AI Overviews Now Show Up in Commercial Searches 71% More Often. Here’s What That Means for Your Local Service Business.

If you’ve been told that AI Overviews only affect informational queries — broad questions like “what is a heat pump” or “how does Invisalign work” — the data says that advice is now out of date.

A Semrush study of more than 600,000 keywords across 10 industries found that AI Overviews appeared on commercial-intent search results 71% more often in April 2026 than they did six months earlier. Not informational queries — the kind of searches people make when they are narrowing down a buying decision.

What commercial searches look like for local businesses

A commercial query is when someone is in the middle of the decision. Not just learning, not yet buying. Evaluating options. Comparing costs.

For your type of business, those look like this:

• “Dental implant consultation cost vs. bridge”
• “AC replacement quotes — Carrier vs. Trane”
• “How much should a roof replacement cost in 2026”
• “Plumber for slab leak repair near me — cost estimate”

These are the queries that sit between “what is a slab leak” (informational) and “call a plumber” (transactional). And they are the ones that grew most in AI Overview visibility.

The numbers that matter

Finance led the growth at 231%, followed by Computers and Electronics at 107% and Games at 76%. Travel, healthcare, and home services all saw double-digit growth. Not a single industry in the study declined.

Here is the part that tells you Google is serious about this surface: AI Overviews appeared alongside Google Ads roughly twice as often as a year ago. Keywords that triggered an AI Overview had a higher average cost per click than keywords without one — in Finance, $4.84 vs. $2.14; in Jobs and Education, $5.02 vs. $1.51.

Google does not run paid ads next to features it plans to de-emphasize. The data says Google is investing in AI Overviews for the searches where people decide which business to call.

What this means for your service pages

Your website’s service pages are the source material AI Overviews reach for when summarizing a commercial query. If your page about “pricing for dental implants” is clear, specific, and structured as a direct answer, an AI Overview can pull from it. If it is vague or buried under years of thin content, the Overview will draft from someone else’s page instead.

The same dynamics covered in an earlier post about how AI recommendations drive traffic apply here — but now the commercial decision slot is monetized, which means it is more competitive, not less.

What to do this week

Pick one commercial query your customers search for. Not the broadest, not the most specific — the one they search for when they are deciding between you and another option.

Write a page or update an existing one that answers that query directly. Use a question heading. Give a concrete, verifiable answer. If the answer involves cost, give a realistic range. If it involves timing, give a timeline.

Reference the service by name and mention your location. AI Overviews draw on pages that match entity context. If your page says “dental implant consultation cost in Naperville,” the Overview knows it is talking about a specific business in a specific place.

See what your competitors are doing. If a competitor’s service page is already showing up for a commercial query your customers search, their content is citable and yours is not. That is a direct visibility gap.

The bottom line

The argument that “AI Overviews don’t matter for buying decisions” is no longer supported by the data. Semrush’s study makes that clear: 71% growth across every measured industry, appearing on the same SERPs as paid ads, most often on the keywords with the highest commercial intent.

If your service pages are written to be citable — direct answers, specific costs, clear structure — you are giving the AI Overview something to recommend. If they are not, the Overview will recommend someone whose pages are.

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Filed under: AI Visibility · Local SEO · Content Strategy Reading time: ~5 minutes Published: July 6, 2026