Block flattening can make weak AI Overview visibility look like a top ranking in Search Console, so prioritize actual visits and conversions.

Declining clicks from organic search have been a shift in the industry for the past couple of years, and we’ve faced increasing pressure from clients and stakeholders to provide explanations for this, or to show that “traffic” has basically shifted to AI.

This has led to a panic in the industry, as we try to find a new normal to educate stakeholders on what matters and what doesn’t. Alongside this, AI tool vendors have been quick to jump into the space, forcing a narrative that their tool is the answer to AI visibility when, in reality, it just suits their product and not what is really needed.

On top of this, Google has now openly admitted that its Search Console reporting cannot keep up with how AI search actually works.

The discussion started when Google Search Advocate John Mueller replied to a thread on Reddit, explaining that tracking traditional rankings for AI features is “hard to do in a way that makes it useful.” Mueller went on to say that Search Console still treats entire AI-generated overviews as a single block.

In doing so, he confirmed what many marketers have noticed for a while, namely that trying to squeeze AI answers onto an old 1-to-10 ranking scale no longer makes sense.

This is a shock to the system, as we’re still working on stakeholder education to move away from what has been a reliable, stable, easily reportable, and forecastable value (potential traffic) metric.

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