Ryan Kelly: Hey, and welcome back to AI on the Fly. I’m Ryan Kelly, your host. We have a special guest again today, Devin Halliday, Director of Marketing for WSI Smart Marketing.
If you watched our last episode, you know that we’re creating a short three-part mini-series answering questions about AI tracking. That’s sort of Devin’s whole world. When he runs our team with our clients, he’s constantly assessing how AI is working across our portfolio. So who better to have on the episode answering today’s question about tracking?
In the last episode, we asked: Is it possible to track AI? Well, this episode we have a really fun question. Are you ready?
Devin Halliday: I’m ready.
Ryan Kelly: All right, check this out. If AI can be tracked, and if clicks are no longer the story, what should we be paying attention to, and how do we know if it’s working?
Devin Halliday: Yeah, great question. We talked about what happens if you get the click in AI and someone ends up on your website, but we know there are other metrics to measure. There are other ways to know if visibility is happening.
In fact, that’s the first keyword: visibility. One of the first things you want to start looking at for KPIs is whether your web pages are being cited in answers given by AI and whether your brand is being mentioned.
And of course, there’s a third component in addition to citations and mentions: Is there a link? Is there a cited link? That’s part of it. That’s what’s going to help you get the click back.
But first, what we’re really looking for is: Do I have branded mentions, and are my pages being cited in the LLMs? For example, are my service pages answering questions that people are searching for and therefore showing up as an answer, not just my brand name or basic business name?
Ryan Kelly: Okay, so brand mentions and pages being cited. Where would you see these things?
Devin Halliday: Great question. Right now, some of the best tools are SE Ranking, Semrush, and a few other tools available to marketers to really dive in and see those.
But you can actually start to see those on your own right now. Instead of going into regular Google Search, click AI Mode and type in the name of your service.
Type in a question that people often ask you when they call you about your services. That will start to show you if you’re being mentioned by name and if your pages are being cited and referenced back to you.
Ryan Kelly: So basically, I’m going to try to summarize this because I don’t know if I’m as nerdy as Devin. I’m not. I’m the big-picture guy. He’s the in-the-weeds guy.
So, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode in Google, People Also Ask, FAQs on Google’s homepage, and third-party answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity?
Devin Halliday: Exactly.
Ryan Kelly: So we can essentially search those ourselves and try to see where we’re coming up. Or we can use software systems like SE Ranking or Semrush, or even analytics, and try to figure out what prompt phrases we want to come up for and see where we’re ranking.
Devin Halliday: That’s exactly right.
Ryan Kelly: Okay. And we’re going to tie this up quick because this is a long video. What do you think about click-through rate?
We know with zero-click that people are seeing brand mentions at the top of these systems, and they’re not always clicking through to websites to make decisions. But when they are, is it possible to see if you’re getting traffic from these AI systems or answer engines?
Devin Halliday: One hundred percent. It is possible to see if they’re clicking through and what’s happening. In fact, in the first video of this series, we talked a little bit about where you can see those if you dive into your analytics.
But I think the most important thing right now is that people are looking for answers to questions, not a library of possible answers to search through.
So if you’re showing up in brand mentions and if your pages are being cited, people are going to find you. They’re going to navigate toward you.
The world of search has changed so dramatically in how people use it. It’s no longer just an extension of Google. It’s becoming even deeper, and I think that’s where we’ll be able to tell a little bit more in the next episode.
Ryan Kelly: You guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Stay tuned for more data, more information, and more super-nerdy tips and tricks from guys like us.
Until next time, I’m Ryan Kelly, and thanks for watching.