Post written Jan 27, 2026
If you read my last post, you know I've been sounding the alarm that my organic traffic dipped by 40% in 2024. Guess what.
This year my traffic dipped another 39%.
Guess what happened to revenue? It's up single digits.
Is AI traffic making up the drop in SEO traffic? No. Here's the transparent metrics:
My organic search traffic dropped by 169,244 visits.
My AI generated traffic was 15,036 visits.
So my AI traffic growth only made up 7.5% of my organic search decline.
For every 100 organic visits lost, I only gained about 7-8 visits from places like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.
I poured my soul into sharing openly not how "awesome" my company is, but the honest parts of the journey, where I didn't know things I said, I'm trying but I don't know ... shocker, being a human is winning for our business.
Do you have a Brand Trust KPI? Or
Content Trust KPI?
Anyone can produce 5x the content, but what KPI would tell you it produced 5x the TRUST?
Let's ground ourselves that NO ONE's job in marketing is JUST to be found (seen) but to also get that work to convert.
53% of people distrust AI search results - according to this Gartner study. So you can't just "content scale" your way into trust.
Prof G said it best... in a world of infinite content, the value of the people we trust to be a curator goes up exponentially. Think about it, as humans our brains are still wired for "fight or flight" we can only process so many articles. We will seek out... TRUSTED curators to help us make sense of it all.
Trust: A new B2B KPI Conversation for 2026
What's the new thing to measure? Growing Trust.
With all this focus on AI visibility, what about what humans think about your brand, what is your influence?
The goal isn't just to be visible (seen) but to have actual humans believe your company can solve their problems and to choose you to solve them.
Reflection Question:
What KPI used to be a great proxy for success that isn't today?
In our case, we used to be able to measure that people were engaging with our brand (homepage traffic, branded search terms, etc) and then converting (back when cookies were trackable). That's just not a reality anymore.
What existing KPIs still give you a good signal?
I think it is leads by channel. When looking at organic, yes my traffic tanked. But I want traffic so I can get leads, not just as a vanity metric. So when leads went up, while traffic was down I knew I was OK. So I can still use organic search as a KPI, but maybe I should shift from traffic to leads, because traffic is no longer a good proxy for marketing success.
But don't confuse presence with performance, I'm an SEO so I'm fully aware that I can get you visible for all kinds of stuff that you shouldn't be ranked for. For the longest time, with a high enough Domain Authority and some text at the bottom of a page I could crush companies doing the "right thing" to win humans.
I've been showing forever how putting a block of text at the bottom of a page is all you need to do to win in some verticals in SEO and how it just doesn't work in AI search. Just one more way that SEO and GEO are NOT the same. Cause if they were the tactics that worked before would work here and some do, but some don't.
You can hack your way to visibility (almost) anywhere, but building another listicle does not gain you trust, recognition and the down funnel impact you want.
What new signal is trending in the same direction as your leads, MQLs, or pipeline that wasn't 2-3 years ago?
This is the kind of analysis that lets you show up to a leader with something like:
Hey see how when we increased our [old metric] that [impact metric] moved in a similar direction?
See how [old metric] kept increasing, but [impact metric] stopped following?
See how [new metric] is more aligned with [impact metric]?
This is how you get leaders on board. Then you drop the banger below, show your time, budget, against these channels.
This visual should make every marketer reflect
How much of your budget & time is spent by channel? Now which channels have a chance to be a catapult on trust?
Think about it everyone's screaming from the rooftops how important Reddit is for brand, connecting with customers, and AI - now ask yourself how much time do you spend per week inside reddit, understanding what people are saying about your brand (The F5 tool is a good free tracker). Are you responding, are you creating value, are you engaging? And no spamming your listicle spam in reddit threads isn't "doing reddit".
The Framework - AI Vizz ain't shizz...
A leader knows the job to be done is to be visible, believed, and chosen. Cause that makes money.
You can track your growth in AI results, but you and I know that doesn't mean you are necessarily growing the business.
Lets say you are winning with listicles, you are growing visibility, great!
If that stops working what other channel do they help? None.
Once that crap above stops working, it's trash, there is NO additional value to be created there. Remember that!
The job to be done: Build content that grows Trust and Traffic
I wanna build the content that wins with humans first, grows my trust and traffic.
Right now, do you know that your recent post is being shared in a private group on whatsapp or LinkedIn?
Maybe a list of 50 CMOs on Whatsapp, LinkedIn Groups, Email Lists are sharing your posts? Where do you track that impact? It's all trapped in Direct. You don't know, you have to believe that writing content with opinions, that is quality, and helpful will get you into places.
If you don't believe in the serendipity of good marketing and putting quality content in the world, this upcoming "everything is direct" is going to be hard for you.
Like if you produce this content, your only chance is to get AI visibility, cause NO human with a reputation is sharing this auto generated crap with their CMO group.
Trusted private groups is where visibility turns into believability, do you track that?
And this happens:
On 1 day I got followed by 30+ 50 CMOs & VPs (all in SaaS) because 1 TRUSTED person mentioned me, and 3 others vouched for me.
How much traffic would I need from AI to rival that?
How do you account for all those posts I wrote that had NO visibility in search or AI, but got passed around circles I had no idea they were in? If my KPIs were based on that I would have underinvested. The brutal truth is YOU DON'T, you can't and it would be a fool's errand to try. This is the conversation we need to have with executives.
Not, can we track it, Not, "I found a work around!", Now the conversation is more like: "you gotta believe, and here are my leading indicators on that."
Now, Be Chosen
Let's start talking about the 2026 KPI dash that meets this reality.
Overlay all metrics you can track against your CRM's - MQLs, SQLs, and Revenue.
You see how organic traffic was kinda correlated to my revenue, then all of a sudden it wasn't?
What was more correlated to that revenue line - direct & social. I know it is hard to show our value to revenue, but an overlay at least tells your executives you ate smart enough to know you gotta have this turn into value for the company.
The Executive Conversation Strategy
So, what do we do, Marketing Leader? We lead through focus and clarity:
- Top Funnel Signals (Be Seen)
- Mid Funnel Engagement (Be Believed)
- Bottom Funnel Performance (Be Chosen)
- Business Outcomes (Revenue/Pipeline)
Here's what I'm monitoring over the next 3-6 months:
Hypothesis 1: Social influence impacts branded Search, "If people see Seer as a trusted resource on socials and in AI conversations, there will more likely be an increase in them typing Seer into Google." (Controlling for job postings)
Lets look at AI visibility growth + Organic social traffic (+Y%) + Direct - if all three are growing we're winning humans, now does branded search grow at similar rate?
- If yes: The hard to measure stuff is likely working
- If no: We're visible, but it might be hard to say we are memorable.
Hypothesis 2: Engagement = Direct Traffic, "As people believe what we're saying, as indicated by interactions and community growth, they're more likely to come direct to Seer to find the information they need."
- As social engagement improves AND newsletter signups increase (leading indicator of being chosen) does direct traffic follow the same trajectory?
- If yes: People are trusting/remembering us and coming back directly (maybe)
- If no: Engagement isn't translating to stickiness - maybe you got a lot of social tricks to get clicks, but it never sticks. (Ha).
Hypothesis 3: Direct Traffic conversion rate will continue to increase, "As more quality (social, shares, communities, WhatsApp, etc.) traffic continues to bucket into direct, because of our social selling strategy, the quality of that direct traffic will continue to increase." If we are making the changes to our site to get more people to believe in us, by signig up for newsletters and webinars as early lead indicators.
- As direct traffic increases, does conversion rate stay strong or improve? Also while you can track social from Linkedin for my B2B fam, you should look at your leading indicator conversion rate. I've had months where social lead to 12x the conversion rate for newsletters as search.
- If yes: Channel shift is bringing higher-intent traffic, strategy is sound
- If no: quality is down, need to assess our audience targeting and content strategy
Hypothesis 4: Signal growth should result in revenue, "We believe that measuring signals will give us reliable indicators (within reason) of revenue growth, therefore if our top, middle and bottom of funnel metrics all trend positive, pipeline should move proportionally."
- If yes: Growth mix is having the desired effect, evaluate shifts in market trends to continue to calibrate
- If no: Evaluate what you're bringing in (are you reaching the right audience?) and how you're converting (is your marketing to sales handoff solid?)
This video below will help you start to think about the "offsetting metrics" you need to overlay with your leading and lagging indicators.
KPIs: When to Chill vs. When to Panic
Each person will need to come up with their own but Marketa our head of ... Marketing, looks at our data through these lenses:
🟢 Monitor (Single Metric Drops):
- Branded search drops 10% one month > Could be seasonality
- Social engagement dips > Test new content formats
- AI traffic plateaus > Expected, it's a new channel
🟡 Test & Adjust (Two Correlated Drops):
- Branded search + homepage traffic both down > Awareness problem
- Social engagement + newsletter signups both down > Content quality issue
- Direct traffic + conversion rate both down > Website/UX problem
🔴 Reorient Immediately (Three+ Correlated Drops + Revenue Impact):
- Top funnel + mid funnel + bottom funnel all trending down
- AND revenue/pipeline showing impact
- This is not channel shift, this is market loss
- Time for strategic pivot
Oh and today this happened, I was selected by LinkedIn as a Top Voice. Who knows what that leads to but it is another trust signal that when they analyzed my content they thought I was worth it, for now :) Where does this show up in our KPIs? We'll find out, but I'll take it over 1,000 listicles anyday.
