For twenty years, local search worked on a simple bargain: show up on page one, get the click, win the customer. That bargain is quietly dissolving. Google’s AI Overviews now sit above the ads and the map pack on most local queries, and the majority of local searches end without a click to any website at all. Meanwhile, a fast-growing share of consumers—especially the under-35 clients salons depend on—skip Google entirely and ask ChatGPT or Gemini directly: “best spray tan near me,” “is red light therapy worth it, and where can I do it in [city]?”

The AI doesn’t return ten blue links. It returns two or three names. Recent analyses suggest only a tiny fraction of local businesses ever get recommended by AI assistants—and, more unsettling for anyone who has invested years in SEO, a shrinking share of AI citations come from pages that rank in Google’s top ten. You can be winning the old game and be invisible in the new one.

Click here to read the entire article in the latest issue of Smart Tan Magazine online.