “local seo”). And on every single query, the first thing on the page was the three-business map box. Google is answering “who, near me” with Maps before it answers “what is” with AI.

What this means for a local business

The map box is still the prize. If you sell a local service, the Google Business Profile decides more of your visibility than any AI feature does. Nothing we saw changes the advice on our profile optimisation page.

AI Overviews cite ordinary pages. The summaries are assembled from pages Google already ranks, and they link to them. Pages that answer a question plainly in the first paragraph, under a heading that matches how people ask it, are the ones that get cited. That is the same thing that wins People Also Ask boxes, and the same thing that has always been good writing.

Some searches will lose clicks. We have seen it in Search Console: a client venue page took 2,249 impressions and only 5 clicks over 28 days for a search Google answered on the results page. When the answer is a fact, the summary absorbs the click. When the answer is “which business should I ring”, it does not; people still need a phone number and a name.

Write for both at once. A clear first-paragraph answer, headings phrased as questions, a sentence that states your town and your service, and structured data that confirms it. That serves the AI summary, the question boxes and the human reading on a phone. Our AI search page describes exactly what we do and, just as importantly, what we do not promise.

What we do not know

Whether a listing in an AI Overview produces enquiries. Whether llms.txt files are read by anything that matters. How quickly the layout will change again. We will re-check the same seven searches in a few months and update this article; if the layout moves, the advice will move with it.