Ask the SEO Wizard
Dear O Mighty SEO Wizard,
Google's AI summary of my business quotes one old bad review. Help?
— a founder of a B2B software company in Beaverton, adapted from a question on r/smallbusiness
Asked
We had one rough week during a server migration three years ago, and one frustrated client left a review about "unreliable service." We fixed it in 48 hours and they are still a client. Now Google's AI Overview uses that review as the summary of our whole business.
The Wizard answers
You can’t edit an AI Overview directly. But you can change what it has to work with, and you’re in a better spot than most, because the person who wrote that review still works with you.
Ask them to update it. Seriously. Tell them it’s still showing up, remind them how you fixed it, and ask if they’d add an update. Updated reviews replace the original text. That’s the single fastest fix.
If that’s a no, or while you wait:
- Reply to the review publicly. Calm and short. What happened, what you fixed, how long it took, and that the client is still with you. AI tools read replies too.
- Get recent reviews that talk about reliability. Ask your happiest clients to mention uptime, support, or how you handle problems. A three-year-old review loses weight when there are twenty newer ones saying the opposite.
- Put the story on your website. A page about how you handle reliability, or a case study about that migration, gives Google something better to summarize.
- Send feedback on the Overview. There’s a feedback option on every AI Overview. It’s not a fix on its own, but it doesn’t hurt.
Expect this to take weeks, not days. AI Overviews refresh on their own schedule.