How to Track Performance in AI Search
If you care about getting traffic to your website from Google, there is really only one data source that provides reliable information. It is completely free, yet many founders still aren't using it correctly.
I am referring to Google Search Console.
If you do not have this set up for your domain yet, do it today. You won’t start collecting data until it is active, and it is the only way to see what people are actually typing into a search bar before they land on your site. Google Analytics can’t show you that. Even high-end rank trackers like Ahrefs or Semrush are essentially just giving you an educated guess.
I’ve been doing SEO for 17 years, and this is the only reliable data you can get. But the way we interpret this data has to change because of how Google is evolving.
The Shift from Clicks to Impressions Fortunately, Google recently released some AI filtering that makes it much easier to clean up your data. For example, you should always filter out your branded traffic. You should already be ranking number one for your own name; that isn't SEO, that's just existing.
When you filter that out and look at your actual SEO performance, you will likely notice a trend: clicks are going down, but impressions are going up.
Historically, marketers didn't care about impressions. We only cared about the click that led to a session. But the reason impressions are rising is that Google is increasingly showing AI overviews. People are getting the answer they need directly in the search results and don't need to click through to a website anymore.
Why This is Good News for Business Owners If you sell a product or a service, this isn't a bad thing. While fewer people are visiting your actual website, more people are using Google to make purchase decisions.
As long as that AI response is recommending your product or service as the solution, that is often better than a random visit to your home page. It means the AI has already vetted you as a credible answer to the user's specific problem.
In the past, I used to ignore impressions in Search Console. Today, I value them almost equally with clicks. In the near future, as Answer Engines become the primary interface for the web, impressions and citations will likely be the only metrics that matter.
Stop worrying about the "lost" traffic and start looking at how often you are being surfaced as the answer.