Measuring Success in AI Search

Search is shifting faster than ever. As consumers increasingly employ agentic search to discover and evaluate brands, marketers must seek to understand how to effectively optimize for these emerging engines and how to measure success. 

In a previous post, Ansira broke down the differences between AEO (also called GEO) and SEO. In this article, we’ll dive into understanding AI search visibility and how to measure performance. 

AI search differs from traditional search in a few key ways: 

• Instead of a list of websites (“10 blue links”), users get a conversational, synthesized answer 
• AI engines pull data from multiple sources, not just a web index 
• Answers often don’t contain a link to a website — leading to zero click visibility 
• While total search volume is small, AI search is increasing rapidly, with Google’s share of search declining in 2025 for the second year in a row 

Consumers are using AI agents to ask questions like: 

• “What’s the best-reviewed roofing company in St Louis?” 
• “What’s the best B2B marketing automation platform?” 
• “List the pros and cons of each insurance agent near me” 

If your brand doesn’t show up in answers to the above, you’re invisible to anyone using AI search, regardless of your Google rankings. That’s where AEO, and how we measure it, can help. 

To understand a brand’s visibility in AI search, we can’t rely on traditional search rankings. Keywords and organic traffic no longer tell the complete organic search story. We need to understand how your brand appears in AI search, not just *if* it appears. Do the AI engines cite your strengths and weaknesses accurately? Does it generally favor you in a positive light? If a user asks for comparisons between you and the competition, who comes out on top? 

Marketers should consider the following: 

• How often a brand is referenced in AI-generated answers (Including Google AI Overviews) 
• Of all relevant prompts, how many returned results for your brand? 
• Is your brand sentiment favorable? Neutral? Negative? 
• How do AI engines rank you against competitors? 
• Do answer engines reflect your brand accurately? 
• Is your content being cited as source material? 

Together, this information builds an in-depth picture of a brand’s presence in the growing space of AI search. 

Using the above as a baseline, you’re ready to measure the effectiveness of your AEO strategy. Whether you optimize for AI engines yourself or partner with a brand like Ansira to manage it for you, you should see shifts in these core AEO KPIs: 

• Increased brand inclusion rate for relevant queries 
• Increased accuracy in answers/reduction in errors 
• Increases in sentiment score, though this may require community and reputation management in some cases 
• Improved perception vs competitors 
• Increased citation count 

AI assistants often don’t send referral traffic. This means traditional SEO analytics alone won’t capture AEO success. 

Instead, use proxy indicators: 

• Increases in direct traffic 
• Growth in brand search volume 
• More knowledge panel activity 
• Customer surveys asking why prospects chose you 
• Social media mentions after major AI exposure events 

This is, effectively, organic search triangulation to understand a brand’s total organic performance. 

While AI search is still in its infancy, it’s clearly here to stay and growing rapidly. We can expect more users to turn to AI engines for daily searches, while queries become more complex. AI engines will evolve, improve, and provide better results. Brands embracing this change will meet users where they are, while brands that ignore AI search will have a tough time understanding why their traffic and leads are shrinking month over month. 

A lot of our enterprise clients don’t have the time to set up the above or maintain reporting at a regular cadence. But partnering with the SEO and AI experts at Ansira to empower your brand-to-local growth during this shift in search behavior can make these steps a low-lift effort on your part.  

Inquire today about our Ansira Attract solution, which could include traditional organic search and listings management, reputation management, and everything in between.