AI-generated summaries at the top of Google's results, "AI Overviews", are no longer a distant experiment. By mid-2026 they appear on nearly 43% of searches in Belgium. For an SME that relies on organic search, the useful reflex isn't panic, but a targeted adjustment.
1. Where Belgium stands
AI Overview coverage now reaches around 43% of searches in Belgium and 46% in France, with a trigger rate of about 12% on French-language queries. The European rollout is moving faster than expected: Google is accelerating because user engagement with the format is high. The window to adapt is shrinking quarter by quarter.
2. The real impact on your traffic
When an AI Overview appears, click-through to organic results drops: roughly −18% for positions 1 to 3 and up to −35% for positions 4 to 10. Google's main target remains informational queries ("how to…", "what is…"), where the format could cover 65–75% of searches by the end of 2026. If your traffic rests on very generic articles, that's where you'll feel the drop first.
3. Local and commercial queries are less exposed
Good news for many Belgian businesses: local and transactional queries ("marketing agency Brussels", "quote… near me") trigger an AI Overview far less often than purely informational ones. The "local pack" and business listings keep their full value. The stake shifts to credibility: Google favours sources that demonstrate real experience and expertise, the well-known E-E-A-T.
4. How to stay cited rather than bypassed
The goal changes in nature: being cited inside the AI summary, not just ranked below it. In practice, that means content that clearly answers a precise question, clean structured data (schema.org), consistent brand authority, and solid local pages. In short: less generic content, more verifiable expert answers.
The AI lens, humans first
AI is very useful for watching this new terrain: tracking when an AI Overview appears on your keywords, spotting whether your brand is cited, detecting pages that lose traffic. But it does not set the strategy. Deciding which topics deserve an expert page, balancing volume against authority, keeping a credible brand voice, that remains human work. That is our stance: AI executes, expertise decides, and watches over it.
This week
Pick your 5 most strategic keywords and type them into Google: does an AI Overview appear, and is your brand cited in it? Then check that your key pages have structured data and a clear author signature. Twenty minutes is enough to know where you stand.
At Vistalaro, SEO plays out on two fronts. Content and authority strategy, what to publish, for which query, with what proof of expertise, falls to Vistalaro Pilot, your dedicated senior marketer. The technical foundation, structured data, speed, well-built local pages, falls to Vistalaro Build & Automate. Two levers, one logic: staying visible as search changes.
Is your SEO ready for AI search?
Let's look together at where you appear (or don't) in AI Overviews, and identify the priority adjustments for your SME.
Let's talk