26 August 2026
News

Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode: what really changes for your website

In short

In Canada, Google’s AI Overviews have appeared since fall 2024, and AI Mode has been available in French since October 2025. France only got them on July 22.
The studies all point the same way: when an AI summary appears, people click fewer links. But local, shopping and booking searches are the least affected.
For a small business, the levers are well known: a well-kept Google Business Profile, pages that give concrete answers, and a site that gets people to act.

On July 22, Google switched on its AI-generated answers in France, one of the last major markets that didn’t have them yet. In Canada, we’ve been living with them for almost two years. Since we work with businesses in Montreal and in Alsace, we have an unusual vantage point: we see both markets at the same time.

Here is what Google launched, what the available data says, and what we actually do for the websites we look after.

What exactly did Google launch?

Two different things that often get mixed up.

AI Overviews are summaries written by Google’s AI, a Gemini model tuned for search, that appear at the very top of the results page, above the usual links. They don’t show up on every search, only when Google thinks a summary answer is useful. Each summary cites a few sources as links.

AI Mode is a separate tab, next to “Images” or “News”. You ask a question as you would ask an assistant, and you can keep asking follow-ups. To answer, Google breaks the request into sub-questions and runs several searches in parallel, a technique it calls “query fan-out”.

Canada has a two-year head start

May 2024: AI Overviews launch in the United States.
October 28, 2024: AI Overviews start rolling out in Canada. At the time, Google noted that French was not officially supported.
August 21, 2025: AI Mode comes to Canada, in English.
October 14, 2025: AI Mode becomes available in French.
March 13, 2026: shopping features arrive in AI Mode in Canada.
April 10, 2026: AI Mode can book restaurant tables in Canada, with OpenTable and Libro.
July 22, 2026: France finally gets AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The practical consequence in Quebec: depending on whether your customers search in French or in English, they don’t necessarily see the same Google. If your clientele uses both languages, you need to look at both.

Why France had to wait

The obstacle there was legal. In March 2024, France’s competition authority fined Google 250 million euros in a dispute over publishers’ neighboring rights, criticizing it in particular for training its AI on news articles without telling publishers. It took new commitments from Google to publishers, at the end of June, to unlock the rollout.

In Canada, paying news outlets was handled differently: since the Online News Act of 2023, Google pays 100 million dollars a year to Canadian media. But the concern is the same. In February 2026, News Media Canada, which represents the country’s newspaper publishers, summed up the problem in a few words: zero clicks, zero revenue.

What the numbers say

There is no public study with Canada-specific figures yet. But the studies carried out elsewhere all point in the same direction:

Pew Research (July 2025): in a panel of American users, a link was clicked in 8% of searches when an AI summary appeared, versus 15% without one. Only 1% of users clicked a link inside the summary.
Ahrefs (February 2026): the click-through rate of the top result drops by 58% when an AI Overview is present.
Sistrix, Germany (February 2026): AI summaries appear on about 20% of keywords. On those queries, the top result falls from 27% to 11% of clicks. But shopping and booking searches are barely affected.
Ahrefs, France (August 2026): across 963 large websites, the median drop was 5.7% in click-through rate and 8.8% in clicks in the days after the launch. The most exposed sites lost 23.1% of their click-through rate, and health was the hardest-hit sector.

These figures mostly concern big information sites, but the trend is consistent: your site is still seen, it just gets clicked less, especially on general questions. For its part, Google says it still sends “billions of clicks every day” to the web and disputes reports of sharp declines.

Who is really affected?

For a local business, the question to ask is simple: which searches do your customers use to find you?

If your traffic mostly comes from articles answering general questions (“how to choose a heat pump”, “difference between SEO and Google Ads”), you’re on the front line. Those are exactly the queries where Google’s AI answers directly.

If customers find you by searching for a service near them (“plumber Laval”, “website design Montreal”), a product to buy or an appointment to book, the impact is much smaller. On those searches, people want to act, not read a summary. And when AI Mode answers a local question, it relies heavily on Google Business Profiles.

What we do for the websites we look after

1. Read Search Console differently

Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in Search Console’s “Web” report, along with everything else. For each site, we compare impressions and click-through rate query by query, in both French and English when the site is bilingual. A page that keeps its impressions but loses clicks hasn’t “dropped on Google”: it’s simply being summarized above itself. That’s a different problem, with a different solution.

2. Take care of your Google Business Profile

Opening hours, categories, photos, services, replies to reviews. Google recommends it in its documentation on AI features: keep your business information up to date. For a local small business, it’s often the most cost-effective lever.

3. Write pages that give real answers

A “starting from” price, a precise service area, a turnaround time, a method. AI cites sources that contain concrete, verifiable information. A vague page that keeps repeating “custom solutions tailored to your needs” has no chance of being cited, by Google or by a customer.

4. Focus on pages that drive action

Booking an appointment, requesting a quote, making a reservation, buying: those are the least affected searches. In Canada, AI Mode already books restaurant tables. A well-built, fast and reassuring service page, with a clean booking system, is now worth more than yet another general advice article.

5. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Google Ads, customer reviews, social media, newsletters: the more your visibility depends on a single channel, the more exposed you are to its changes. SEO remains essential, but it shouldn’t be your only tap.

What not to do

First, don’t panic and rewrite everything. A few weeks of data isn’t enough to draw page-by-page conclusions. Second, don’t trust promises of “guaranteed AI rankings”. Google says it again and again in its documentation: there is no special optimization for its AI answers. A page simply needs to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet. Best practices haven’t changed: a fast, clear, trustworthy site with useful content.

If you want to know how your website is coping with this change, we can go through your Search Console data with you and tell you, query by query, what comes from Google’s AI and what comes from something else. It’s at the heart of our SEO services and our website maintenance. Let’s talk.