If you run a plumbing company, a dental practice, or a clinic, there is a good chance a large share of your new customer calls start in the Google map pack. That is the box near the top of search results showing local businesses with a call button, reviews, photos, and directions. Google is testing a version of that box with most of those things gone.
What Google is testing
Search Engine Roundtable, a search industry news site, reported this week that Google is testing removing the action buttons, reviews, and photos from the AI Overview version of the local pack. An AI Overview is the AI-written answer Google now places at the top of many searches, and for local searches it often includes its own version of the map pack. These AI-based local packs have been around for a couple of years, and they keep changing.
Joy Hawkins, who flagged the test on X, put it this way: "It uses the Google Business Profile but yet removes a ton of its features (reviews, address, hours etc)." She also said that on mobile, every time she gets this version, the traditional local pack is gone. She called it the ugliest version of the AI Overview she has seen in local so far, and the writer at Search Engine Roundtable was able to replicate the test himself.
Why this hits service businesses hardest
Think about what those missing pieces do for you. The call button is how a homeowner with a burst pipe reaches you in ten seconds. The reviews are why they pick you over the company listed next to you. The website link and directions are how they book or show up. As Search Engine Roundtable noted, this test makes it harder for searchers to visit your website, call your business, or get directions from Google Search.
For a service business, those actions are the entire point of the listing. Your Google Business Profile, the free listing you manage inside Google, still feeds this new version. You do the work of collecting reviews and uploading photos, and in this test Google does not show them.
My read on where this is going
This is a test, and tests get rolled back. Joy Hawkins said she hopes this one reverts soon, and it might. The way I see it, the direction matters more than this single layout. Google has been moving the local search experience inside its own AI answers for a couple of years now, and each version gives the searcher fewer direct ways to act on your listing.
My bet is that some form of this sticks, even if this exact version does not. I expect free local visibility to keep shrinking in steps small enough that most owners never notice until the phone slows down. In my experience from more than a decade managing Google and Meta ads for service businesses, the owners who get hurt worst by changes like this are the ones who never measured how much of their business the map pack was sending them in the first place.
What to do about your free Google traffic
You cannot stop Google from testing layouts. You can know your numbers. If you track calls by source, you will see within days whether a change like this costs you leads, and you can respond before the month is lost. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current as well, because even this stripped version still pulls from it.
Then build a channel where you control the terms. Paid search ads still show with your phone number and your own landing page, and the ad auction does not care what the free pack looks like this month. My take is that every service business should treat free Google traffic as a bonus, with paid traffic and a strong booking page as the base.
How to prepare your business
1. Search your main service on your phone and screenshot what Google actually shows for your area.
2. Check your call tracking so you know how many leads the map pack sends you today.
3. Keep your Google Business Profile complete, since the AI version still pulls from it.
4. Decide now what replaces those calls if the buttons disappear for good.
If you want a second set of eyes on how exposed your lead flow is to changes like this, we help service business owners with exactly that.
