Are AI assistants replacing Google for finding contractors? Not yet, but they are changing it

The short answer

Not yet. The published data does not show AI assistants replacing Google for finding contractors, yet. What it shows is the answer moving: more searches end in an AI-written answer, fewer end in a list of links, and AI assistants are becoming a second place homeowners ask. That shift is the opening.

Even Google is building toward answers. In its July 2026 earnings remarks, Alphabet said AI Mode, like AI Overviews, is increasing the number of Search queries overall, and that it sends billions of clicks¹ to websites every week through AI features in Search. Whether the question is asked in Google or in ChatGPT, more of it is now answered by an AI that picks a few businesses to name.

For a contractor, that changes the question. It is no longer only where you rank on a page of links. It is whether you are one of the names in the answer.

Where the forecasts point

In February 2024, Gartner predicted that traditional search engine volume would drop 25%² by 2026, as search marketing lost share to AI chatbots and virtual agents. It was a forecast, not a measurement, and the published numbers since show a shift that is real but still underway rather than finished.

That is what makes it an opportunity. Most local businesses have not started preparing for AI answers, so the ones that do are early.

What is changing inside Google

A bigger shift is happening on Google's own results page.

AI Overviews appear on many searches. In March 2025, Pew Research Center found that 18%³ of the Google searches in its study produced an AI summary. Seer Interactive, working from its own clients' data, found AI Overviews on 36%⁴ of informational searches, and far less often on commercial and transactional ones. One result stands out for local businesses: informational searches containing "near me" showed an AI Overview 76.9%⁵ of the time in Seer's data.

People click less when an AI summary is there. Pew found users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional search result in 8%⁶ of visits, about half as often as when no summary appeared. They clicked a link inside the summary itself in 1%⁷ of visits. Ahrefs found the top-ranking page's average click-through rate was 58%⁸ lower when an AI Overview was present, measured on informational keywords.

More searches end without a click at all. SparkToro reported that 68.01%⁹ of U.S. Google searches in the first four months of 2026 ended without a click. That includes clicks that would have gone to Google's own properties and ads, so it is not all lost traffic to business websites.

Being in the summary helps. Seer found that being cited inside an AI Overview delivered +120%¹⁰ more organic clicks per impression than not being cited. That is agency data from its own clients, not a random sample, but it points to the practical question: not whether you rank, but whether you are part of the answer.

Most of these studies measure informational searches. A homeowner ready to hire may search differently, and the published data on those searches is thinner.

What is growing outside Google

AI assistants do send people to websites, and the volume is growing. Similarweb reports that AI platforms drove an average of 770.7 million¹¹ referral visits a month to websites worldwide over the year to May 2026, more than double the year before. Adobe's data showed traffic from generative AI tools to U.S. retail sites up 693.4%¹² year over year in the 2025 holiday season. That is retail, not home services, and a percentage rise from a small base says nothing about how large the total is.

Those visits may be worth more than average. Semrush estimates the average visitor from AI search is worth 4.4 times¹³ the average visitor from traditional organic search, based on conversion rate. That is a vendor's figure, drawn from digital marketing and SEO topics rather than home services, so treat it as a signal worth watching, not a rate to plan around.

AI answers also link out less than you might expect. Similarweb found that the share of U.S. ChatGPT prompts whose answers included web citations rose to roughly 6.8%¹⁴ by May 2026. By that measure, most ChatGPT answers carry no links at all. For contractor questions our own measure is narrower: in our Phoenix measurement so far, which covers window and door questions asked of Claude and Gemini, the share of answers that cited at least one website was 72%¹⁵.

Two channels that do not agree

If AI assistants simply repeated Google, none of this would matter much. Your Google work would carry over. Our measurements test that directly.

We compare the home-services businesses that Google shows for Phoenix searches with the businesses the AI engines we measure name in their weekly answers. Our newest comparison covers window and door businesses and two engines, Claude and Gemini; ChatGPT and Perplexity will be added. In it, Google showed 6¹⁶ businesses that we could compare, and 0%¹⁷ of them went unnamed by both engines. The lists still did not match. Claude on its own never named 33%¹⁸ of those businesses. And going the other way, 5¹⁹ of the businesses the engines named, 45%²⁰, were ones Google did not show. The full study, with its dates and sample, is on our Google vs AI research page, and the reasons are in why your business ranks on Google but ChatGPT does not mention it.

Whatever the latest figure, the point is that it has to be measured: a Google ranking report cannot tell you what the AI assistants say.

What this means for an owner

Do not abandon Google. Your Business Profile, your reviews, and your indexed pages remain the base, and Google's own AI features draw on that same index. Google says there are no additional requirements²¹ to appear in its AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible to show with a snippet.

Do stop treating a Google ranking report as the whole answer. The questions worth asking now are:

• Are you in Google's AI answer, not just below it? Search your main services the way a homeowner would and look at the AI Overview, not only the list.
• Do the AI assistants name you? Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity the questions your customers ask, and note who they name and which sites they cite. Our guide to checking whether ChatGPT recommends your business shows how.
• Can the assistants reach you? Each engine uses its own crawler, and a blocked crawler means you cannot be read. See how AI engines find local businesses.

Then measure both channels over time. A single check tells you about one day. The trend tells you whether anything you changed made a difference.