Looking for a nearby eatery to silence your growling stomach? Where you go could vary widely, depending on your search choices.
New research from SEO and AI search platform Local Falcon found a significant gap between searches conducted with AI search and Google Maps for restaurants.
The study examined 10,000 restaurants across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to test whether they appeared in Google Maps results and in AI-generated restaurant recommendations.
The company found that nearly three in four restaurants (74.9%) were invisible in Google’s AI recommendations, never surfacing at a single nearby search when a diner asked the AI where to eat.
“For a restaurant, that means getting shut out of AI Overviews completely, right as those overviews have become the way most people search because Google has promoted AI Overviews to the very top of the page,” observed Local Falcon CEO David Hunter.
