Google AI Overviews for Grand Avenue, Phoenix Makers

The commodity test: could a big-box store have written this answer?

Google's guide to generative AI search asks site owners for unique, non-commodity content. For a furniture maker, that means answers drawn from your own bench and your own invoices.

Read the before version out loud and ask who could have written it. A catalog retailer could. A drop shipper could. So could an AI tool with no idea what your shop smells like. That's the problem. When every site says several weeks to several months, a summary has nothing to borrow from yours in particular.

The after version could only come from one bench. It names a species, a size and a number of weeks. It says what makes the schedule slip, and it's dated. You don't have to share trade secrets to write like that. You just have to say out loud what you already tell people in the showroom, and we help you get it onto the page.

A quick way to check yourself: cover your logo and read a page to a friend who knows your work. If they can't tell it's yours by the second sentence, the page needs more of the shop in it. It usually takes one honest number and one honest caveat to get there.

• It would read the same on a competitor's site with the logo swapped.
• It uses words like quality, craftsmanship and passion without showing any of them.
• It never names a wood, a joint, a size or a number of weeks.
• It ends with contact us for more information, because it has none to give.
• Nobody in your shop would say it out loud to a buyer standing at the bench.

Thirty old inquiries, sorted into piles on the shop table

Sort thirty real buyer messages by question, then write first for the ones where a generic answer would steer a buyer wrong about how your shop works.

1. Pull thirty real inquiries Go back through email, texts and the showroom notebook. Grab the first message from thirty buyers, good fits and bad fits both.
2. Highlight every question Mark each sentence that ends in a question mark, plus the ones that should have. Plenty of buyers ask by accident, as in, not sure if you do chairs.
3. Sort them into piles Lead time, price range, wood and finish, restoration, delivery and restaurant orders usually cover most of it. Count how many land in each pile.
4. Copy how you answered Find your reply to each question and paste it next to it. Your reply is the first draft of the answer page, in your own voice.
5. Strip out anything private Remove names, addresses, prices you quoted one person and anything a client told you in confidence. Keep the reasoning and drop the details.

This takes an afternoon, and it's the most valuable afternoon in the whole project. We've never met a keyword tool that knew a restaurant owner wanted to know whether a table base wobbles on a tiled patio. Your old messages do. The piles you end up with also tell you where to start: the fattest pile gets the first answer page.

If your team is small, hand us the raw messages with names blacked out and we'll do the sorting. You'll still need to check our reading, because a woodworker's shorthand can fool anyone who hasn't stood at the bench.

One long commission guide beats a pile of thin pages

Google says there's no need to chop content into tiny pieces for AI, because its systems can find the right part of a longer page and show that part.

Give each section a clear heading that reads like the question, and open it with the plain answer in the first sentence. That helps a person scanning on a phone just as much as it helps a search system. Then link to the guide from your home page, your gallery and every project page, so it never sits alone.

We still build separate pages when the buyer is truly different. A restaurant owner ordering twenty tables asks different things than a couple buying one, and a restoration job starts in a different place than a new build. Those earn their own pages. Five pages that each answer one sentence don't.

Length isn't the goal, though. A guide padded with history lessons and mission statements is still thin where it counts. Every paragraph should answer something a buyer has actually asked you, and if you can't picture the buyer who asked, the paragraph can go.

We'd also add a short table of contents at the top of the guide, with each question as a jump link. A buyer who only cares about restoration can skip straight there, and the headings double as a quick outline of everything you know.

Shop photos that do the explaining for you

Google's guide suggests backing text with high-quality images and video, and a maker's photos can show joinery, scale and wear better than a paragraph can.

We made up every caption in that table for illustration, but notice the pattern. Each one names the piece, gives one number or one method, and answers a worry. A photo named IMG_4471 with no caption answers nothing. The same photo named walnut-table-six-seat-through-tenon, with a caption that says what the joint is, answers a real question for a real buyer.

Most of these shots need no photographer. A phone, a window and ten patient minutes will do. We'll send you a shot list and tell you which photos are doing the heavy lifting once they're up.

Video works the same way. A thirty-second clip of someone rocking a finished table on its legs says more about stability than any spec line. Keep clips short, caption them in plain words and load them only when someone taps play, so the page stays quick on a phone.

Put a last-checked date on every lead time you publish

Lead times drift with the season and the backlog, so any page quoting one should show a visible updated date that you change when the number changes.

1. Pick one day a month The first Monday works for most shops. Put it on the same calendar as your wood deliveries so it can't slide.
2. Check each published lead time Look at the shop schedule and ask whether the numbers on the site are still true for a buyer who signs today.
3. Change the number and the date together If the range moved, update it and the last-updated line in one edit. If it didn't, update only the checked date.
4. Change the markup date too If the page carries structured data, dateModified should match the visible date. We set this up so one edit covers both.
5. Note it in the log Write down the old range, the new one and why. When buyers mention the page later, you'll know which version they saw.

A dated answer does two jobs. It tells a buyer how fresh the promise is, and it keeps you honest when the backlog grows. Nobody gets angry at a lead time that says September and turns out a little long. People do get angry at a number that's been wrong since spring, and a summary quoting that number makes it worse.

Be careful with the word guaranteed, too. Wood moves, finishes cure at their own pace and a supplier can miss a truck. We write ranges with the reasons they stretch, and we keep firm dates for the signed drawing, where you and the buyer agree on them in writing.

If you run slow and busy seasons, say that too. A line like our spring calendar fills by February, so winter is the easy time to start tells buyers how to plan. It also gives an AI summary a real, dated fact to repeat instead of a guess.

What your old FAQ markup does in 2026

FAQ rich results vanished from Google in May 2026, so markup on your questions page no longer wins extra room in results. Leaving it in place does no harm.

Do we need to rip the FAQ markup out of our site?

No. Google said back in 2023 that structured data it doesn't use causes no problems for Search. You can leave it alone, and we'd only remove it during a cleanup we were doing anyway.

Should we keep writing question-and-answer pages?

Yes, when they answer what buyers really ask. The format still reads well on a phone, and a clear question with a direct answer is easy for a person to scan. What went away was the extra space in results, and the reason to write good answers never depended on that.

Our old FAQ page still quotes a 2022 lead time. How much does that matter?

More than any markup question on this list. A stale answer on your own site is the easiest wrong thing for a hurried reader to repeat, whether that reader is a buyer or a summary. Read the page against today's shop calendar, then fix or delete every line that's drifted. Add a checked date while you're there, so the next stale spot is easier to catch.

What should replace the FAQ page's old job?

A commission guide like the one above, plus short answer sections on the pages where each question comes up. A buyer reading about restoration should find the restoration answers right there, without a trip to a separate FAQ page.

Is it worth marking up our products or pieces at all?

Sometimes. If you sell ready-made pieces online with prices, product markup can describe them properly. For commissions with no fixed price, clear text does most of the work, and we'd spend the time on the answers before the code.

Blocking Google-Extended won't pull your work out of search

Makers who worry about AI copying their designs often reach for the Google-Extended setting, yet Google says that setting has no effect on inclusion or ranking in Search.

We hear the worry, and it's fair. You spent years developing a leg profile or a joint, and now software can look at a photo of it. Somebody online says to block Google-Extended in robots.txt, and it sounds like a lock on the shop door. It helps to know what that setting actually controls before you flip it.

Google-Extended is a separate token Google uses for its Gemini apps and its Vertex AI service. It isn't the crawler that builds the Search index. Since AI Overviews are a feature of Google Search, blocking Google-Extended isn't the switch that keeps your pages out of them, and it won't change your rankings either.

If you decide to block it anyway, that's your call, and we'll set it up cleanly. We'd just rather you make that choice for the right reason. Keeping your designs out of Gemini's training is a fair goal. Hiding from the summary above the search results isn't something this setting does.

• Publish finished pieces and keep shop drawings and jigs off the site.
• Credit your shop in every caption, so a copied photo still carries your name.
• Show enough detail to prove the craft without showing every measurement.
• Keep the names of your most-ordered designs consistent everywhere, so buyers can trace a copy back to the original.
• If you do block Google-Extended for other reasons, we'll note the date so any later change can be traced back to it.

The repair order for an AI Overview that gets your shop wrong

An AI Overview can't be edited by the business it describes, so fix the page Google is likely reading first, then send feedback and log the date you did it.

1. Capture exactly what you saw Screenshot the Overview with the date showing, and write down the exact words you typed. The same question worded differently can get a different answer.
2. Open the links it cited Most Overviews show the pages they drew from. If one of them is yours, that page is the first thing to fix. If it's an old directory listing, note it for the correction list.
3. Fix your own page first Put the correct statement in the opening lines, something like: we build to order and no longer sell floor stock. Your site is the source you fully control.
4. Send feedback to Google Tap the thumbs-down under the Overview, choose Report a problem and describe the error in a sentence or two. Keep a copy of what you sent.
5. Check again in a few weeks Type the identical question again and save what comes back. Put both screenshots side by side in the log.

Feedback is worth sending, but it isn't a correction form, and nobody at Google promises to act on yours. The page fix is what does the heavy lifting. It helps to think of the Overview as a customer who read your site in a hurry. If it got the wrong idea, something on the page made that idea easy to get.

Wrong answers often start with something small and old: a caption, a directory entry, a line on an about page nobody reread. That's good news. Small, old things are cheap to fix, and once they're fixed, every tool that reads your site gets the better version at the same time.

• An old news story or blog post that described the shop years ago.
• A directory listing that still shows services you dropped.
• Your own gallery page, if the captions say for sale on pieces that were commissions.
• A neighbor's site that mentions your shop in passing with the wrong detail.
• Reviews that talk about a piece someone bought off the floor, read as if that's all you do.

Answers a restaurant owner wants before ordering twenty tables

Restaurant buyers ask about wear, cleaning, wobble and reorders, so a maker who wants their work should answer those questions on a page written just for them.

• How the finish holds up to daily wiping with the cleaners restaurants really use.
• Whether bases can be leveled on an uneven floor or a patio.
• How long a batch of twenty tops takes compared with a single table.
• Whether you can match a second batch a year later if the room expands.
• What happens when one top gets damaged: repair, refinish or replace.
• How delivery works when the dining room can only close for one morning.

Every item on that list is a question a homeowner rarely asks, which is why a restaurant page earns its keep. Write each answer the way you'd say it to an owner standing in your showroom with a floor plan. If you don't know yet, say what you'd need to see first. That honesty reads well to a buyer, and it gives a summary something solid to quote.

Show the proof you can share. A cafe that agreed to be named, with a photo of your tables after a year of service, is worth more than a paragraph of adjectives. If no restaurant has agreed yet, say so plainly and show the finish test you ran in the shop instead.

One more thing restaurant owners care about is who they'll deal with after delivery. If a top gets scorched or a base loosens, do they call you, and how fast can you look at it? A short paragraph on after-care turns a nervous buyer into a confident one, and it's a detail almost no catalog seller bothers to write.

Should the restaurant page show prices?

Show the shape of the price at least: what a standard top costs to make compared with a custom one, and what changes per table. Restaurant buyers work from budgets, and a page that says nothing about money often gets skipped.

What if we only want restaurant work some of the year?

Say so on the page, with the months you take batch orders. It's better to turn someone away in writing than to waste a call, and it keeps a summary from promising a slot you don't have.

Keeping score without pretending to know too much

Search Console's generative AI report counts impressions by page, device and country, and we keep those numbers apart from the commission inquiries you actually receive.

The last row is the one that pays your rent, so it gets the most attention in our monthly look. If AI impressions climb while good inquiries stay flat, the answer pages are being seen but aren't sending the right people. That usually means the next step on the page needs work, and we'd fix that before writing anything new.

We're an owner-run shop in Indianapolis, and we'll be straight about our reach. We haven't worked with a furniture maker on Grand Avenue, and we can't promise yours will appear in any Overview. Jeff Clerisier runs the agency himself and has been at web and brand work for roughly ten years. What we can promise is careful answers, dated checks and an honest reading of the results.