Your landing page is speaking the wrong language.
It was written for someone who typed "roof repair Coral Springs" into Google, skimmed a headline, and either called or didn't. That search took three words. The person using Google's AI Mode today is typing something closer to: "What should I ask a roofer before signing a contract, and how do I know if the damage is covered by insurance?" That's a conversation. Your page almost certainly isn't answering it.
Here's what the data actually shows, what pages AI tends to cite, and what you can change on your own service pages this week.
What "3X Longer" Actually Means for Your Page
Google's AI Mode—the conversational search experience that generates an AI-written answer before showing traditional results—is drawing a different kind of search behavior. According to Google's own figures, cited by their Ads team in October 2026, queries in AI Mode are three times longer than traditional searches. More than one in six AI Mode searches in the U.S. now include images or voice alongside text.
In plain terms: people aren't just searching for a business anymore. They're thinking out loud inside the search bar. They're working through a problem—comparing options, listing constraints, asking about tradeoffs—right there in the query. By the time they land on your page, they already have a specific question in mind. If your page doesn't answer it near the top, they go back and let AI find someone who does.
Google's data also shows that discovery is happening earlier in the buying process. Someone might not even know they need your specific service yet. They're still exploring. That means your page isn't just competing for the person ready to book—it's also competing for the person still figuring out what they need.
What Pages AI Actually Cites
TJ Robertson's analysis of 193,507 AI answers across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews produced a finding worth sitting with. Pages that AI cited opened with a direct answer to the question 20% of the time. Pages in Google's top ten that the AI never cited? Only 5% opened with a direct answer.
Pages that ranked well on Google but didn't give a direct answer up front were largely passed over by AI—even when AI was already looking at them.
There's more. In the same analysis, half of the passed-over pages were missing an answer to the question anywhere in the portion the raters read. Not buried. Gone entirely. Cited pages scored higher on completeness: 2.3 versus 1.7 on a five-point scale, consistently, across 195 blind-rated page comparisons.
One honest note: Robertson's team treats these as associations, not causes. Adding a direct answer to your page does not produce a citation on demand. What the data shows is a clear pattern—cited pages answer the question faster and more completely than the ones AI passes over.
Why Service Business Pages Usually Fail This Test
Most local service business landing pages are built around what the business does, not what the customer is trying to figure out. They lead with the company name, a tagline, a list of services, and a "get a free quote" button. That structure made sense when Google was matching keywords to pages and ranking the most authoritative one.
AI isn't doing keyword matching. It's reading your page the way a person would—to see if you actually answered the question. If your HVAC page says "We provide residential and commercial HVAC services in Broward County" and a potential customer asked "how do I know if I need a new AC unit or just a repair," your page answered nothing.
The mismatch is specific to service businesses. A product page can list specs and dimensions. A service page has to answer judgment questions—questions that start with "how do I know," "what happens if," "is it worth it to," "what should I expect." Those are exactly the kinds of questions people are now typing into AI Mode.
There's also this: Google's research shows users want human perspectives alongside AI summaries. They want lived experience and earned authority—not just a description of what a service does. Forums, videos, and firsthand accounts are where people go for that texture. Your service page can provide some of it too, if it's written plainly and specifically rather than like a brochure.
What to Do This Week
This doesn't require rebuilding your whole site. It requires putting the right content in the right place.
- List the five questions customers ask before they book. Pull from your text messages, voicemails, sales conversations, and Google reviews. Not pricing—the questions like: "How long does this take?" "Will you need to come back?" "How do I know if this is the right service for my situation?" Those are what AI Mode users are actually typing.
- Write a direct answer to each question in two to four sentences. No preamble. Start with the answer. If someone asked "how do I know if my electrical panel needs replacing," the answer starts with the conditions that indicate replacement—not with "At [Company Name], we believe in honest assessments."
- Put at least one answer above the fold—meaning the part of the page visible before the visitor scrolls. Most service pages waste that space on a hero image and a slogan. Put the answer to your most common pre-booking question there instead, or immediately below the headline. That's the content AI reads first, and it's the first thing a busy visitor sees.
- Add a short FAQ section to each service page. Three to five questions, answered directly. Keep each answer to a short paragraph. This is the format AI reads efficiently, and it's also what a busy person appreciates. The rest of your list from step one goes here.
- Check whether your page includes any firsthand specifics. Robertson's analysis found that first-hand experience on a page was associated with 45% higher odds of being cited compared to passed-over pages. That doesn't mean inventing stories. It means writing specifically: what your crew actually does on a job, what a customer typically sees when you arrive, what questions come up during a service call. Specific beats vague every time.
The Thing Most Businesses Miss
Longer AI Mode queries don't just mean you need longer pages. They mean you need more complete pages. There's a difference. A 2,000-word page that repeats your service description twelve different ways is not complete. A 600-word page that answers six specific questions your customers actually ask is complete.
The other finding from Robertson's study that most people skim past: promotional tone didn't separate cited pages from passed-over pages. About three-quarters of pages in both groups were clearly trying to sell something. AI didn't penalize that. What it responded to was whether the page answered the question—before the pitch, not instead of it.
Your customers are now using AI to do the early research that used to happen over the phone or across the counter. If your page can do what a knowledgeable employee does—answer the question plainly and then offer the next step—it's in much better shape than a page that just announces you exist and you're great.
What This Isn't
No page change produces a citation on demand. The data shows patterns across a large sample; your results depend on your industry, your market, your specific questions, and factors that aren't fully understood yet. Google hasn't released conversion benchmarks for AI Mode behavior. Treat this as a strong hypothesis worth testing, not a formula with a fixed output.
The direction is clear enough to act on. Answer the question first. Be complete. Write like someone who's actually done the work. Those are worth doing regardless of how AI search continues to develop.