Search and AI change log
What is changing in search, and what it means for your firm.
Google, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude and the regulators keep moving. We log every change that affects how clients find a solicitor, in plain English, with what we are doing about it for the firms we work with.
AI search
Claude now answers 'which solicitor should I use' with cited firms
Anthropic's Claude retrieves live web results and names specific businesses with links back to the pages it used. Legal enquiries are one of the categories where it will happily shortlist firms.
Source: AnthropicWhat it means for your firm
Claude is a fourth surface to be visible on, alongside ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and classic Google results. It leans on pages it can verify: clear service pages, published fees, review profiles and third-party mentions.
What we are doing about it
We added Claude to the prompt panel we test for every client, so your visibility baseline now covers four assistants rather than one, and we prioritise the pages each assistant actually pulls from.
Google
AI Mode pushes ten blue links further down the UK results page
Google's AI Mode gives a written answer with a small set of cited sources before any organic listing. For 'best X solicitor' style searches, that answer is often the only thing a client reads.
Source: Google Search blogWhat it means for your firm
Ranking fifth is no longer a position, it is invisible. What matters is whether your pages are one of the handful of sources the answer is built from.
What we are doing about it
We restructure key service pages so a single page answers a single client question, with the answer near the top, and we track citation share rather than only ranking positions.
Regulation
EU competition rules reshape how comparison and directory results appear
Under the Digital Markets Act, Google has been reworking how it surfaces its own units versus third-party comparison and directory sites in Europe. Directories have gained visibility for commercial service queries.
Source: European Commission, DMAWhat it means for your firm
For UK firms with cross-border or EU-facing work, more of the clicks route through directories and review sites before anyone reaches your own website.
What we are doing about it
We treat directory and review profiles as ranking assets, not admin: consistent firm data, complete practice area listings, and a review flow that keeps those profiles fresher than your competitors'.
Local search
Review recency is doing more work in the local map pack
Firms with a steady drip of recent reviews are holding map pack positions better than firms with a larger but older review count.
What it means for your firm
A 200 review profile that has been quiet for a year now loses to a 60 review profile collecting two a week, in both the map pack and the way assistants describe you.
What we are doing about it
We install a review request flow at the point of completion or case close, so reviews arrive continuously instead of in occasional bursts.
Content
Legal pages are held to a higher evidence bar
Legal advice sits in the 'your money or your life' category, where Google and the assistants weigh author identity, credentials and citations more heavily than for ordinary commercial content.
Source: Google Search quality guidanceWhat it means for your firm
Unattributed blog posts written for keywords now underperform, and can drag down the pages around them.
What we are doing about it
Every article we publish carries a named solicitor or specialist author, a review date and links to primary sources such as legislation and Law Society guidance.
Want to know which of these is already costing you instructions?
We check your firm against every change on this page and send back a prioritised fix list.
