Summary 

AI search is changing how businesses are discovered online, but some industries are being affected far more than others. With Health and Home & Garden leading the way in Google AI Overviews, businesses need to rethink their approach to search visibility. We explore which industries are most affected, how AI is changing website traffic and conversions, and three practical ways to optimise your business for AI search through AEO and GEO.

Search Today 

Neil Patel’s team analysed over 8 million search queries to see how often an AI Overview appears by industry. The change in search between categories is bigger than most business owners realise: 

• Health: 60.7% of queries trigger an AI Overview 

• Home & Garden: 50.4% 

• Food & Beverage: 24.9% 

• Finance: 22.9% 

• Entertainment, real estate, sport and technology: 5-17% 

• Local categories (think “plumber near me”): just 2.2% 

From this data, a pattern has been found where AI Overviews lean hardest into informational searches, the “what, why, and how” questions, and barely touch local, near-me searches. That’s good news if you’re in construction, trades, or property; Home & Garden sits at number two, which means renovation, building, and property content is some of the most valuable real estate in AI search right now.  

Why this is important for your business  

It’s not just about where AI shows up; it’s about what happens to the click. Recent research into search behaviour shows that 68% of US Google searches in early 2026 ended without a click at all, and when an AI Overview appears, click-through on the top-ranked result can drop by more than half. 

Now, being visible in AI search is one thing; however, research has found that the traffic that does arrive from AI search converts up to 54% better than traditional traffic, because the visitor has already been informed by the AI answer and arrives further along in their decision. Less traffic, and better traffic. That changes what you should be measuring, and what “ranking” even means. 

How can you optimise your business for AI search?   

Here are three things that can help to optimise your business for AI: 

1. Be retrievable. AI systems need to find, load, and understand your content fast. Clear headings, fast pages, and structured data are essential to ranking highly in AI search. 
2. Be citable. Original data, named expertise, and clear sourcing are what AI tools pull into their answers; generic content gets skipped, especially if it isn’t backed by research. 
3. Be measurable. Your analytics won’t show you appearing inside an AI answer; you have to check for it directly, industry by industry, prompt by prompt. The clearest proxy to watch is direct search: when AI recommends your business, people don’t click a citation; they open Google and search your brand name instead. A steady rise in direct, branded searches is one of the strongest signals your AI search optimisation is working. 

That is what we ensure with our AEO and GEO service at Stylo Digital: we track where and how your business shows up in AI search, industry by industry, and optimize it in the background, so you don’t have to. Want to know whether your business is visible in your category? Get in touch, and we’ll give you a free demo of how your business is tracking and where we can improve your AI visibility, based on your industry.