In this short, Joshua Albanese, founder of Spearleaf, explains how Google's results went from ten blue links to a three-result map pack to a single answer in AI Overview, where he says the business ranked first gets most of the business. His advice is to focus on the AI component through AI search optimization, which he says takes care of the SEO and the maps rankings too.
Read the full guide: Why Is No One Visiting My Website? Where the Clicks Went →
Video Transcript
If you have a business, you're going to want to watch this. So, there are some big changes in Google SEO in 2026 that I need to go over with you.
First thing, and this is what's going to protect yourself: Google used to be 10 blue links. But then they started getting rid of it, and they started showing Google Maps. And then that went down to only three. You'd only get three links in Google Maps before you needed to scroll.
And now they launched AI Overview. And in AI Overview, you only get one. So you only get one review. That's what it is. Whoever's ranked number one gets nearly about 75% of all the business. It will go to that one review.
The rest of these, what you used to get, now get the rest of that, which is basically nothing. It's 25%, but you're not going to run a business on that 25%, okay?
So, the most important thing that you need to focus on is just not SEO, but the AI component. And when you focus on the AI component, it'll take care of the SEO. It'll take care of the maps that you want to get ranking on.