Google's AI Local Pack Hides Your Reviews. What's Left?

Google is testing a version of its local results where the call button, the photos, the star rating, the address, and the hours are all gone. What is left is your business name and a few lines of text that Google’s AI writes about you.

It is a test, not a rollout, and it may be gone by next month. But it shows where local search is heading, and the fix is work you should be doing anyway. Here is what changed, what still shows, and what I would check this week.

The short version

• Google is testing an AI Overview local pack (the AI-written answer box at the top of a search) that drops action buttons, reviews, and photos.
• Reports say the address and hours are missing too, and on mobile the normal map results disappear when this version shows.
• It still pulls from your Google Business Profile. The text fields are doing the work the photos and stars used to do.
• If your profile and your service pages do not say plainly what you do and where, Google has nothing to write.

What Google is testing

Joy Hawkins, one of the most reliable people watching local search, flagged this on X in early November. Barry Schwartz reproduced it and published side-by-side screenshots on November 10 (Search Engine Roundtable).

In the normal local pack (the three businesses beside the map), a buyer sees your rating, a photo, your hours, and buttons for Call, Directions, and Website. In the test version, the buttons, reviews, and photos are removed. Hawkins reported the address and hours are missing as well, and that on a phone the traditional pack does not appear at all when this one does.

Her summary: “It uses the Google Business Profile but yet removes a ton of its features.”

Google has not announced it or explained it. The reports do not spell out every detail of what remains, and I can’t tell you how often it shows on Northern Ontario searches. I would treat it as a preview, not a crisis.

Why this matters more for an industrial firm

A restaurant loses a lot when the photos and stars go. An industrial company loses something different.

Most fabricators, commercial contractors, and suppliers I look at have a thin profile. A dozen reviews, a few old photos, a broad category like “Contractor,” and an empty services list. In the normal pack, the rating and the Call button carry the listing anyway. A buyer sees 4.8 stars and a phone number and that is enough to make the call.

Take those away and the listing is only as good as the words Google can find about you. If the profile says “Contractor” and the website says “quality workmanship since 1987,” the AI has nothing specific to say. The firm that wrote “structural steel fabrication and erection for commercial builds in North Bay, Sudbury, and Timmins” gets a sentence that answers the buyer’s question.

The other loss is the one-tap call. Without the button, a buyer who wants you has to search your company name or click through to your site. So what shows when someone searches your name, and what your site says in the first screen, matters more than it did.

What is left, and what to fix

Four things carry the listing when the visual parts are gone. All four are in your control.

• Your primary category. Pick the narrowest one that names your core work (“Metal fabricator,” not “Contractor”). This is still how Google decides which searches you belong in.
• Your services list and description. Write them in the words a buyer uses on the phone. What you build, who you build it for, where you work. This is the raw material for whatever the AI writes.
• Your service areas. Name the real towns. An AI answer to “commercial roofer near Sturgeon Falls” can only include you if something says you work in Sturgeon Falls.
• Your service pages. One page per real service, with the plain facts on the page: capacities, materials, project types, towns served, and a phone number in the first screen. Google’s AI reads your site alongside your profile, and it quotes specifics.

I covered the profile fields in more detail in Google Business Profile for Industrial Firms, and the town-by-town side in Service Area Pages That Win Regional Work.

Don’t stop asking for reviews

It would be easy to read this as “reviews don’t matter now.” I would not.

This is one test layout. Reviews still show in the normal pack, in Maps, and on your profile when someone searches your name, which is exactly where a buyer goes when there is no Call button. A buyer weighing a six-figure job still reads every one.

What the test does show is that reviews can’t be the only proof you have. If Google can hide them in one layout, your own site needs to carry the evidence too: named projects, real photos, and client feedback you have permission to publish.

What I would do this week

Search the three or four phrases your best buyers would type, on your phone, and look at what Google says about you. Then open your Business Profile and read the category, services, and description as if you had never heard of your company.

If a stranger could not tell what you do and where from those words alone, neither can Google. That is a one-hour fix, and it pays off whether this test sticks or not.