--- title: "Google's AI Answers Are Cutting Research Clicks for B2B, Services and Local Firms. Here's Where Leads Are Moving" summary: "Seer Interactive's 2026 data shows organic click-through falls sharply when an AI Overview appears, with informational and comparison queries hit hardest, while G2 and BrightLocal surveys show buyers and local consumers turning to AI for shortlists. For B2B, professional-services and local businesses, the top of the funnel is shifting into Google's and chatbots' answers." url: "https://marketing-insights.endatasite.com/articles/google-ai-overviews-ai-mode-b2b-professional-services-local-leads" publisher: "Marketing Insights" section: "AI Search" author: "Marketing Desk" datePublished: "2026-09-28T22:27:50.249Z" dateModified: "2026-09-28T22:27:50.249Z" sources: - title: "AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update (Seer Interactive)" url: "https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update" - title: "Google Search's I/O 2026 updates (Google)" url: "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/" - title: "New G2 Research: Half of B2B Software Buyers Now Start Their Research With AI Chatbots" url: "https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-g2-research-half-of-b2b-software-buyers-now-start-their-research-with-ai-chatbots-302742807.html" - title: "Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (BrightLocal)" url: "https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/" --- # Google's AI Answers Are Cutting Research Clicks for B2B, Services and Local Firms. Here's Where Leads Are Moving *Seer Interactive's 2026 data shows organic click-through falls sharply when an AI Overview appears, with informational and comparison queries hit hardest, while G2 and BrightLocal surveys show buyers and local consumers turning to AI for shortlists. For B2B, professional-services and local businesses, the top of the funnel is shifting into Google's and chatbots' answers.* Google's AI answers are no longer an experiment sitting on top of search results. At its I/O conference in May 2026, Google said AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users a year after its debut, with queries "more than doubling every quarter since launch," according to a May 19 post by Elizabeth Reid, Google's VP of Search. For companies that sell expertise rather than products, including B2B firms, professional-services practices and local service businesses, the question is what that shift is doing to the clicks and inquiries they depend on. The most detailed recent answer comes from click-through data. Seer Interactive published an April 24, 2026 update of its AI Overviews study covering 53 brands, 5.47 million queries and 2.43 billion organic impressions from January 2025 through February 2026. The findings come from the firm's own tracked data, and Seer did not break the results down by industry, but they are among the largest public datasets on the question. ## Fewer Clicks When an AI Overview Appears In February 2026, Seer measured an organic click-through rate of 3.82% on queries without an AI Overview and 2.36% on queries with one. Paid search showed the same pattern: 21.85% CTR without an AI Overview versus 16.21% with one. The decline may be leveling off. Seer reported that organic CTR on queries showing an AI Overview climbed from a low of 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026, an 85% rebound in two months. The authors wrote that "the decline has slowed and that indicates we may have passed the worst of the period." That is a recovery from a low base, not a return to pre-AI levels. ## Where B2B and Services Firms Are Most Exposed Seer's data suggests the pain is concentrated in the research stage. AI Overviews appeared on 36% of informational queries in the dataset, compared with 8% of commercial queries and 5% of transactional ones. Question-format queries triggered an AI Overview 85.9% of the time, and comparison queries were the highest-risk category: "At 95.4% AIO rate, nearly every 'X vs Y' informational query in this study has an AI Overview," Seer wrote. That maps closely onto how B2B and professional-services marketing has worked for a decade. Explainer articles, "how to choose" guides and vendor or approach comparisons were built to capture early-stage searchers and convert some of them into newsletter sign-ups, demo requests or consultation calls. Those are the queries where Google now answers first. Bottom-of-funnel searches, where a buyer is ready to contact a firm, are far less likely to show an AI Overview, according to Seer's intent breakdown. Being cited helps, but only partly. For informational queries, Seer found brands cited in the AI Overview earned a 2.07% organic CTR, compared with 0.94% when they were not cited and 3.35% when no AI Overview appeared. "Being cited in the AIO delivers +120% more organic clicks per impression versus when you are not cited. But it still underperforms No AIO by -38%," the report said. ## Buyers Are Starting Somewhere Else The traffic picture is only half the story. G2, the software review platform, said on April 15, 2026 that a March 2026 survey of 1,076 B2B decision-makers found 51% now start software research in an AI chatbot more often than on Google, up from 29% in April 2025. In the same survey, 69% said they chose a different vendor than originally planned based on AI chatbot guidance, and 85% said they view vendors more favorably when an AI chatbot mentions them. G2 has an interest in the finding, since review-site citations were rated the most confidence-inspiring element of AI answers by 45% of respondents, but the direction matches the traffic data. "Buyers have moved from reference to inference," said Tim Sanders, G2's chief innovation officer. For B2B firms, that means a prospect may arrive already holding a shortlist that an AI assistant helped build, having never visited the firm's blog. ## Local Businesses Face a Different Shift Local discovery is changing too. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey, published February 11, 2026 and based on 1,002 US consumers, found that use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for business recommendations rose from 6% in 2025 to 45% in 2026, making AI the third most common source of recommendations. Google's share for that purpose fell from 83% to 71% in the same survey. Google is also moving AI closer to the booking itself. In its May I/O announcements, the company said AI Mode would handle bookings for "local experiences and services," and that for select categories such as home repair and pet care, users can "ask Google to call businesses on your behalf," a feature Google said would roll out in the US over the summer. For contractors, clinics and other appointment-driven businesses, the first contact may increasingly come from an automated caller or an AI-assisted request rather than a website visit. ## What This Means for Your Business For agencies serving B2B and professional-services clients, the case for measuring success by blog traffic is getting weaker. Informational and comparison content still matters, but its job is increasingly to be the source an AI Overview cites, not the page a visitor lands on. Reports should separate informational traffic from commercial and branded traffic so clients can see where losses are concentrated and where lead flow is holding. Comparison and "X vs Y" pages deserve a fresh look. Seer's data shows they almost always trigger an AI Overview, so they need clear, verifiable claims that an AI system can summarize accurately, and a reason to click, such as pricing detail, calculators or case evidence the summary cannot reproduce. Local clients should treat business profiles, reviews and accurate service and hours information as inputs to AI answers and agent bookings, not just to the map pack. Make sure phone lines and front desks can handle calls and requests that may originate from Google's AI. Finally, add qualitative capture to intake. A simple "How did you hear about us?" field that includes AI assistants will tell clients more about AI-driven lead flow than referral data alone, since many of these journeys leave no clean trail in analytics. ## Sources - [AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update (Seer Interactive)](https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update) - [Google Search's I/O 2026 updates (Google)](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/) - [New G2 Research: Half of B2B Software Buyers Now Start Their Research With AI Chatbots](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-g2-research-half-of-b2b-software-buyers-now-start-their-research-with-ai-chatbots-302742807.html) - [Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (BrightLocal)](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/) *Cite as: Marketing Insights, "Google's AI Answers Are Cutting Research Clicks for B2B, Services and Local Firms. Here's Where Leads Are Moving", https://marketing-insights.endatasite.com/articles/google-ai-overviews-ai-mode-b2b-professional-services-local-leads (as of 2026-09-28).*