The Death of Clicks: How to Measure Website Performance in a Post-SEO World.
The digital marketing metrics we've relied on for decades are rapidly becoming obsolete. As AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews reshape how consumers find and consume information, one of the most fundamental performance metrics, the humble click, is losing its relevance at an alarming rate.
The Great Search Behavior Shift
Ever since the phrase “I’m googling it” broke into popular speech, Google has been synonymous with search. With the rapid growth of AI, consumers are turning to bots to answer their pressing questions.
They seem to be loving it. No more navigating through blue links to find an answer on their own. Instead, they’re getting a comprehensive, synthesized response that directly answers their question, in a tone that matches how they searched in the first place. The kicker is that this doesn’t require a single click out to a website.
This new search behavior is fundamentally altering the customer journey that brands have spent years optimizing for. Early data suggests that AI Overviews can reduce click-through rates by 35% compared to traditional search. Ouch!
Why Traditional Digital Marketing Metrics are Failing
For years, Impressions, Clicks, and Conversions have reigned supreme in the land of digital marketing measurement. These metrics were built for an internet where search results were gateways, not destinations.
The problem with continuing to rely on this reporting framework is that they are no longer a reliable measure of visibility. A brand might be prominently featured in AI responses without generating traditional website traffic. Engagement is happening behind closed doors, or in the locked box of LLM platforms, not on your owned properties. Websites have become a resource to confirm credibility rather than a customer’s first stop to learn about a product.
The New Performance Scorecard
Instead of asking, “How do we get people to our website?”, brands should be asking, “How do we become the authoritative source to our customers’ burning questions?”
Some brands are already shifting their focus from driving clicks to earning AI search presence. In other words, making sure their brand, products, and expertise are consistently shaping AI’s responses to relevant queries.
From this perspective, an accurate brand visibility report in the AI era must include:
Response inclusion rate: How often does your brand appear in AI-generated searches for relevant queries across the most popular AI platforms?
Attribution quality: When mentioned, are you positioned as a leader, alternative, or afterthought?
Share of AI voice: What percentage of responses in your category mention your brand versus competitors?
Query coverage: Are you represented across the full spectrum of customer questions, from discovery to high-intent decision-making?
There are new tools popping up daily to support this measurement (or at least it feels that way). The truth is that few of these tools have a perfectly comprehensive solution…yet. At least for now, successful reporting means a strategic combination of testing the tools out there and manually monitoring results.
What’s Next?
We’re not saying it’s time to completely ignore Impressions, Clicks, and Conversions. They will still be a necessary component of performance measurement. But as website traffic tanks, these new AI-related metrics can help create a more complete and accurate representation of how consumers are engaging with brands.
Now is the time to experiment while AI is still relatively nascent. There’s no clear AI platform dominating traffic, the way that Google dominated in search. The brands that “win” in this new landscape will be those who heeded these early warning signs and moved fast. They will structure highly visible content to establish their brands as the most trusted and frequently cited sources on AI. What are you waiting for? Get started today or your competitors will beat you to the AI punch.
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