Skip to main content
Back to Blog
search ai local-seo

What Changed in Google Search This Year for Pelvic Floor PT Practices

Beacon Local |

If you’ve searched Google recently, you’ve probably noticed it doesn’t look like it used to. There’s a box at the top with an AI-generated answer. The map results show fewer businesses than they used to.

This isn’t a glitch. It’s the new normal, and it has real implications for how patients find a pelvic floor PT practice. Here’s what actually changed in the last year, what experts say is coming, and what it means for your visibility.

AI Overviews are now the default for most searches

AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional search results, now appear for 68% of local searches overall. For informational queries (the kind a patient types when they’re researching a condition), AI Overviews appear 92% of the time. For cost or comparison queries, they appear 97% of the time (Whitespark, 2026).

That means when a patient searches “what does pelvic floor therapy involve” or “how much does pelvic floor PT cost,” they’re almost always seeing an AI summary first, before any clickable websites.

The impact on traffic is real. Organic click-through rates dropped 61% on queries where AI Overviews appear, falling from 1.76% to 0.61% (Dataslayer, 2025). Even when your site ranks number one organically, fewer people click through if the AI already gave them an answer.

There’s a flip side worth knowing about. Brands cited as sources in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks than before, and 91% more paid clicks (Dataslayer, 2025). The practices being referenced by AI are getting more traffic, not less. The ones that aren’t being referenced are losing visibility.

The local pack is getting smaller

The “local pack,” the box of businesses that shows up on a map when you search for a service near you, used to show three businesses by default. In Google’s newer AI-powered local results, the pack often shows only one or two businesses (Sterling Sky, 2026).

A study of 322 local markets found that AI-powered packs surfaced 32% fewer unique businesses than traditional packs (Whitespark, 2026). In 88% of those markets, AI packs featured fewer total businesses.

Less room at the top means tighter competition. The practices that show up are the ones Google has decided to trust most.

Google updated its algorithm three times this year

Most practice owners don’t watch Google’s update schedule. Most don’t need to. But the cadence matters for context.

In the last twelve months, Google has rolled out three significant algorithm updates:

  • August 2025 Spam Update, which targeted fake reviews and Google Business Profile spam
  • February 2026 Discover Core Update, which rewarded “demonstrated expertise” and reduced sensational content
  • March 2026 Core Update (March 13-27), the first broad core update of 2026

Google Search Central tracks all of these officially (Google Search Central). Each update reshuffles rankings. A practice that was ranking well six months ago might be ranking differently today, with no changes to its own site.

Review recency now matters as much as review volume

For years, the conventional wisdom was that more reviews are better. That’s still true, but the recency of reviews has become one of the top five local ranking factors despite officially being listed at number 20 (Whitespark, 2026).

A practice with 50 reviews from two years ago now ranks below a practice with 20 reviews that arrived in the last few months. A steady weekly flow beats occasional bursts. Even negative reviews help rankings when they arrive consistently, because recency signals an active, real business.

This is the most underrated change of the year. Most practices aren’t tracking it.

What this means for your practice

The pattern across all of these changes is clear. Google rewards practices that look alive. Active profiles, fresh content, recent reviews, and demonstrated expertise are all weighted more heavily than they were a year ago. Practices that were optimized once and left alone are losing ground to practices that stay engaged.

For a pelvic floor PT practice, three takeaways are worth holding onto:

  1. Being cited as an expert source matters more than ever. AI Overviews pull from authoritative content with structured data. Vague, generic copy doesn’t make the cut. Specific, expert-driven content does.
  2. Recent activity outweighs historical setup. Posting weekly to your Google profile, requesting reviews on a regular schedule, and updating content matters more than what you did at launch.
  3. One-time optimization is no longer enough. The algorithm changed three times in the last twelve months. The practices that stay visible are the ones with someone watching for shifts and adjusting.

What to expect going forward

No one knows exactly how AI search will evolve. The major industry tracking firm Whitespark added “AI search visibility” as a formal ranking category for the first time in their 2026 survey (Whitespark, 2026), signaling that experts now view it as a permanent factor rather than a passing trend.

What’s reasonable to expect: AI Overviews will keep expanding to more types of queries, the local pack will continue to favor highly active and highly trusted businesses, and the gap between practices that stay engaged and practices that don’t will keep widening.

This isn’t a reason to panic. It’s a reason to treat your online presence as a living thing rather than a finished project.

Sources

Ready to Help More Patients Find You?

Let's talk about helping the patients who need your help find you.

Get in Touch

20 minutes, free tips, and a conversation about your practice.