AI isn't taking your customers. You have to open the door yourself.

A government with its doors shut

On 20 October, Het Financieele Dagblad reported that rijksoverheid.nl, the Dutch central government’s website, had 15% fewer visits in 2025 than a year earlier. The decline starts in May 2025, exactly when Google introduced its AI Overviews in the Netherlands. Visits to pages on vaccination fell 40% in the first half of 2026. The topics of the Ministry of Social Affairs lost 46% on average.

In April, Binnenlands Bestuur reported an even larger figure over a different period: about 35% fewer visits than a year earlier. For dismissal and state pension it was 60 to 70%. The same article holds the sentence that matters: the number of searches did not go down.

So people ask just as many questions. They just don’t come in anymore.

It is as if a government office keeps its doors shut and is surprised that nobody walks in. Not because nobody wants to know anything, but because someone a little further down the road does answer the question.

Who walks in instead

The government’s communication service ran a test of its own. Every day it fired a hundred questions about emergency kits at Google, to see what came back and whether the government site was the source. It was not. The information about bottled water and emergency radios came from a survival website.

That is not an exception. According to Binnenlands Bestuur, AI systems mix government information with other, sometimes commercial, sources. In a large study by European public broadcasters, covering more than 3000 answers from AI assistants in 18 countries, 31% of the answers had a serious problem with sourcing.

And sometimes AI points to a door that no longer exists. The FD found that the government’s 404 pages are drawing more visits: AI links to government pages that have already been removed. An Ahrefs study measured that AI assistants send visitors to a page that does not exist almost three times as often as Google does.

AI does not choose against the government. It chooses from what it can read.

The same thing on a small scale, in the Eindhoven region

For an optician and audiologist in a village in the Eindhoven region, we have asked three or four AI assistants the same questions every week since late July. For each question we count the share of assistants that name the practice.

By name, it goes well. Since 28 July, every assistant that answers has named the practice, every week.

In its own village, too. Asked for the best audiologist in the village, 95% of the assistants name the practice on average. But it is not alone. In 13 of 15 checks, chains such as Audika, Beter Horen or Schoonenberg stood beside it. In 4 of 15, AI also named sites that are not audiologists but are about audiologists: Klantenvertellen.nl, goedeopticien.nl, the professional register for audiologists and a guide to audiologists nearby. That is the survival website from the FD, on a small scale.

In the town next door, it tips over. Asked for the best audiologist or optician in the larger town next to the village, AI names the practice in about half the answers on average: a quarter one week, all of them the next. The chains were there in 14 of 15 checks.

That is not a shut door. It is a side street. Whoever already knows the address finds the practice without effort. Whoever still has to choose, and asks on the high street where more customers search, often walks past.

Why the swings are so large, and why testing once tells you nothing, is in One check says nothing.

What an open door is

The customer who still has to choose does not know your name. They ask for a trade and a place. The question is whether your site answers that, in text an AI assistant can read.

That is less technical than it sounds:

• Say what you do, in the customer’s words. Not just “ear care” but hearing test, hearing aids and what insurance covers.
• Say where you do it. Not just your street, also the places your customers come from. A page per town only works if that page says what you do for people there.
• Say it in plain text. An image, a PDF or an embedded booking form is a shut door to an assistant. A list of your services and a plain link to the form is not.
• Answer the questions people actually ask. Does a hearing test cost anything? Do I need a referral? Put the question and the answer on the page. Where possible also in structured data.
• Don’t leave bricked-up doors behind. A page that moves gets a redirect. Otherwise AI sends your customer to a 404, as with the government.

The government’s communication service does the same: it now writes its pages so that models pick them up faster. According to the FD, AI likes a clear structure and lists.

Where the open door stops

Three things you should know before you expect anything from this.

An open door is necessary, not sufficient. The chains beside the practice have many locations, many reviews and mentions on other sites. AI does not only look at your own site. In our study of estate agents in Uden, site and reviews worked together. A good site makes you readable. Whether you get chosen also depends on what others say about you.

The measurement is small. Three or four assistants a week, one practice, since late July. We saw for ourselves how fast that moves when nothing happens. For the audiologist question in the town next door, the practice was named in 38.5% of the answers on average in the eight checks up to 1 September, and in 52.4% in the seven checks after. Nothing on its hearing pages had changed in that time. Anyone who had tied that rise to a change would have sold ordinary fluctuation as a result.

You won’t get your visitors back. The Dutch government already rewrites its pages and still loses visitors. Fewer clicks happen either way. What you do control is whether you are in the answer. Then the customer no longer needs to click to end up with you.

The test you can run yourself

Don’t type your own name into ChatGPT. AI finds you on that almost every time, and then you think nothing is wrong.

Ask the question a new customer asks, about the place where you want customers and not just your own street: “Who is a good audiologist in …?” Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, a few weeks in a row. Look at who is in the answer instead of you. Then ask yourself what they wrote down that you didn’t.

AI isn’t taking your customers. It sends them to the door that is open.

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Sources: Het Financieele Dagblad, “Minder bezoekers rijksoverheidssite door AI”, 20 October 2026. Binnenlands Bestuur, “Hoe AI zorgt voor dalend websiteverkeer”, April 2026. EBU and BBC, study of AI assistants and news, October 2025. Ahrefs, “How often do AI assistants hallucinate links?”, 2025. SiteOptima, weekly checks at one practice from 27 July to 20 October 2026.