Your GBP isn't dying. It's feeding AI Overviews.

AI Overviews Are Changing Google Business Profile Visibility

Last week, I needed the address for Repli's Bend office. Simple task. I typed "Repli Bend Oregon" into Google, expecting our Google Business Profile to pop up the way it always has: name, stars, address, hours, a little map pin.

Instead, an AI Overview answered first. Our address was right there, pulled cleanly out of the profile info, sitting above the map pack, above the organic results, above everything. I never scrolled down to see the GBP card that used to own that space. I didn't have to.

GBP impressions are down, but that's not the whole story.

If you've watched your property's Google Business Profile insights lately, you've probably seen the same thing operators everywhere are seeing: fewer impressions. It feels like a decline. It looks like a decline. Depending on who you ask, it might even get reported up the chain as one.

Birdeye's State of Google Business Profile 2026 report puts a number on it:



That's a real, significant drop.

But here's the part that gets buried: customer actions – the calls, the direction requests, the site visits – are only down about 5%. Renters aren't disappearing. They're just not "impressing" your profile the way analytics used to count it, because a lot of them are getting their answer from an AI Overview before they ever formally "view" your listing.

Local Falcon's research backs this up from a different angle. AI Overviews now show up in roughly 40% of local queries, and when one of those Overviews includes a local pack, it surfaces about a third as many businesses as the traditional three-pack did.

Sterling Sky found the same compression pattern across the hundreds of local profiles it analyzed. One multifamily-focused analysis put AI Overview appearance rates for apartment searches specifically at around 68%.

Translation: the SERP got smaller. Fewer logos, fewer pins, fewer chances to be one of three. And whoever Google's AI decides to name gets an outsized share of the attention that's left.

So where is the AI actually getting its answer?

Your Google Business Profile.

This is the part that should reframe how you think about GBP, not deprioritize it. Google's AI Overviews and its Gemini-powered search experiences are not inventing information about your property out of thin air. They're grounding their answers in structured data, and the most authoritative structured data source Google has for any physical location is the Business Profile you already control.

Google's own Gemini models use a capability called Grounding with Google Maps, which reached general availability this year and connects to more than 250 million verified places. Business Profile data functions as the trusted source of truth for that grounding layer. When an AI Overview names your community, checks your pet policy, or states your leasing office hours, there's a very good chance it's citing your GBP without sending anyone a click for it.

That's exactly what happened when I searched for Repli's Bend address. The AI assistant read our profile and reported back.

For the first time, Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey added "AI Search Visibility" as its own category, sitting alongside the local pack and organic rankings it's tracked since 2008. That's not a minor footnote. That's the SEO industry formally acknowledging that showing up in an AI-generated answer is now a distinct discipline from ranking in a list of links, and Business Profile data sits underneath both.

What this actually means for multifamily marketers.

Your renters were never loyal to the format of a search result. They wanted an address, a pet policy, a price range, a fast answer.

AI Overviews just got better at giving them one, faster, using your own data to do it.

That shift changes what "GBP performance" should mean for your team:

Impressions are becoming a weaker signal.

A drop in profile views doesn't automatically mean a drop in demand. It might mean Google answered the question for you before the click ever happened. Watch calls, direction requests, and lease inquiries instead of obsessing over view counts.

Completeness and accuracy carry more weight than ever, not less.

If an AI Overview is going to speak on your community's behalf, sparse or outdated attributes (pet policy, parking type, unit amenities, office hours) don't just hurt your ranking. They hurt what the AI is willing to say about you, or whether it says anything at all.

Reviews are doing double duty.

Specific reviews (the ones that mention the dog park, the maintenance turnaround, the walk to the light rail) aren't just building trust with human readers anymore. They're grounding material for the AI generating the summary a prospective renter reads first.

Consistency across your GBP, your website, and your ILS listings matters more, because AI cross-checks it.

If your profile says one thing and your property website says another, that's a verification gap that can quietly knock you out of consideration before a renter even weighs in.

What to actually do about it

1. Audit your GBP like it's your top landing page, because it functionally is one now.

Every attribute filled in. Every amenity checked. Photos updated in the last 30 days.

2. Rewrite your GBP description like a renter would talk about it, not like a brochure.

Specific, factual, conversational. That's the language AI systems ground answers in.

3. Coach your team on how they ask for reviews.

"Mention the amenity you use most" produces far more useful material than "leave us a review," both for humans and for whatever's summarizing those reviews later.

4. Run the NAP consistency check.

Name, address, phone, hours, pet policy: same everywhere, GBP to website to ILS. Inconsistencies are exactly what trip up AI cross-referencing.

5. Stop measuring GBP success by impressions alone.

Pair your Business Profile insights with calls, direction requests, and lead-source data from your CRM to see the fuller picture.

The bigger picture

GBP didn't get less important. It got promoted. It went from being a listing renters browsed to being the source material an AI reads on their behalf. The properties that treat their profile like a living, accurate, specific data source will keep showing up, whether a renter ever clicks through or not.



The ones that let it go stale will find out the same way I did in Bend: the AI Overview will still have an answer. It just won't be built from anything your team wrote.

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