+3.7x Monthly AI Traffic [AI SEO Case Study]

Google’s AI Overviews now decide which businesses show up in the most valuable search real estate, pulling in data from multiple sources and reshaping how customers discover brands.

This case study shows how our agency positioned a client to dominate AI Overviews for competitive keywords and why every business needs an AI search strategy now, before their competitors lock in the advantage.

Our client’s monthly AI referral traffic grew by 370%

And is appearing for 155 keywords within AI overviews in the U.K.

In this case study, you’ll learn how to:

To start, here’s some context about the site and why their site needed an SEO boost.

The Challenge

The client is a home services company based in the U.S.A.

At first, the client thought their strong local rankings were enough, but that confidence quickly turned to frustration. Competitors were consistently stealing the spotlight in Google’s AI Overviews, leaving them feeling invisible.

They were losing ground, losing patience, and starting to lose faith in their digital strategy. That’s when they turned to my SEO team at The Search Initiative, knowing they needed a new approach before slipping further behind.

Their Google Business Profile contained gaps and inconsistencies, limiting trust signals and lacked presence on third-party directories and review platforms, meaning AI models had little external validation to cite.

To expand their visibility in AI search, they needed a content strategy that targeted informational keywords, which are the type of queries Google’s AI often draws on to provide context-rich answers.

Before outlining what we did, it’s important to understand why appearing in Google’s AI Overviews is important for local businesses.

Why AI Overviews Matter for Local Businesses

Google’s AI Overviews are becoming a prominent way for local search results to be presented.

According to a study by LocalFalcon, as of May 2025, 40% of local search queries now display AIOs, often above the map pack. This means they can directly influence which businesses customers discover first.

Google’s official guidance for AI features also explicitly tells site owners to keep their Google Business Profile (GBP) information up to date as part of best practices for appearing in AI Overviews and AI Search Mode.

This is a strong signal that GBP data is actively consumed by Google’s AI systems and determines which businesses are mentioned in the AI-generated answers.

Consistency across other key directories also matters, as AI search tools often pull from multiple trusted sources.

How to Get Your Local Business Featured in AI Overviews

Let’s look at three different ways you can help get your business featured in Google’s AI Overviews.

Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the cornerstone of local AI search optimization. It’s a place Google uses to pull up to date information about your business, so that it can be used in AI Overviews.

Below is a screenshot from Dishoom in Covent Garden’s Google Business Profile.

You can see that this information about its most popular times for a Tuesday, is consistent and pulled directly from the Google Business Profile.

If your GBP is incomplete, inconsistent, or inactive, you’re missing out on appearing in AI-generated answers from AI models.

What is a Google Business Profile?

A Google Business Profile (previously Google My Business) is a free tool from Google that lets you manage how your business appears in Search and Google Maps. It’s your digital shopfront, showing your:

Here’s what a Google Business Profile looks like:

Google uses GBP data as a primary structured data source. This means your profile directly influences whether your business:

Creating Your Google Business Profile

Claim & Verify Your Profile

1. Go to Google Business Profile Manager
2. Search for your business. If it exists, claim it; if not, click “Add your business to Google”.
   
3. Follow the prompts to enter your business details.
4. Choose your verification method: postcard, phone, or email.
   

Complete the Fields

1. Business Name – Enter your business name exactly as it appears to customers in the real world, without any extra keywords or taglines

2. Business Type – Select all of the appropriate business types that apply to your business.

3. Business Category – Choose the most accurate category for your business. This helps Google match you to relevant searches.

4. Service Areas – List the locations where you provide services or deliver products. This is optional.

5. Region – Select the region that your business is based in.

6. Contact Information – Include a main phone number, and if possible, a backup line or mobile. Make sure these numbers are consistent across your website and other listings.You also have the option to add a link to your official website.

7. Services / Products – depending on your selections for Business Type, you’ll be asked to add information about your services/products. Select all that apply, along with any Custom services.

8. Opening Hours / Business Hours – Clearly list your standard operating hours, and keep them updated. Use the “Special hours” feature for bank holidays, seasonal changes, or one-off closures.

9. Business Description – Use up to 750 characters to explain what your business does, who you serve, and what makes you unique.
Keep the most important information in the first 250 characters, as that’s what’s often displayed.

This is also an opportunity to incorporate some relevant keywords to help further the models’ contextual interpretation of your business.

Good Example: “At GreenLeaf Lawn Care, we provide eco-friendly lawn maintenance, seasonal fertilisation, and landscape design services for homes and businesses across Westbrook.”

A rich description makes it more likely that AI can confidently match your business to relevant user queries.

Bad Example: “We cut grass.”

A vague, generic description like “We cut grass” gives no signals about your location, specialisms, or target audience, meaning AI may overlook you in favour of competitors with clearer, more complete profiles.

10. Business Location – If customers visit you in person, enter your full address and position the map pin exactly where your business is located. You can also choose to hide your address if you operate from home.

11. Social Profiles – Link to your social media profiles (Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.). This makes it easier for users to find, follow and/or contact you and provide AI Overviews with more verified brand signals.

When completing your Google Business Profile, keep your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) consistent across every online mention of your business.

That means the exact same spelling, formatting, and details should appear on your website, social media accounts, review sites, and local business directories.

Even tiny differences, like writing “High Street” in one place and “High St.” in another, can create uncertainty for these systems.

This isn’t just a local SEO issue.

Remember, AI Overviews and other AI models pull from multiple trusted data sources to verify facts. If your business details don’t match everywhere, the AI may:

Upload High-Quality Images and Videos

Adding high-quality visuals to your Google Business Profile isn’t just about making it look good, it’s a critical trust and engagement signal for both customers and search systems.

For example, Google’s AI overview uses the same photo…

… in its AI-generated answer as the Cover Photo of Dishoom’s GBP.

Profiles with rich, professional-looking media tend to attract more clicks, more calls, and more in-person visits. They also provide AI Overviews with visual context to verify your business category, offerings, and location.

Include friendly, professional shots of your team to humanise your brand. This helps build trust among your prospective customers and also shows Google that there are real people behind your company.

For example, a landscaping company could post photos of a finished garden alongside action shots of staff planting flowers.

Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are more than just social proof, they’re a strong trust signal for both human visitors and AI-driven search. The more high-quality, authentic reviews you have, the more confidently LLMs and Google can recommend your business over competitors.

For example, here’s an AI Overview for best hotels in west London for families.

Here’s a breakdown of the number of reviews each of the hotels mentioned has:

The Residence Inn Kensington – 1,849 reviews

The Athenaeum hotel – 1,330 reviews

The Goring – 1,434 reviews

Scrolling down to the organic search results, we found this:

Despite ranking organically, Google’s isn’t confident enough to recommend this in its AI answer, as it only has 125 reviews.

Positive, keyword-rich reviews also help AI understand what your business is known for, which services you offer, and in which locations you operate.

After a positive interaction (e.g., completed project, successful appointment, happy customer service call), politely ask for feedback.

It’ll give you a link (and QR code) that you can share with your customers.

Important: Never offer discounts, gifts, or incentives in exchange for reviews as this violates Google’s terms and can get your profile penalized.

Responding promptly, particularly to criticism, demonstrates that you genuinely value customer input. Address negative reviews by acknowledging the customer’s experience, apologizing where appropriate, and offering to resolve the issue privately. This shows prospective customers that you take concerns seriously and are committed to making things right.

Where it feels natural, weave in relevant keywords to subtly reinforce your core services or products. This not only reassures potential customers but also helps search engines and AI tools better understand your business focus.

Example (positive review): “Thanks for your kind words! We’re glad you enjoyed our same-day AC repair service.”

Example (negative review): “We’re sorry to hear about your experience with our installation service.  Please reach out to us directly at [contact info] so we can make it right.”

By following these steps, you’ll optimize your Google Business Profile for both traditional search and AI-powered results, ensuring your business details are accurate, keyword-rich, and easy for AI systems to surface to the right audience.

Get Listed (and Reviewed) on Third-Party Platforms

Google’s AI Overviews and LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity seek consensus.

For example, Google uses an AI system called MUM (Multitask Unified Model) to “understand the notion of consensus, which is when multiple high-quality sources on the web all agree on the same fact”.

They compile data from their own training data in addition to multiple trustworthy sources to determine which businesses they feature and recommend in their results.

ChatGPT uses web search with inline citations and can display maps for relevant mobile queries. Being listed and visible on trusted third-party platforms increases your chances of appearing in these results because the AI often pulls business details and citations directly from these sources, in addition to your Google Business Profile.

Maintaining a consistent presence across high-authority platforms that are relevant to your business niche sends strong credibility signals to these AI systems.

How to Get Listed (and Reviewed) on Third-Party Platforms

1. Identify the Right Platforms

The goal isn’t just to be “everywhere,” but to be present on trusted, high-authority sources that both human users and AI models turn to for confirmation.

If your business consistently appears where AI (and your prospective customers are looking), you increase the odds of being surfaced.

Here’s a list of general, high-authority that offer great broad credibility signals:

There are also lots of niche industry sites and platforms that offer specialized authority and help AI systems confidently match your business to specific verticals:

AI models tend to surface quoted text from reviews on these platforms when giving recommendations.

Here’s an example of a Google AI Overview using direct quotes when asked about the restaurant Dishoom.

A closer look at the cited pages shows that these terms are used with Tripadvisor’s own AI-generated summary of all reviews…

… and that these words are mentioned in the actual reviews…

By targeting the right mix of broad and niche listings, you create a strong web of consensus that reinforces your brand’s authority in AI search outputs.

2. Claim and Optimize Each Profile

Once you’ve identified the right third-party platforms, the next move is to take ownership of each listing and fully optimize it so it ranks well, signals credibility, and is more likely to be referenced in AI-generated answers.

Search your business name on each platform to see if an unclaimed or outdated listing already exists.

Use the platform’s verification process (often email, phone call, or postcard) to confirm ownership.

If duplicates exist, request a merge or removal to avoid diluting your credibility.

For example, if your café appears twice on Yelp under slightly different names, AI models may not associate reviews with a single business entity, so consolidating avoids this issue.

3. Ensure NAP Consistency (Name, Address, Phone)

As explained earlier, use the exact same format for your name, address, and phone number across all platforms. Even small differences (e.g., “Street” vs “St.”) can weaken your local and AI search signals.

4. Fully Complete Every Section

Fill out every possible field on the platform to give yourself the best chance of AI understanding exactly what you do and where.

5. Keep Profiles Updated

Regularly update seasonal offers, photos, and service details as outdated info signals to AI that the source may be less trustworthy.

6. Get Reviews That Feed AI Search

Reviews aren’t just social proof for human readers, they’re machine-readable signals for AI systems. Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, and other LLM-powered search features use these for contextual cues and help form their answers when they contain relevant, specific details.

Here’re some tips when asking for reviews:

Targeting Informational Queries That Drive Clicks from AI Overviews

Many studies, including this one from Ahrefs, confirms that AI Overviews are much more common for informational search queries and that they show up less frequently for local queries.

Here’s the catch with informational searches that trigger AI Overviews: not all of them are worth chasing.

Simple definitions like “what is yoga nidra” often get fully answered inside an AI Overview, leaving no reason for a user to click through.

The real opportunity lies in questions that spark curiosity, invite comparisons, or guide a decision. These are the moments where a quick AI-generated blurb isn’t enough, and users need to dive deeper.

Think about queries like:

Each of these triggers an AI Overview, but they also create a natural curiosity gap that drives clicks. In these cases, users don’t just want the list, they want to know context, variations, and what’s right for their situation.

Let’s look at how to find these queries…

Finding (The Right) Informational Queries

To uncover these kinds of queries, start by entering a broad seed term related to your niche like “yoga” into a keyword tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

The Questions section shows searches framed as questions, many of which lean into comparisons, benefits, or routines rather than simple definitions.

Straight away, you can spot groups of searches forming around topics like different types of yoga or which practices work best for specific outcomes.

From there, drill down into subtopics. For example, feeding “best yoga poses” back into the tool surfaces dozens of long-tail queries such as “best yoga poses for flexibility” or “best yoga poses before bed.”

In this case, there are 44 related queries.

They have low search volumes, but that’s exactly what makes them powerful. They’re highly specific, intent-rich searches that AI Overviews may introduce but rarely satisfy on their own, giving your content the chance to win the click.

You can also use Google’s People Also Ask section for inspiration on related questions your audience are asking…

Optimizing for Informational Queries

Once you’ve found the right kinds of informational queries, the goal isn’t just to appear in an AI Overview, it’s to make your content the natural next click after someone reads the AI summary.

That means structuring your pages so they do two things at once:

1. Provide a concise, extractable answer that Google’s AI can use.
2. Offer deeper insights, comparisons, and context that go beyond what the Overview alone can satisfy.

Let’s look at what you need to do to achieve this:

When clicking onto the page that’s been cited, Google explicitly shows which part of the article it used for its AI-generated answer – it’s taken from the very top of the post.

But don’t stop there. Follow your short answer with expanded content that tackles the why, how, and which option is best.

For example, for “best yoga poses for stress relief”, start with a quick list of poses, then expand into why each works, when to use them, and variations for beginners vs advanced students.

This ensures the AI can cite you, while your content still promises value users can only get by clicking.

In this example, the local business Apex has clearly defined the heading…

Making it easier for AI to extract relevant information to be used within its answer.

In this example, the local business has used both bullet points and numbered lists …

Making it easier for AI to extract relevant information to be used within its answer.

In this example, the local business has answered the question in the Key Takeaways…

Which lets the AI know that it’s relevant to the search query. Then, you can see that it uses the following text…

… within its answer.

You can do the same for AI SEO!

Analyze and look at the existing Google AI overview for the question you’re answering. Identify what the AI-answer covers and how it’s structured, written.

If Google lists a set of poses, expand your content with comparisons by skill level, safety tips, or even video demonstrations. If it gives a general schedule, offer a week-by-week progression.

The goal is to give readers something they can’t get from the Overview alone.

For example, when looking at the AI Overview surfaced for “what are the best yoga poses for stress relief”, it’s clear that stating which yoga poses are best isn’t enough.

The Overview also details why they’re beneficial for back pain.

For each section, Google adds individual sources that it’s cited. Use these as gateways to explore what else you should include in your own content, and importantly, how to structure it to increase extractability.

The next step is to layer in your own expertise and unique value. Go beyond what’s already in the cited pages:

The goal is to create content that makes the AI think, “This is essential for my answer.”

For example, this page that’s been cited has included a video demonstrating how to do the pose instead of just adding text or an image.

When you give it unique, trustworthy, and highly relevant information, you improve your chances of being cited, rather than just being another source it ignores.

Optimizing for informational queries today means playing a two-part game: make your answers extractable enough to show up in AI Overviews, but layered and valuable enough that the Overview becomes a teaser for your full content.

That’s how you turn visibility into real traffic…

The client saw 1,498 monthly sessions driven by AI search to the blog compared to 804 6 months ago.

In short, AI Overviews may handle the surface-level answers, but the real opportunity lies in creating informational content that satisfies the next layer of intent. That’s where your site becomes the essential click after the snippet.

The Results

Since the start of the campaign, the site’s organic traffic has increased by 82% from 140k to 256k monthly sessions.

In the same period, AI referral traffic grew by 370%

The site is also appearing for 155 keywords within AI overviews in the U.K.

And keywords ranked within the top positions have also grown to over 9.6k.

Conclusion

In this case study, I’ve shown you how to get your business featured in Google’s AI overviews by:

Optimizing your Google Business Profile for improved visibility in Google’s AI Overviews

Finding out which third party platforms AI systems rely on, so you can get recommended instead of your competitors.

Targeting informational search queries that actually convert in AI overviews.

If you’re looking for help with your site’s SEO, get in touch with my team at The Search Initiative.

Get a Free Website Consultation from The Search Initiative:

Article by

Matt Diggity

Matt is the founder of Diggity Marketing, LeadSpring, The Search Initiative, The Affiliate Lab, and the Chiang Mai SEO Conference. He actually does SEO too.

Want to rank easier, higher and faster?

Sign up and join 100,000+ other subscribers and get SEO test results sent straight to your inbox.

REGISTER

"One of the most effective SEOs I've ever met"- Cyrus Sheppard

As Seen On...