Many website owners check the same metric every month: their Google ranking. But it is precisely this metric that is rapidly losing its significance. Now that Google is responding with AI Overviews and AI Mode, and more and more people are asking their questions directly in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity, the traditional ranking check captures only a small slice of reality. It\u2019s time to rethink website tracking. <\/p>\n
Tools like Semrush or Seobility aren\u2019t worthless\u2014but their numbers should no longer be considered objective truth. These providers do not have access to Google\u2019s internal data. Rankings, visibility indices, and traffic forecasts are extrapolated from samples of search terms, assumed click-through rates, and, in some cases, clickstream data. These are estimates\u2014and the tools in question describe them as such themselves. <\/p>\n
As long as Google Search was predictable, these estimates worked quite well. But it is precisely this predictability that has now disappeared. <\/p>\n
AI summaries now appear in nearly half of all Google search queries. This is changing the rules of the game in several ways: <\/p>\n
A fixed visibility metric from a third-party tool can no longer accurately reflect this. The key question, therefore, is no longer \u201cWhere do we rank?\u201d but rather: Are we being found and used as a credible source\u2014and does this result in inquiries or revenue?<\/strong> <\/p>\n Google Analytics alone isn’t enough for this, because it only measures what happens after<\/em> someone arrives on the website. A modern setup consists of four levels that complement each other: <\/p>\n Search Console and Analytics are at the heart of this: Search Console shows what happens before<\/em> visitors arrive at the website, while Analytics shows what visitors do on<\/em> the website. Semrush and Seobility remain useful\u2014but for technical audits, competitor monitoring, and long-term trends, not as key performance indicators. <\/p>\n In early June 2026, Google introduced its first dedicated report on visibility in generative AI features in Search Console. It reports impressions from AI overviews, AI mode, and generative Discover features separately\u2014broken down by page, country, device, and time period. <\/p>\n There are two important limitations: For now, the report only<\/strong> shows impressions<\/strong>\u2014not clicks, click-through rates, or search terms. And it\u2019s being rolled out gradually and isn\u2019t yet available for every website. Those who have access to it should nevertheless start tracking now\u2014because an impressions value serves as the baseline against which all future metrics will be measured. Every month without recorded baseline values is a lost opportunity for comparison. <\/p>\n Here, it’s important to distinguish between traffic<\/strong> (someone actually clicks on the website) and visibility<\/strong> (the brand is mentioned without anyone clicking).<\/p>\n As of May 13, 2026, GA4 has a dedicated \u201cAI Assistant\u201d channel for traffic. It automatically tracks visits from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude without requiring any configuration. In addition, OpenAI often appends the parameter It\u2019s important to take a realistic view: This channel systematically underreports traffic.<\/strong> Perplexity continues to be categorized under \u201cReferrals\u201d; clicks from AI dashboards are counted as organic search; and clicks from the mobile apps of AI services often arrive without a referrer and are categorized as \u201cDirect.\u201d A historical year-over-year comparison also doesn\u2019t work yet, because the channel only starts counting from its launch date. The most reliable approach, therefore, remains to add UTM parameters to important links yourself\u2014these are included in the link and remain intact even if the referrer is missing. <\/p>\n There is still no comprehensive \u201cSearch Console for ChatGPT.\u201d This means you can\u2019t automatically see how often a brand has been mentioned in AI responses, in which questions it appeared, or which competitors were mentioned alongside it. You can bridge this gap by implementing your own regular monitoring: <\/p>\n An example for a travel provider might be: \u201cWhich Swiss tour operator is recommended for golf trips to Ireland?\u201d The key metric is then no longer \u201cPosition 4,\u201d but rather the AI citation rate<\/strong> \u2014for example: \u201cThe brand was mentioned in 38 percent of relevant AI questions and linked as a source in 21 percent of them.\u201d<\/p>\n A modern monthly report highlights five key metrics:<\/p>\n The classic visibility index from SEO tools remains part of the picture\u2014but now only as a secondary metric. After all, in the age of AI, what matters is no longer a website\u2019s ranking, but whether it is found, used as a credible source, and generates real business results. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many website owners check the same metric every month: their Google ranking. But it is precisely this metric that is rapidly losing its significance. Now that Google is responding with AI Overviews and AI Mode, and more and more people are asking their questions directly in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity, the traditional ranking check captures","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1147,1541,1539,1540,1159],"tags":[1544,1546,1545,1543,1542],"class_list":["post-10179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence-ai","category-semrush","category-seo","category-seobility","category-websites-en","tag-google-analytics","tag-google-ranking","tag-search-engine-ranking","tag-semrush","tag-seobility"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rettenmund.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Modern Tracking on Four Levels<\/h2>\n
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\n \nLayer<\/th>\n Tool<\/th>\n What Is Measured<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n \n Google Visibility<\/td>\n Google Search Console<\/td>\n Impressions, Clicks, Search Queries, Landing Pages, Click-Through Rate, Branded vs. Non-Branded Searches<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Website Success<\/td>\n GA4, or possibly Matomo<\/td>\n Inquiries, bookings, sales, phone and email clicks, visitor quality<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Technical Health<\/td>\n Crawling, Server Logs, Monitoring<\/td>\n Indexing, Errors, Bots, Load Time, Availability<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Market Comparison<\/td>\n Semrush, Seobility<\/td>\n Keyword trends, competitors, backlinks, technical audits \u2013 as a benchmark<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n New: Directly Measure Visibility in AI Search<\/h2>\n
How much traffic comes from ChatGPT and similar services?<\/h2>\n
utm_source=chatgpt.com<\/code> to links from ChatGPT search results, which allows visits and the resulting requests to be tracked. <\/p>\nMentions Without Clicks: Monitoring Your Own AI Visibility<\/h2>\n
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The Modern Customer Report<\/h2>\n
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