AI search is rewriting how the biggest professional services firms get found. We pulled the data

We analysed 12 of the leading law, consulting, accountancy and property firms across the UK and US. Most are losing organic search visibility, and nearly all of them are being pulled into Google's AI Overviews. For anyone who owns growth at a firm this size, it belongs on the board's agenda.

By Paul Williamson, Founder and Director, PRonto Marketing.

PRonto analysed 12 sector-leading professional services firms in Semrush. Between May 2025 and May 2026, 10 of the 12 lost organic keyword visibility, with keyword counts down about 21% on average, while 11 of the 12 now appear in far more Google AI Overviews than a year ago, several of them roughly double.

We wanted to know something specific. Not whether AI is changing search in general, everyone says that. Whether it is measurably changing how the biggest, best-resourced firms in professional services actually get found. So we pulled the numbers ourselves.

What we looked at

We picked 12 firms that lead their sectors, split across the UK and US to cover both markets.

In law, the UK Magic Circle firms Clifford Chance, Linklaters and Freshfields, and three of the highest-grossing US firms, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins and Skadden. In consulting, McKinsey and Bain. In accountancy, PwC in the UK and KPMG in the US. 

And in property advisory, Knight Frank in the UK and CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate firm, in the US.

For each one we pulled Semrush data and compared May 2025 with May 2026, two complete months exactly a year apart. We tracked three things: how many keywords the firm ranks for, its estimated organic traffic, and how many of its keywords now trigger a Google AI Overview.

What the data shows

Here is how the 12 firms moved, year on year.

Firm	Sector	Organic keywords	Organic traffic	AI Overview presence
Clifford Chance	UK law	−13%	−17%	+56%
Linklaters	UK law	−64%	−4%	−25%
Freshfields	UK law	+4%	+15%	+143%
Kirkland & Ellis	US law	−1%	−1%	+122%
Latham & Watkins	US law	−11%	+19%	+98%
Skadden	US law	−31%	−4%	+36%
McKinsey	Consulting	−42%	−10%	+21%
Bain	Consulting	+12%	+19%	+163%
PwC UK	Accountancy	−31%	−29%	+35%
KPMG	Accountancy	−27%	+1%	+84%
Knight Frank	UK property	−18%	broadly flat	+34%
CBRE	US property	−28%	+11%	+111%

Three things stand out.

1. Keyword visibility is falling across the board. 

Ten of the 12 rank for fewer keywords than a year ago, and across the group ranked keywords fell about a fifth on average. McKinsey alone shed 42%. This is the top of the funnel thinning out, the research-stage searches where buyers first stumble across a firm.

2. Traffic is holding up far better than visibility, for now. 

Several firms kept traffic flat or even grew it while their keyword footprint shrank underneath them. McKinsey is the clearest example: keywords down 42%, traffic down only 10%. That gap is the warning light. The decline shows up in visibility months before it lands in visits, which is exactly why it is so easy to miss until it hits a number the board actually watches.

3. And AI Overviews are swallowing the space. 

Eleven of the 12 firms appear in far more AI Overviews than a year ago, up around 70% on average, with Kirkland, CBRE and Bain close to double or beyond. This is the mechanism. Google is answering more of these firms' questions on the results page itself, lifting their content into an AI summary the user reads without clicking through.

Why it is happening

This is Google's stated direction, not a glitch.

In May 2026, Google's VP of Search Elizabeth Reid confirmed that AI Mode passed one billion monthly users a year after launch, with queries more than doubling every quarter. 

Google has made its newest Gemini model the default in AI Mode, rebuilt the search box for the first time in 25 years, and started rolling out search agents that answer and act on a query without the user visiting a single website.

Read that as a buyer's journey. Your prospect asks Google a question your firm could answer brilliantly. Google answers it for them, drawing on your content and everyone else's, and the prospect never lands on your page. You were in the mix. You were just never clicked.

It is not all collapse, and that matters

Two things in our own data push back on the doom narrative, and they are worth holding onto.

First, two firms grew. Bain added keywords and traffic, and Freshfields grew both while nearly tripling its AI Overview presence. When we looked at what these two actually rank for, the reason is instructive.

Freshfields' search footprint is dominated by branded and recruitment queries. People typing "Freshfields", the full firm name, "training contract" and "vacation scheme". Those are navigational searches, and Google almost never replaces a navigational search with an AI answer. It sends the person to the site. Branded demand is largely immune to the AI Overview effect, so a firm with a strong brand keeps that traffic while informational search erodes around it.

Bain has a strong branded base too, but the more useful half is that it owns distinctive, high-authority content. Its single biggest non-branded page ranks for "net promoter score", a concept Bain created. 

When Google's AI answers a question, it cites the original, authoritative source, and for Net Promoter Score that source is Bain. So Bain's AI Overview presence tripled while it kept and grew its clicks. Being the origin of an idea is protective.

The pattern is worth sitting with, because it is the whole strategy in one line. The firms holding up are the ones with strong brand demand and genuinely original, authoritative content that AI has to cite. That is exactly what good PR and content marketing build.

Second, the wider trend is levelling. Seer Interactive has tracked click-through rates on AI Overview queries across 53 brands and billions of impressions. Through 2025 those rates fell almost continuously, and Seer's model predicted more of the same in 2026. 

Instead, in January and February 2026 they rebounded. We are not back to pre-AI Overview levels and probably never will be, but the freefall has slowed into something closer to a new normal.

So search is being re-sorted, not switched off. The firms that understand the new sorting are already pulling ahead of the ones still measuring last year's game.

How honest is this data?

Fair question, and worth answering plainly rather than dressing the numbers up.

We measured each firm in a single country database. Global firms draw traffic from many countries, so the true picture for a McKinsey is broader than one database shows. Treat these as directional, not audited accounts.

Month-end snapshots also carry noise. Knight Frank's May 2025 traffic was an unusually low month against its normal run, which is why we have marked its traffic as broadly flat rather than trust a misleading jump. A three-month average smooths this out, and it is in the workings behind this piece.

We also left out Semrush's most recent month, June 2026, because it was only part-populated when we pulled it and would have exaggerated every decline. Everything here uses complete months only.

None of that changes the direction. It is the same direction Exposure Ninja found in June 2026, when it reported an average 27% fall in ranked keywords across 14 accountancy and consulting firms. Our 21% comes from a different set of firms, a different sector mix and both sides of the Atlantic, and it points the same way. When two independent reads land in the same place, the trend is real.

Why this belongs on a board agenda

The asset at risk here is not a marketing channel. It is the firm's ability to be found by the right buyer at the moment they go looking. That is a growth asset. And it is being quietly repriced by a change in how Google works, without anyone signing off on it.

Most firms can feel this happening and can’t yet see it. Exposure Ninja's survey of 158 business leaders found 96.8% expect AI to change how they are found within the year, while only 31% are actually tracking their visibility in AI tools. 

You can’t brief a board, defend a budget or fix a problem you are not measuring. The firms that come through the next two years in front will be the ones who saw the shift early enough to act while it was still visibility, before it became revenue.

What to do about it

If you own growth at a professional services firm, three moves are worth making this quarter.

1. Start measuring your AI Overview presence as a standing metric. 

Know how often Google answers your buyers' questions with an AI summary, and whether your firm is the one being cited in it. Most firms have never looked.

2. Separate branded from unbranded search in your reporting. 

If buyers are discovering you inside AI tools and then searching your name, branded search will hold while unbranded falls. That tells you to build authority, not to panic about raw traffic.

3. And give search and AI search a single owner, not two teams reporting up separately. 

The firms losing ground are the ones where this fell down the gap between a marketing task and a board strategy.

If you want to see where your firm actually stands, that is the work we do at PRonto. We will show you where you are being found, where you are being left out of the answer, and what to prioritise while the advantage is still there to take.

Talk to us today to find out more.

To find more industry insights, visit the PRonto blog.

Are professional services firms losing organic search visibility to AI?

Mostly yes. PRonto's analysis of 12 sector-leading law, consulting, accountancy and property firms found 10 of the 12 ranked for fewer keywords in May 2026 than a year earlier, down about 21% on average. This matches Exposure Ninja's June 2026 finding of a 27% average fall across 14 accountancy and consulting firms.

What are AI Overviews doing to these firms?

Pulling them in. Eleven of the 12 firms PRonto analysed appear in far more Google AI Overviews than a year ago, up around 70% on average, with some close to double.

Google answers the query on the results page, so the user often reads the firm's content without clicking through to the site.

Is search traffic actually falling, or just keyword visibility? 

Visibility is falling faster than traffic so far. Several firms held traffic flat while their keyword footprint dropped sharply. McKinsey lost 42% of its keywords but only 10% of its traffic. The visibility decline tends to lead the traffic decline by months.

What should a firm do first?

Start measuring your AI Overview presence as a standing metric, separate branded from unbranded search in reporting, and give search and AI search a single owner rather than splitting them across teams.