Google trusted Yelp over our client's own website
Google's AI summaries are now showing up on most brand name searches. In a recent study, Ahrefs found AI summaries on 82.91% of U.S. desktop branded searches on September 29, 2026. That number is up from 61.3% in July.
After reading the report, I started searching branded keywords to make sure our clients weren't being impacted negatively. Here's a great example as to why this matters.
One of our clients is a motorcycle shop here in Vancouver. I typed their name into Google and noticed that a branded search led to an AI Overview that was showing incorrect information, even though our client's website and Google Business Profile had the correct info listed.
For some reason, the Google AI Overview was showing that they were open a half hour later from Tuesday to Friday than they actually were.
Was this a hallucination? I dug deeper.
After going through every online profile that our client has, I noticed that the hours showing in Google's AI Overview were consistent with an old, dated Yelp profile that someone set up. A profile that didn't even show up on the first page of Google when someone is searching for the business.
Not great, Bob.
Why it matters
At the heart of the story is that the information being used in AI Overviews is not always the information that you give to Google when you update your Google Business Profile and website.
Summaries are pulled from plenty of different sources, and it's extremely important that you're keeping everything up to date. A search result that lives on page 2 or 3 of Google (and that none of your potential clients may have ever seen in the past) could now be featured in an AI summary and be the only thing that people read.
What I'd do
Search your own business name and ask Google a bunch of branded questions on top of that. Questions like:
- What time is [your business] open?
- What services does [your business] offer?
- What is [your business]'s pricing?
Search for all of the top queries that you find in your Google Search Console data. Make sure that every source is saying the same thing, because conflicting information is more dangerous now than it ever has been.
Remember that Yelp and Bing are free profiles to claim, and that unclaimed listings lend themselves to the suggestions and edits that anyone makes publicly.
Also: Make sure you've turned on Google Business Profile notifications. When someone suggests an edit to your listing, you now have 4 days to reject it before Google may publish it. This is a welcome update.
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