Over the past few months, I’ve been getting the same inquiry from prospects at uSERP:
“Our organic traffic is down X% despite following SEO best practices. Is SEO still worth investing in?”
These companies were doing everything right. Rankings looked solid. Content was optimized. But traffic kept dropping, and they couldn’t figure out why.
Then I realized what they were missing: complete blindness to AI search.
While they obsessed over position 1 in Google, their competitors were getting mentioned in ChatGPT responses, AI Overviews, and Gemini. They had zero visibility into this new search landscape that’s stealing traditional organic clicks.
You don’t realize how much traffic AI search is intercepting until you start tracking it.
Since then, we rebuilt our entire SEO measurement process to include AI search tracking. When prospects ask “Is SEO still worth it?” we can finally give them a complete answer.
Here’s what that actually looks like:
1. We track the same keywords clusters across Google AND AI search engines with SEOmonitor
When clients rank #5 for “social media calendar,” we also see if they appear in ChatGPT responses for that exact set of keywords. Same dataset, complete visibility. Here’s what that dashboard looks like in SEOmonitor.
Google’s AI-generated answers are already reshaping how users interact with search results, even in their experimental phase. SEOmonitor’s AIO Tracking shows exactly where your brand appears in these AI Overviews, whether you’re featured in the snapshot, linked as a source, or missing entirely.
2. Weekly AI mention reports keep clients informed
Instead of scrambling to explain traffic drops, we proactively show clients where they appear (or don’t) in AI-generated responses. Brand mentions, sentiment, citation quality – all tracked automatically.
3. We catch AI volatility before clients notice
When AI answers change overnight and suddenly exclude our clients, we get instant alerts. No more surprise calls about “mysterious” traffic drops.
This isn’t about jumping on the AI bandwagon. It’s about measuring what actually affects your clients’ visibility.
If you’re still explaining traffic drops with “algorithm updates” and “seasonality,” you’re missing half the story. AI search is redirecting your organic traffic, and you can’t optimize what you can’t see.
Thanks to SEOmonitor for sponsoring this issue of SEO Power Plays. Their AI Search Tracking gives you complete visibility into both Google rankings and AI search performance in one unified dashboard. Try it out here.
–Jeremy
