AI search is changing how people find and consume information, but it hasn’t completely rewritten the rulebook. For SEO pros, that means navigating a hybrid world where traditional search metrics still matter somewhat, but don’t tell the whole story anymore.
Yes, visibility, user experience, and conversions are still the north stars. But how we measure those in AI-powered SERPs is shifting.
In this post, we’ll break down which classic SEO metrics still pull their weight, what they miss in the AI context, and what new metrics you should start tracking if you want a true picture of your brand’s performance in AI-driven search.
Why Traditional SEO KPIs Are No Longer Enough
Traditional SEO KPIs — like keyword rankings, organic traffic, and click-through rates — measure performance in classic search engine results, where users choose from a list of blue links. But AI-powered SERPs don’t always work that way.
Tools like Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity generate direct answers, often without showing traditional rankings or driving clicks. That means these older KPIs cannot solely tell you whether your brand is visible, mentioned, or trusted in AI-generated content. To truly understand performance today, you need new metrics that reflect how AI systems surface, cite, and summarize your content.
Here’s why traditional SEO metrics are no longer enough in an AI-first search landscape:
- AI answers satisfy queries without clicks: users often get complete answers directly from AI-generated summaries, meaning less traffic, even if you rank #1. Traditional KPIs like CTR and traffic no longer reflect true visibility.
- Visibility isn’t always attributed: AI-generated responses can use your content without linking to or naming your brand, making it invisible to traditional analytics tools.
- Rankings don’t reflect AI SERP presence: traditional rankings focus on the “10 blue links,” but nearly half of queries now trigger AI overviews. Without AI-specific tracking, you miss a major visibility layer.
- Brand mentions are missed: LLMs may reference your content without proper citation or links—something standard SEO tools can’t detect.
- Competitive presence in AI answers is invisible: competitors may dominate AI responses even if you outrank them in classic SERPs, costing you awareness and leads.
- Client expectations have evolved: clients now want reports that show brand exposure and real business impact, not just keyword rankings or traffic spikes. Old KPIs fall short.
5 SEO Metrics for Tracking AI Visibility
Not all traditional SEO metrics are obsolete. However, they must be reinterpreted in today’s AI-powered SERPs. Here are some that are still relevant but need a new perspective:
1. Keyword Rankings
A 2024 SurferSeo study found that websites ranking in the top 10 positions of Google’s SERPs have a 52% chance of appearing in an AI Overview.
While AI-generated answers often bypass traditional clicks, they still rely on content that ranks well. High-ranking pages are more likely to be cited or summarized by AI search tools like Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity. If your content doesn’t rank, it’s less likely to be included in AI-generated results.
Keyword.com’s AI Overviews Tracker can help you identify which keywords trigger AI answers in Google SERPs. With this data, you can:
- Prioritize content updates for keywords where your pages rank but aren’t featured in the AI overview
- Spot gaps in AI visibility where competitors are cited but you’re not
- Optimize for inclusion by analyzing which types of content and formats AI tends to surface
- Track AI performance over time to see how your visibility changes as AI results evolve
- Report more accurately to clients by showing where brand exposure is happening beyond traditional rankings
Learn more: How to track Google AI overviews.
2. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
A 2024 Ahrefs report found that the presence of an AI Overview in the search results correlated with a 34.5% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page compared to keywords without an AI overview.
In the age of AI answers, a drop in CTR — despite stable rankings — can signal that users are getting their answers directly from the AI summary, skipping your site entirely.
Here’s how to use CTR for monitoring AI visibility
- Compare CTR before and after AI rollouts for high-ranking keywords. A sudden drop may indicate that an AI overview is now satisfying user intent.
- Identify “leaky” queries where you rank well but aren’t converting views into visits—these often overlap with AI-generated answers.
- Test and refine metadata (titles and descriptions) to compete with AI summaries and encourage users to click through anyway.
- Layer CTR with AI tracking tools like Keyword.com to see if low CTR corresponds with the presence of an AI Overview.
3. Organic Traffic
A sudden drop in organic traffic from specific keywords (even if your rankings haven’t changed) can suggest that:
- Your content is being used in AI results and LLM output without attribution.
- Or the AI summary is answering the question well enough that the user doesn’t need to visit your page.
You’ll easily see your site’s organic traffic on Google Analytics. With that data, you can:
- Establish a baseline: track organic traffic for your top pages and high-performing keywords before AI features are rolled out in your space.
- Identify AI-affected keywords: use tools like Keyword.com’s AI Overview Tracker to see which keywords trigger AI answers. Cross-check these with keywords showing traffic decline.
- Look for rank-traffic mismatch: if a page still ranks well but traffic is dropping, that’s a sign AI is satisfying intent on the SERP—reducing clicks to your site.
- Segment keywords by search intent: Informational queries (like “how to” or “what is”) are more likely to be answered directly by AI. Focus your analysis here first.
- Adjust your content strategy: if AI is intercepting traffic from high-intent keywords, consider updating your metadata to encourage clicks or shifting to keywords less vulnerable to no-click AI summaries.
4. User Experience metrics
Our emphasis here is not on the core web vitals metrics. You should maintain a user-friendly website, pay close attention to your Core Web Vitals reports, and implement the recommendations — whether for AI or traditional search.
However, you should pay particular attention to bounce rate and dwell time because they signal relevance and engagement.
Bounce Rate
Even if AI tools surface your content or cite you in an answer, users may still click through to validate the source, dig deeper, or take action. If they land on your site and bounce immediately, it’s a signal that:
- Your content didn’t add value beyond what the AI gave.
- The page experience didn’t match the user intent.
- You’re losing the trust or engagement opportunity after the AI referral.
So while bounce rate isn’t a direct AI ranking factor, it tells you if your content is strong enough to hold interest after an AI mention.
Dwell Time
Dwell time measures how well your site expands on or complements what AI already told the user.
In an AI-driven search world where visibility often happens without a click, the clicks you do earn are higher intent. If someone chooses your link after reading a summarized AI overview, they likely want something deeper or more actionable.
That means:
- Short dwell time = failed to deliver deeper value.
- Long dwell time = successful post-AI engagement.
5. Conversion Metrics
Conversion metrics like signups, purchases, or demo requests give you a clearer picture of whether the users who engage with AI responses are taking meaningful action. They let you measure the business impact of being cited or surfaced by AI, not just the exposure.
Here’s how to use conversion metrics for measuring AI visibility
- Isolate traffic patterns during visibility spikes
- Use a tool like Keyword.com’s AI Visibility tracker to spot when you’re featured.
- Correlate those dates with traffic and conversion spikes—even if the source is “Direct” or “Other.”
- Tag landing pages featured in AI tools
- Add custom tracking (UTMs, page IDs) on URLs you control that are frequently cited.
- Monitor behavior and conversion from these pages.
- Compare conversion rates between AI-exposed and non-AI pages
- Segment your content: What’s showing up in AI tools vs. what isn’t?
- See which drives more leads, demo requests, etc.
- Track assisted conversions
- Use multi-touch attribution to identify if AI-cited pages contribute earlier in the funnel, even if the conversion happens later through email or paid retargeting.
New SEO Metrics That Deserve Attention Now
Here are some new KPIs on the block worth tracking:
1. AI Brand Mentions
AI brand mentions show how often your brand is mentioned in AI and LLM responses, regardless of whether a link to your site is included. Such mentions can influence user perception and brand authority, contributing to indirect traffic and conversions.
Chatgpt answer featuring Keyword.com
You can track your brand mentions in AI search engines and LLM tools with Keyword.com. Here’s a quick video explainer of how to do this.
2. AI Linked References
Track the number of brand mentions or resources linked to your website. This metric is more powerful because it serves as a signal of authority, drives traffic to your site, and enhances your site’s referral links.
LLMs like Perplexity and Claude often include visible links to sources of their response alongside the result. These links are citations that help you monitor content AI sees as authoritative.
With Keyword.com’s AI brand monitoring tool, you’ll be able to track citations and see when your brand or competitors get referenced in AI results.
Perplexity answer for keyword ranking fluctuations
3. AI Overview Visibility
Google introduced the Search Generative Experience, known as AI Overviews, to transform its users’ search experience. Since its introduction, this SERP feature has established a strong presence in search results.
Tens of millions of daily searches now feature AI Overviews with links to source websites in the snapshots. Analyze these keywords that trigger AI search results and track your AI overview rankings.
This strategy enables you to target keywords without AI search results and assess your position compared to your competitors for keywords that trigger AI Overviews.
You can effortlessly track your AI overviews’ rankings and see the source URLs with Keyword.com’s AI Overview tracker.
4. Prompt-Triggered Visibility
Track the prompts that trigger your brand mentions or citations in AI answers, as well as those for your competitors.
This data will help you identify user intent that leads to your brand mentions. You’ll also have a new angle to refine your brand messaging for better positioning.
You can manually analyze AI-generated text that surfaces your brand or use AI-powered mention monitoring tools.
5. AI Share of Voice
Monitor your competitors’ appearance in AI answers more frequently. Then, identify keyword gaps and topics they dominate to adjust your content strategy.
6. Conversion Influence
Matt Pierce, a content-led SEO consultant, shared something interesting about this new KPI.
“Instead of only counting last-click conversions, we look at whether organic content played a role in the journey. For example, someone discovers your page via a search and then returns later to convert after a branded query or email touchpoint.
These new metrics probably aren’t as important as the fundamental ones. However, I predict that they’ll rise in popularity over time. They give a fuller picture of SEO’s value beyond the standard ranking-and-traffic stuff.”
7. AI Citations Link Destination
Where are the links from citations on AI summaries going on your website the most? Is it your homepage, blog, or product page? This metric will help you identify the page to prioritize for more brand mentions.
8. Platform-Specific Performance
How often is your brand mentioned or linked on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews?
Each AI platform pulls data from different sources and responds differently to prompts. Identifying the AI model with the highest mention can help you channel your efforts to the most effective source.
Monitor AI Visibility with Keyword.com
AI is reshaping how people search—and how brands get discovered. With Keyword.com, you don’t have to guess whether your site is showing up in AI-generated answers. You get clear, trackable insights across Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and more—so you can spot opportunities, stay competitive, and turn AI visibility into real results.
With AI Visibility, you can:
- See where your site shows up in AI search results
- Track keywords across multiple AI engines
- Measure your visibility score, sentiment, and ranking position
- Spy on competitor performance
- Find which of your URLs are being cited
- Monitor brand mentions
Ready to take control of your brand’s AI narrative? Get started with Keyword.com’s AI search monitoring tool.