What happens to outdoor business SEO when AI replaces the first page of Google
Google’s first page is shrinking. Not in some abstract, future-tense way. Right now, AI-generated answers sit above the organic results for a growing share of searches, and for some queries, Google’s newer AI Mode skips the traditional results page entirely. It just answers the question.
If you run a rafting company, a fishing guide service, a campground, or any other outdoor business that depends on search traffic, this is worth paying attention to. Not because the sky is falling, but because the mechanism that sends people to your website is changing in ways that affect how many of those people actually arrive.
Here’s the short version: AI Overviews now appear on about 25% of Google searches. When they show up, organic click-through rates drop by more than half. For informational queries, close to 83% of searches with an AI Overview end without anyone clicking on anything. The searcher reads Google’s answer and moves on.
That sounds grim. But the data tells a more complicated story when you look at local and activity-based searches specifically. And for outdoor businesses, that’s where the actual bookings come from.
The old bargain is breaking
For twenty years, SEO worked on a simple exchange. You built a useful page. Google ranked it. People clicked on it. Google needed your website because it couldn’t answer questions on its own, so it sent traffic your way.
That deal is unwinding. Google can now read multiple pages, synthesize an answer, and present it directly on the results page. The searcher never has to visit your site. Nearly 60% of all Google searches end without a click today, and that number has been climbing steadily.
For outdoor businesses, the impact splits along a predictable line. Informational queries take the hardest hit. Searches like “best time to visit Yellowstone” or “what to wear whitewater rafting” are exactly the kind of questions Google can answer with a generated paragraph. If you were getting traffic from that type of content, some of it is drying up.
But local and transactional queries, the searches where someone is actually looking to book something, remain more protected. Only about 8% of local searches currently trigger AI Overviews. “Rafting near Buena Vista CO” still shows the map pack and business listings. “Book fly fishing guide Bozeman” still leads to your website.
That’s the good news. The less good news is that Google expands AI Overviews into new query types every few months. The protection local queries have today is not guaranteed for next season.
There’s a second shift happening alongside AI Overviews. More people are skipping Google altogether and going straight to ChatGPT or Perplexity to plan trips. They’re typing things like “plan a three-day fly fishing trip near Bozeman” or “best family rafting for kids under 10 in Colorado” and getting complete answers without ever seeing a search results page. Your website doesn’t need to rank if the AI never searches for it in the first place. It needs to be in the data the AI already knows about.
Where ai answers come from
The AI systems generating these answers don’t have secret databases. They pull from sources you can actually influence.
Google AI Overviews draw primarily from pages that already rank well in organic results. If your site is on page one for “guided kayak tours Lake Powell,” you’re a candidate for citation in the AI answer for that query. Google’s system reads your page, extracts specific facts, and includes them in the generated response with a link to your site.
ChatGPT works on different plumbing. It pulls from Bing’s search index, Google Business Profile data, and review platforms like TripAdvisor and Yelp. When someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a fishing guide in Montana, it’s drawing from those sources, not from a separate AI-only index. One finding that stood out in recent research: 84% of hotels globally don’t show up in ChatGPT recommendations at all. For small outdoor operators who haven’t thought much about their digital presence beyond their own website, that number is probably worse.
Perplexity scrapes the top search results for a query and gives extra weight to review sites, local directories, and content with clear factual claims. It cites sources inline, so if it pulls from your page, there’s a real link sending real traffic.
What all these platforms have in common: they favor content that states facts plainly. Specific, structured, direct. “Half-day whitewater rafting on the Nantahala River, Class II-III rapids, all gear included, ages 8 and up, $75 per person” is the kind of sentence an AI system will extract and cite. “Experience the adventure of a lifetime on our world-class rapids” is the kind of sentence it skips.
If your website reads like a brochure, AI systems will look elsewhere for answers. If it reads like a useful guide that answers real questions, you’re in a much stronger position.
Your existing seo work is not wasted
There’s a natural reaction when people hear about AI search: assume everything they’ve done for SEO is now irrelevant and start chasing some new optimization tactic. That reaction is wrong.
The businesses that show up in AI answers are the same businesses that rank well in organic search. Google AI Overviews pull from top-ranking pages. ChatGPT relies on Bing’s index, which rewards the same signals. Perplexity scrapes the top 30 results for a given query and builds its answer from those.
If you rank well, you’re already a candidate for AI citations. If you don’t rank at all, no amount of new optimization will help.
So the content work still matters. Publishing articles about your area, your trips, and the questions your customers ask still builds the organic authority that AI systems rely on. Building detailed service pages with real specifics, pricing, duration, difficulty, gear lists, location details, still earns you the rankings that feed AI answers.
The operators who’ve been doing solid SEO over the past few years aren’t starting from scratch. They have a foundation that translates directly into AI visibility. The operators who’ve been running on a website built in 2018 with no blog, no reviews, and no updates since last season, those are the ones facing a real problem. The gap between these two groups is about to get wider.
There’s an upside buried in this shift that’s easy to miss. Visitors who arrive through AI citations tend to be further along in their decision-making. By the time someone clicks through from an AI answer, they’ve already had their general questions answered. They’re on your site because the AI told them you’re a good fit. Those visitors are closer to booking than someone casually scrolling through a page of search results.
Your google business profile carries more weight now
If there’s one thing to prioritize, it might be your Google Business Profile.
AI Overviews for local queries pull heavily from profile data. Your business description, photos, reviews, Q&A section, hours, and service categories all feed into the answers Google generates for searches near your location. ChatGPT draws from this data too when recommending local businesses.
A complete, current profile tells AI systems that your business is real, active, and relevant. An incomplete one with a vague description and photos from three seasons ago tells them to look at the next result. This is the same advice we’d give you for regular local SEO, but AI has made the payoff larger.
The Q&A section is where most competitors leave easy ground unclaimed. You can post and answer your own questions there. “What’s the minimum age for your trips?” “Do you provide gear or should guests bring their own?” “What happens if weather cancels a trip?” These answers show up in AI-generated responses, and the majority of outdoor business profiles have nothing in their Q&A section.
Review text matters in a way that star ratings alone don’t. AI systems read your reviews looking for facts they can use. A review that says “had a blast” gives them nothing. A review that says “our guide put us on cutthroat trout all morning on the Green River, ideal trip for intermediate fly fishers” gives the AI specific details it can reference when someone asks about fishing guides in that area. You can’t write your guests’ reviews, but a post-trip message asking “what part of the trip stood out?” tends to produce the kind of detail AI systems find useful.
Specific changes worth making on your site
You don’t need to tear down your website and start over. But a few specific adjustments make a real difference in whether AI systems pull from your pages or skip them.
Start every service page with a direct, factual description of the trip or activity. Not a tagline. Not your origin story. The basics: what the activity is, where it happens, how long it lasts, what it costs, what’s included, who it’s appropriate for. AI systems look for exactly this kind of structured information, and they skip pages that bury it below three paragraphs of marketing copy.
Add an FAQ section to each major service page. Three to five questions that guests actually ask, with short, honest answers. “Do I need to know how to swim?” “What should I wear?” “Can we bring our own lunch?” These map directly to the conversational questions people are asking AI assistants, and the Q&A format makes extraction easy.
If you haven’t added schema markup to your site, this is a good time. LocalBusiness structured data, along with TourismBusiness or Event schema where relevant, helps AI systems categorize your business and understand what you offer. It’s a one-time technical job that most web developers can handle in an afternoon. It won’t change your rankings overnight, but it removes a barrier to being cited.
Write headings that match how people ask questions. “What to expect on a half-day rafting trip” works better for AI citation than “Our Half-Day Experience.” AI systems use headings to understand what a section covers, and question-style headings line up with how people phrase queries to AI assistants.
And put your pricing on the page. AI answers frequently include price ranges, and pages that list them get cited more often than pages that say “call for pricing.” If you’re worried about competitors seeing your rates, they already know them. Your potential customers need to see them, and so do the AI systems deciding whether to recommend you.
How to check whether ai is sending you traffic
You can measure this now. In Google Analytics 4, filter your referral traffic for sources like chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai. The numbers might be small today, but AI-referred sessions grew over 500% year-over-year through 2025. That growth rate is not slowing down.
In Google Search Console, look at queries where your impressions are high but clicks are unusually low. That pattern often means an AI Overview is appearing for that query and absorbing clicks before they reach your listing. If you’re being cited in the overview, your clicks may actually increase. If you’re not being cited, those impressions aren’t turning into visits.
The simplest test: open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode and ask the questions your customers would ask. “Best rafting near [your river].” “Fishing guides in [your area].” “Family kayak trips [your state].” See whether your business appears. If it does, you’re in decent shape. If it doesn’t, you have a clear picture of where to focus.
None of this requires a big budget or a complete overhaul. The businesses that are showing up in AI answers right now are the same ones that did the foundational SEO work over the past few years. AI search hasn’t changed what good marketing looks like for outdoor businesses. It has made the gap between businesses that do it and businesses that don’t a lot more visible.
What this means for your off-season
If you’re reading this during the slower months, the timing works in your favor. The off-season has always been the best time to do marketing work that pays off when bookings pick up. With AI search, that’s even more true.
AI systems are indexing and learning about your business all the time, not just during your peak season. The content you publish in November, the Google Business Profile updates you make in January, the schema markup you add in February, all of that feeds the AI systems that will be answering customer questions come spring.
Waiting until your busy season to deal with this is like waiting until customers walk in the door to put up your sign. By the time you act, the AI systems have already decided who to recommend. The outfitter down the road who spent the winter doing the work while you waited will be the one getting cited when your shared customers start planning trips.
The changes here aren’t dramatic. They’re specific, practical, and buildable over a few weeks of off-season work. Update your Google Business Profile. Add FAQ sections to your trip pages. Put real pricing on your site. Ask past guests for detailed reviews. Search for yourself in ChatGPT and Perplexity and see what comes back. That’s not a revolution. It’s maintenance, and it’s the kind of maintenance that will matter more each year as AI takes a bigger role in how people find things to do outdoors.
