You are competing for the same searches as carriers with national media budgets, and now against an AI answer that names two or three national brands. Except on the searches that actually produce your phone calls, where our own measurement says the answer layer has barely appeared at all.
That is the opening, and most agency sites are not built to use it.
Google AIO presence by search intent. 4,454 captures across 56 states and provinces and 109 cities, August 2026.
Read the full study →Across 109 cities, the twelve near-me searches that send people to a local agency produced a Google AIO in 6.9% of 1,199 captures and a Local Pack in 99.8%.
Unmodified head terms behave the same way. "Car insurance" returned a Local Pack in 98.2% of geographies and an Overview in 17.9%.
So the answer layer is taking the explainers, the comparisons and the cost questions, and leaving the local intent alone. For an agency that is the entire strategic picture in one sentence, and it argues for putting effort where carriers cannot outspend you.
404 distinct businesses appeared across 885 Local Pack slots. 227 of them appeared in one geography only.
Storefront agency networks, not carriers. Carriers hold only 5.8% of local pack slots.
Most agency content programs are coverage explainers. Those searches now return a Google AIO 97.9% of the time. The content still has a job as citation material, but it is no longer a traffic play, and treating it as one is why agency blogs stopped working.
Fifty city pages generated from one template, differing only in a place name, now consolidate or drop out. The fix is fewer pages carrying real state-specific content: minimum limits, filing requirements, the carriers you actually place in that market.
Coverage explainers pasted from carrier marketing put you in a duplicate content fight with the carrier, which the carrier wins. Your defensible content is what the carrier cannot write: what you place, who you decline, what a claim looks like locally.
Median rating in insurance Local Packs is 4.9, and half of all slots sit at 4.9 or above. If yours is 4.4 you are in the bottom 14% of what Google is choosing to show. That is a review programme problem before it is an SEO problem.
Everything is benchmarked against the same Index published on this site, so you are not grading your own homework. The comparison set is the agencies and carriers competing for your searches in your markets.
On the searches that produce agency phone calls, yes, and the data is unusually clear. Near-me searches returned a Google AIO in 83 of 1,199 captures across 109 cities, and a Local Pack in 99.8% of them. Unmodified head terms behaved almost the same way. What has changed is where effort pays back, not whether it does.
Stop counting on them for traffic. Comparison, cost and informational searches returned a Google AIO above the results 97.9% of the time in August 2026. That content is now citation material, judged on whether Google quotes it, which is a different job with a different success measure.
Movement on long-tail coverage and location searches typically shows in 8 to 12 weeks. Local Pack presence can move faster if the underlying profile work has not been done. AI citation share moves slowest, because it depends on being referenced by sources the model already trusts.
No. One agency per line per metro. If we are already working with a brokerage in your market and your lines, we will say so before the first call rather than after.
It is published in full, free, with the methodology and the capture dates, whether or not you ever hire us. It exists because we needed the measurement for client work and there was no honest public version of it.
Not without written consent. Agency boards are aggregated. National carriers are public brands competing on public search results, which is a different situation.
We run your query set through the same capture the Index runs on, split by intent, and show you which searches the answer layer has taken and which are still a local fight you can win.
1,064 captures. Which insurance searches Google answers itself, and which it leaves alone.
An interactive map of all 56 states and provinces. Switch between car, home and business, and click through to any board.
Different problem, different engagement.