I got a call from a roofing client a few months back, and I could hear the worry in his voice before he’d finished saying hello. He’d spent his Saturday morning reading articles about AI killing Google, and by the time he called me he was ready to cancel his SEO retainer. “If Google’s being replaced by AI,” he said, “what’s the point?”
It’s a fair question. The headlines have been genuinely alarming, and if you’re a local service business owner who’s been investing in SEO, it’s completely reasonable to wonder whether that investment is about to become pointless.
Here’s the honest answer: for local service businesses, AI search doesn’t replace Google the way those articles suggest, and understanding why changes how you should be thinking about your online presence right now.
AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s own AI Overviews pull information from across the web to answer questions directly. They’re genuinely useful for a lot of things. But there’s a crucial difference between how people use AI tools and how they actually find and hire local service businesses.
When someone needs a plumber, an electrician, a physio or a landscaper, they’re not just after information. They need someone real, someone nearby, someone who can actually show up. That search behaviour is fundamentally different from asking ChatGPT to explain something, and the tools people use for it are different too.
Here’s what gets lost in the AI noise: most AI search tools can’t give you a local business’s phone number, show you their hours, or let you read their Google reviews at a glance. Google still does all of that. And Google is still where most people go when they need a local service.
The searches that drive real leads for local businesses, things like “plumber near me” or “best electrician in Subiaco” or “roof repairs Perth,” are still happening overwhelmingly on Google. And those results are still being driven by the same fundamentals they’ve always been: your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your website content, and your local citations.
My roofing client, when I asked him where his last ten jobs had come from, said eight of them had found him through Google Search or Google Maps.
This is the part that most people miss entirely. Google’s AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of some search results, don’t make things up. They pull from web pages that Google has already crawled, indexed, and decided to trust.
So if your website has solid SEO, clear content that answers your customers’ real questions, and a strong Google Business Profile, you’re actually better placed to show up in AI-generated answers, not worse off. The same foundation that gets you found in traditional search results also increases your chances of being cited in AI summaries. It’s not either/or.
The framework Google uses to assess that quality is called EEAT, and it comes down to proving you’re the genuine expert in what you do, both on your website and across your wider online footprint. We cover that in detail in Why EEAT Matters for Your Local Service Business.
Given all of this, here’s what still matters, and what I tell every client who calls me worried about AI.
Keep your Google Business Profile current. Your business name, address, phone number, hours, photos, and services all feed into local visibility. If yours hasn’t been updated in a while, that’s the most valuable place to start. A full walkthrough of what to check is in Your Google Business Profile Is a Trust Page Now.
Keep collecting reviews. Google reviews are still one of the strongest trust signals both for the algorithm and for potential customers reading your profile. A steady stream of recent, genuine reviews with real detail in them makes a meaningful difference.
Keep adding useful content to your website. Blog posts, FAQs, and service pages that answer questions your customers are actually asking. This is what gets you found in both traditional search and AI-generated answers, and it builds compound value over time.
Don’t let your local citations go stale. Being listed consistently across directories and local platforms sends important trust signals for local SEO. It’s not glamorous work, but it matters.
Post to your Google Business Profile regularly. Google Posts are free, take about four minutes, and almost nobody does them consistently. More on why they matter in Google Posts: The Free Local SEO Feature Most Perth Businesses Ignore.
He didn’t cancel his retainer. By the end of the call we’d looked at his actual enquiry data together, worked out where his leads were genuinely coming from, and the answer was clear: Google was doing its job. AI hadn’t taken his customers anywhere.
The businesses that will fall behind aren’t the ones that keep doing solid SEO through a noisy period. They’re the ones that panic, abandon a strategy that’s working, and then wonder why the phone stopped ringing six months later.
AI is changing how search looks. It hasn’t changed how local customers find and hire the people who show up to do the work.
If you’re not sure whether your current SEO is keeping pace with the changes, I’d love to take a look. Book a free 15-minute chat and we’ll go through where your business stands, no jargon, no hard sell.
Karen Dauncey has been working in SEO since 2003 and is a recognised expert in Local SEO for professional and service-based businesses across Australia.
She is the founder of Blue Cherry Online Marketing, a Local SEO and Google Ads agency she established in 2008. Through Blue Cherry, Karen has optimised over 1,000 websites and managed millions of dollars in Google Ads spend, giving her a deep understanding of what drives visibility and enquiries for service businesses in a constantly evolving search landscape. Over the past two decades, she has worked with a wide range of local service businesses including trades, allied health, psychologists, childcare centres, naturopaths, accountants, lawyers and many more.
Karen is also the creator of The SEO School, an online SEO course designed to teach business owners how to take control of their own SEO. She regularly delivers educational programs for Local, State and Federal Government and was an advisor for the ASBAS Digital Solutions Program. Her passion for making SEO accessible drives everything she does, from free resources to hands-on training.
Karen has attended search engine conferences in London, Stockholm, Adelaide and Sydney, and was invited to attend a pilot Business Coaching Course at Google's Head Office. She holds a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK.
She is also the co-owner of the Digital Experts Directory, an online directory for female service-based businesses.
To keep up to date with the latest in SEO, join her Facebook group The SEO School Community or follow her on Facebook or LinkedIn.
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