AI Overviews are changing local trade searches. Here is what shows up now

The cost question: AI answers first, links later

Search for the cost of a job ("how much to replace a consumer unit", "cost of a new boiler fitted") and the result most often begins with an AI Overview. It gives a range, lists the factors that move the price, and cites a handful of sources beneath.

For trades this is a mixed outcome. The homeowner arrives at the phone call already holding a number, sometimes a national average that bears little relation to local labour rates. The firms that benefit are the ones whose own pricing pages are among the sources cited, because their name is on the page the homeowner read.

Search Engine Roundtable's November webmaster report noted a study putting click-through from AI Overviews and AI Mode at under one per cent, with Google itself declining to show click data for those links. Whatever the exact figure, a cited page gets seen by far more people than visit it.

The how-to question: Google will try to do your job

"How to bleed a radiator", "how to fix a dripping tap": these were always DIY-first searches, and the AI Overview now gives step-by-step instructions above the videos. Trades lose nothing here that they ever had.

The interesting category is the how-to search that should not be a DIY job. "How to replace a light fitting" or "how to move a gas hob" tend to produce an Overview that includes a line about regulations or a recommendation to use a qualified person. Trades whose websites explain plainly why a job needs a registered installer, and what the certificate is for, appear in those citations. Our guide to accreditation badges as marketing touches on that.

The near-me question: the map still wins, mostly

For "plumber near me" or "roofer in Darlington", the local pack of three Business Profiles still leads the page in most cases, with organic results beneath. AI Overviews appear less often for these, and when they do they tend to summarise what to look for in a tradesperson rather than naming firms.

In AI Mode, however, the picture is different. Ask a conversational question ("who can fit a bathroom in Stockton and has good reviews") and the answer names businesses, drawing on Business Profile data, review text and website content. The firms named are the ones with complete profiles, specific review wording and pages that say which services they do in which towns. The practical tie to review content is covered in our piece on review velocity and local rankings.

What Google has said, and what it has not

Google has not published a guide to being named in an AI answer for local services. Its general guidance on AI features in Search points to the same fundamentals it has always pushed: accurate, people-first content, structured data where relevant, and a complete Business Profile.

What it has done is keep changing the format. Search Engine Roundtable's November round-up lists links in AI Mode and AI Overviews being updated again, labels being removed from some Overviews, and a test that may remove citation cards altogether. The lesson for a trade is not to optimise for this month's layout but to make sure the underlying facts about the business are consistent everywhere Google can read them.

The directories are moving in too

Checkatrade has put an app inside ChatGPT, letting users find vetted tradespeople from within the chatbot. It is a sign of where the directories think the first search is going. If a homeowner asks an assistant rather than a search engine, the directory wants to be the data source the assistant uses.

That raises the same question for trades as the directories always have, examined in why more tradespeople are walking away from directories: whether to be a line in someone else's dataset or to make sure your own profile and site are what the assistant finds.

What a trade can do about it

• Put a plain-English pricing page on the website, with ranges and the factors that change them. It is what the AI answers are built from.
• Make the Business Profile and website agree on name, services, areas and hours. Inconsistency is the easiest reason to be left out.
• Ask customers to mention the job and the town in reviews. Specific review text is what conversational answers quote.
• Write service pages that explain the regulations and certificates, not just "we are fully qualified".
• Check what appears for your own trade and town in both standard search and AI Mode once a month, and note what changes.

Where this sits in the bigger picture

AI answers are one of a handful of shifts changing how UK trades find work, alongside directory consolidation, Google's tightening of Business Profiles and the growth of short-form video. Our state of trades marketing in the UK, 2026 sets them side by side. The common theme is that the homeowner now checks before calling, and the check is increasingly done for them.

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