Google’s rollout of a default channel group to track visits from AI search engines is a big step forward in tracking AI traffic from intent through visit, all the way through conversion and revenue.
Previously tracking AI search traffic required custom regex-based custom channel groups. This wasn’t overly complicated, but still required time, attention and knowledge that not all marketing teams had.
Google now simplifies the setup, joining Microsoft in providing easy visibility of queries and visits to ecommerce sites from AI search.
So why is there a diagram of a WWII fighter plane in a discussion of Site Analytics and AEO?
The gap marketing teams and operators are left with is visibility into competitive queries and product rankings which DO NOT lead to site visits, and instead funnel to competitors.
Abraham Wald famously determined that armor should not be placed on areas of planes where returning bombers had bullet and other impact holes. If they could make it back to the airfield with damage in those locations, additional armor wasn’t needed.
Instead, his analysis showed the protection should be placed on those areas where damage was not seen.
Google and Microsoft have made great strides in showing ecommerce operators and marketing teams site visit data, tying it back to AI search. However, they still don’t know what they don’t know, and finding queries and optimizing for those queries which you are not ranking for and gaining traffic from is where forward-looking teams are focused.
Microscope.ai monitors, analyzes and helps improve the visibility of your products in AI Search, for queries currently sending traffic and those that aren’t yet.
A final note: Search Engine Journal has a nice summary of the evolution of both GA4 and Search Console over the last few months in tracking AI search traffic, well worth a read if you haven’t seen it.
