How AI Overviews Are Changing Franchise SEO in 2025
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The search landscape has changed more in the last 12 months than it has since the inception of search engines. AI Overviews now appear in over 13% of all searches, with click-through rates dropping by 30-34% when AI Overviews are present. For franchise owners that our team works every day,, this isn't just another algorithm update—it's a fundamental shift in how customers discover and interact with their business.
Here's the reality: AI Overviews were triggered for 6.49% of queries in January 2025, climbing to 13.14% by March—a 72% growth in just two months. If you're not adapting your franchise SEO strategy for this AI-driven future, you're not just missing opportunities—you're handing them to competitors who understand what's coming.
The numbers are stark and they're real. AI Overviews have decreased click-through rates by 34.5% for position 1 rankings when present, based on analysis of 300,000 keywords. For franchise businesses that rely on driving traffic to location pages, booking systems, and lead generation forms, this represents a massive shift.
What this means for your franchise:
The opportunity hidden in the challenge: Being featured in AI Overviews creates new visibility. Being featured as a source leads to an additional link in search results, enhancing overall visibility and higher click-through rates. Smart franchise owners are already positioning their content to be the source AI trusts.
AI search engines give wrong answers 60% of the time and often cite fabricated or broken URLs. For franchises with multiple locations, this creates a nightmare scenario where potential customers receive incorrect information about your business hours, services, or contact details.
The consistency challenge multiplied:
Your defense strategy: Strong organic search presence and broad web visibility leads to AI citations. Brands with high visibility scores were frequently cited because they already dominated the conversation across various high-quality third-party sites.
This is exactly what I've been saying about smart PR and visibility beyond your website. Because here's the truth: AI isn't just reading your content. It's looking at who else is talking about you.
Voice searches are 3 times more likely to be local than text searches, with 75% of voice searches including local-specific phrases like "near me". The way people search is fundamentally changing, and franchise SEO strategies must evolve accordingly.
The voice search reality for franchises:
What franchise owners need to know: Instead of optimizing for "pizza delivery," your content needs to rank for "Where can I get the best hand-tossed pizza delivered near me tonight?" This shift requires a complete rethinking of your local SEO approach.
30% of respondents believe that artificial intelligence poses risks to brand safety and misinformation, with 65.14% of professionals concerned about content quality and authenticity when using generative AI. For franchise owners, integrating AI tools while maintaining data security isn't optional—it's essential.
The security concerns franchise owners face:
The practical approach: Start with AI tools that don't require sensitive customer data. Focus on content optimization, keyword research, and competitive analysis tools that work with publicly available information.
Product content makes up 70% of AI search citations, with AI platforms prioritizing trustworthy, in-depth pages for technical or final-stage information. For franchises, this means your service pages, location information, and expertise-driven content are prime real estate for AI citations.
Implementation steps:
Voice searches tend to be longer and more conversational, with question-based phrases being essential for optimization. Your content strategy must anticipate how customers naturally speak about your services.
Franchise-specific conversational optimization:
Remember what I always say: if you're building a franchise brand and you're not investing in visibility beyond your own website, you're missing the bigger picture.
Brands with high amounts of citation references pointing to their mention in AI results clearly have higher average visibility scores. This isn't about gaming the system—it's about becoming the recognized authority in your industry across multiple touchpoints.
Your multi-platform approach:
AI systems favor fast-loading, well-structured websites, with consistent formatting and rich content that establishes clear topic relationships. Your website's technical foundation determines whether AI can effectively crawl, understand, and cite your content.
Essential technical optimizations:
Traditional SEO metrics are becoming less reliable predictors of business success. The most important SEO trends for 2025 center around shifting focus from traffic metrics to conversion quality.
New metrics franchise owners should track:
Tools that help: New AI monitoring tools like peec.ai allow you to track citations and brand mentions in AI alongside competitors, with all sources logged. Investing in AI visibility tracking isn't optional—it's essential for understanding your franchise's digital presence.
Here's what most SEO agencies won't tell you: franchises actually have a significant advantage in the AI era. Your multi-location presence, when properly optimized, creates the kind of comprehensive, authoritative web presence that AI systems prefer to cite.
Every location page, every local mention, every community partnership helps build the authority signals that AI systems rely on. But only if you approach it strategically.
By 2025, businesses that fail to prioritize AI SEO risk being left out of the digital conversations and automated actions that matter most. This isn't fear-mongering—it's market reality.
The franchises that thrive in 2025 won't be the ones that ignore AI Overviews or hope they go away. They'll be the brands that understand this fundamental truth: visibility now means earning a spot in the answer itself, not just ranking well in traditional search results.
At Lahav Media, we've developed franchise-specific AI optimization strategies that maintain brand consistency while driving local results. We understand that your success isn't measured by individual location rankings—it's measured by how effectively your entire franchise network shows up when customers need you most.
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Katrin is CEO in Lahav Media. She has a passion for knowing what goes into successful local SEO for franchise businesses. She wants to share her knowledge to people who wants to get into SEO with the right fit.
