Editor's note: This is AI Impact, Newsweek's weekly newsletter where each week, we will explore how business leaders are unlocking real value through artificial intelligence. Tap or click here to get this newsletter delivered to your inbox. One change I’ve kept coming back to this year is how much of the buying process can now happen before someone ever reaches a company’s website.
Earlier this year, I wrote about how strong Google performance no longer guarantees visibility when buyers turn to ChatGPT or another AI tool to research their options. Later, after speaking with Synchrony, I explored what happens when agents begin helping people compare products and narrow their choices on their behalf. Those stories left me interested in a part of the customer journey that companies have historically had much less visibility into: what happens before a buyer reaches the site at all.
Marketers have spent years learning to read search rankings, traffic, clicks and conversions. Those still matter, of course, but they may not show which brands are appearing in AI answers, which sources those systems are relying on or whether an agent is visiting a site because someone is actively researching something the company sells. AI visibility can deteriorate before the impact appears in website traffic, conversion or the sales pipeline.
Today, I’m diving into how marketers can tell whether that visibility is improving or slipping, which signals are worth tracking over time and what traffic from AI agents may reveal about customer intent. Read on for what marketers may be missing in AI search. Signals from the frontlines of AI adoption Sitecore, Scrunch CEOs: SEO Metrics Can Hide AI Search Problems Search rankings and web traffic still tell marketers how customers find a brand online, but they can miss what is happening inside AI-generated answers.
Among in-house marketers in a survey conducted by AI-search company Scrunch and professional services marketing agency Scribewise, 62 percent said leaders outside marketing or communications still judge their teams on traditional SEO metrics or web traffic. Eric Stine, CEO of digital experience software company Sitecore, and Chris Andrew, CEO of Scrunch, a Sitecore company that helps brands track and improve how they appear in AI search, said a business can maintain strong Google rankings while competitors gain visibility in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other AI platforms. The broader survey included 602 full-time U.S. marketing and PR professionals working both in-house and at agencies.
Eighty-four percent of respondents said they were confident they could shape AI answers, even as 51 percent were unsure whether their current strategy was the right one. Fifty-six percent could not distinguish AI search optimization from traditional search engine optimization. A single AI response is also a weak benchmark for brand visibility because the answer can change depending on how a question is phrased, what context the user provides and which platform responds.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
