SEO
For many local businesses, performance looks healthier than it is.
Rank trackers still show top-three positions. Visibility reports appear steady. Yet calls and website visits from Google Business Profiles are falling — sometimes fast.
This gap is becoming a defining feature of local search today.
Rankings are holding. Visibility and performance aren’t.
The alligator has arrived in local SEO.
The visibility crisis behind stable rankings
Across multiple U.S. industries, traditional local 3-packs are being replaced — or at least supplemented — by AI-powered local packs. These layouts behave differently from the map results we’ve optimized in the past.
Analysis from Sterling Sky, based on 179 Google Business Profiles, reveals a pattern that’s hard to ignore. Clicks-to-call are dropping sharply for Jepto-managed law firms.
When AI-powered packs replace traditional listings, the landscape shifts in four critical ways:
- Shrinking real estate: AI packs often surface only two businesses instead of three.
- Missing call buttons: Many AI-generated summaries remove instant click-to-call options, adding friction to the customer journey.
- Different businesses appear: The businesses shown in AI packs often don’t match those in the traditional 3-pack.
- Accelerated monetization of local search: When paid ads are present, traditional 3-packs increasingly lose direct call and website buttons, reducing organic conversion opportunities.
A fifth issue compounds the problem:
- Measurement blind spots: Most rank trackers don’t yet report on AI local packs. A business may rank first in a 3-pack that many users never see.
AI local packs surfaced only 32% as many unique businesses as traditional map packs in 2026, according to Sterling Sky. In 88% of the 322 markets analyzed, the total number of visible businesses declined.
At the same time, paid ads continue to take over space once reserved for organic results, signaling a clear shift toward a pay-to-play local landscape.
What Google Business Profile data shows
The same pattern appears, especially in the U.S., where Google is aggressively testing new local formats, according to GMBapi.com data. Traditional local 3-pack impressions are increasingly displaced by:
- AI-powered local packs.
- Paid placements inside traditional map packs: Sponsored listings now appear alongside or within the map pack, pushing organic results lower and stripping listings of call and website buttons. This breaks organic customer journeys.
- Expanded Google Ads units: Including Local Services Ads that consume space once reserved for organic visibility.
Impression trends still fluctuate due to seasonality, market differences, and occasional API anomalies. But a much clearer signal emerges when you look at GBP actions rather than impressions.
Mentions inside AI-generated results are still counted as impressions — even when they no longer drive calls, clicks, or visits.
Some fluctuations are driven by external factors. For example, the June drop ties back to a known Google API issue. Mobile Maps impressions also appear heavily influenced by large advertisers ramping up Google Ads later in the year.
There’s no way to segment these impressions by Google Ads, organic results, or AI Mode.
Even there, however, user behaviour is changing. Interaction rates are declining, with fewer direct actions taken from local listings.
Year-on-year comparisons in the US suggest that while impression losses remain moderate and partially seasonal, GBP actions are disproportionately impacted.
As a counterfactual, data from the Dutch market — where SERP experimentation remains limited — shows far more stable action trends.
The pattern is clear. AI-driven SERP changes, expanding Google Ads, and the removal of call and website buttons from the Map Pack are shrinking organic real estate. Even when visibility looks intact, businesses have fewer chances to earn real user actions.
Local SEO is becoming an eligibility problem
Historically, local optimization centered on familiar ranking factors: proximity, relevance, prominence, reviews, citations, and engagement.
Today, another layer sits above all of them: eligibility.
Many businesses fail to appear in AI-powered local results not because they lack authority, but because Google’s systems decide they aren’t an appropriate match for the specific query context. Research from Yext and insights from practitioners like Claudia Tomina highlight the importance of alignment across three core signals:
- Business name
- Primary category
- Real-world services and positioning
When these fundamentals are misaligned, businesses can be excluded from entire result types — no matter how well optimized the Google Business Profile itself may be.
How to future-proof local visibility
Surviving today’s zero-click reality means moving beyond reliance on a single, perfectly optimized Google Business Profile. Here’s your new local SEO playbook.
The eligibility gatekeeper
Failure to appear in local packs is now driven more by perceived relevance and classification than by links or review volume.
Hyper-local entity authority
AI systems cross-reference Reddit, social platforms, forums, and local directories to judge whether a business is legitimate and active. Inconsistent signals across these ecosystems quietly erode visibility.
Visual trust signals
High-quality, frequently updated photos, and increasingly video, are no longer optional. Google’s AI analyzes visual content to infer services, intent, and categorization.
Embrace the pay-to-play reality
It’s a hard truth, but Google Ads — especially Local Services Ads — are now critical to retaining prominent call buttons that organic listings are losing. A hybrid strategy that blends local SEO with paid search isn’t optional. It’s the baseline.
What this means for local search now
Local SEO is no longer a static directory exercise. Google Business Profiles still anchor local discoverability, but they now operate inside a much broader ecosystem shaped by AI validation, constant SERP experimentation, and Google’s accelerating push to monetize local search.
Discovery no longer hinges on where your GBP ranks against nearby competitors. Search systems — including Google’s AI-driven SERP features and large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini — are increasingly trying to understand what a business actually does, not just where it’s listed.
Success is no longer about being the most “optimized” profile. It’s about being widely verified, consistently active, and contextually relevant across the AI-visible ecosystem.
Our observations show little correlation between businesses that rank well in the traditional Map Pack and those favored by Google’s AI-generated local answers that are beginning to replace it. That gap creates a real opportunity for businesses willing to adapt.
In practice, this means pairing local input with central oversight.
Authentic engagement across multiple platforms, locally differentiated content, and real community signals must coexist with brand governance, data consistency, and operational scale. For single-location businesses with deep community roots, this is an advantage. Being genuinely discussed, recommended, and referenced in your local area — online and offline — gets you halfway there.
For agencies and multi-location brands, the challenge is to balance control with local nuance and ensure trusted signals extend beyond Google (e.g., Apple Maps, Tripadvisor, Yelp, Reddit, and other relevant review ecosystems). The real test is producing locally relevant content and citations at scale without losing authenticity.
Rankings may look stable. But performance increasingly lives somewhere else.
The full data. Local SEO in 2026: Why Your Rankings are Steady but Your Calls are Vanishing
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