How does AI visibility differ from traditional SEO metrics, and what new metrics should we track?

AI visibility measures how readers access, interpret, and present your business information, not just how many links you gain or how high you rank. It includes signals like conversation citations, referral sessions, and the use of AI Overviews in responses, plus local AI discovery signals. Traditional SEO focuses on site traffic and rankings, while AI visibility tracks how well readers understand and retrieve your knowledge. Track both established signals (citations, retrievals) and new AI-driven signals (AI Overviews usage, referral quality) in your reporting. This helps you measure not just traffic, but whether readers are accurately representing your business when they answer questions. Be mindful that AI visibility is probabilistic and platform-dependent; it’s a diagnostic, not a guarantee of outcomes. Use it to inform your content strategy and governance, while keeping a separate, auditable reporting record of signals and their changes over time.