A Google AI Overview is the AI-generated answer Google now shows at the top of many search results, above the blue links. Instead of only listing pages, it writes a direct answer — and for local questions like "how much does Botox cost in <city>," it often names specific businesses and their prices. For a clinic, being named in that answer matters because most people read it before they ever scroll to the links.
It's a synthesized answer, not a page. When you search certain questions, Google's AI reads across multiple sources and composes a short answer at the very top of the page, usually citing a few of them. It appears for a large and growing share of searches, especially informational and local ones — and it pushes the traditional links further down.
It changed what "showing up on Google" means. The old goal was ranking a link in the top results; now, for many questions, the AI Overview is the first (and sometimes only) thing a person reads. For "how much does X cost in <city>"-type queries, it commonly names a couple of local providers with prices — so the businesses it names get the consideration, and the rest are effectively skipped.
Why it matters for a med spa: when a patient asks Google what a treatment costs in your city, the AI Overview may answer by naming one or two clinics. If yours isn't one of them, you're out of the running for that patient before they click anything — regardless of your reviews or ad spend, which influence the map pack, not the written answer.
It's also distinct from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, which generate their own answers from their own sources — so a business can appear in one and be missing from another. To see your AI Overview for a query, just search it on Google (logged out is closest to a new patient's view); a free scan checks the major engines for you.
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