Google will randomly show AI Overviews for local results, and when it does, It will often show AI-generated information about each local listing. The issue is that Google often cites low-quality and self-promotional listicle articles from across the web when showing those snippets in the local pack.
Joy Hawkins posted one example on X the other day, she wrote:
Well here is one of the best AI fails I’ve seen in a while. Google is quoting a single lawyer’s self-promoting listicle for every law firm listed here and is using it as the primary source for this entire list, linking to it instead of the law firms’ websites.
So you can see in her screenshot, which I was able to replicate after several attempts on a few different browsers, that Google is quoting these self-promotional listicle websites:
This is not quality, this is not making Google’s AI results look helpful, it is just a shame.
Forum discussion at X.
