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We share our thoughts and ideas on how to grow a business.
Today's episode, we have data to share.
We are comparing graphs of SEO traditional
Google Organic traffic to our articles
for a handful of clients compared
to attributable AI traffic graphs.
And the ratio is the AI traffic
is in the ratio of about.
3% AI traffic.
These graphs are also up into the right,
they're growing, but they're less than
10%, most of them, less than 5% of SEO.
The decline in organic traffic that
everyone is calling out and saying, SEO
is dead, is just manifesting itself.
In other ways is, is just people are
finding you and then Googling your
site, and so it's showing up as branded
traffic and it's unattributable to SEO.
Welcome to the Grow and
Convert marketing show.
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You can get that Grow and
convert.com/newsletter.
Today's episode, we have data to share.
Benji.
Specifically, we are comparing
graphs of SEO traditional Google
Organic traffic to our articles
for a handful of clients compared
to attributable AI traffic graphs.
To our articles and what we're gonna look
at is just kind of what those shapes of
those graphs look like, what the numbers
and the ratio between them look like and
the implications for marketing teams of
how that should affect your strategy.
To be honest.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
Okay.
Obviously this is gonna make a lot more
sense for those watching on YouTube.
I will try my best to sort of
read off the numbers for those
that listen on the podcast.
Um, we're gonna start off looking at
pairs of graphs, um, and the ratio.
So on the left side I have graphs of
organic traffic to our articles over
time, the overall trend, and then on
the right for the exact same client.
All client names have been as usual as
we do on this podcast, have been removed.
We have for the exact same clients,
AI traffic to our articles.
First big takeaway for a lot
of these newer clients, I mean,
most of these are kind of newer.
You see the left most is around
when we started with them.
So the starting dates
are like August, 2024.
Feb 2025 is a more recent one.
And then there's some old clients
from September, October, 2023 and one
really, really old client from 2022.
I think they actually started before
then, but anyway, before, yeah,
just the graphs are from that year.
One big thing, that's just
a very simple observation.
The SEO graphs, other than some of
the old clients, which we can talk
about in a second, that's a different
game of SEO are up into the right.
They're increasing.
We have stuff that starts off
at, you know, less than a hundred
sessions to 900 sessions, right?
They're up and to the right.
We have stuff growing to
the 3000 sessions a month.
Um, the SEO graphs are increasing.
So immediately, my first takeaway,
a very simple one, is SEO is not
dead like you, you're, you can
still get SEO traffic, I should say.
The reason they're increasing is
because, of course, every month we
publish new SEO content for them.
That targets extremely bottom of
funnel, high conversion intent keywords.
But the point is that strategy is a,
continues to be a growing strategy.
No complaints from you.
No.
No complaints yet.
We'll, we'll see.
We'll, we'll see when
we get to the AI side.
And then on the AI side,
those graphs are also growing.
Obviously some of 'em the where they
start, like, let's go to this third
client that started a long time ago,
or at least before the first two,
back in September, October, 2023.
So it's a couple years old.
We've been engaged with
them for a long time.
The SEO graph has been like a
steady increase the last few months.
Maybe it's had a slight decrease.
AI of course, starts for most of these
clients somewhere around middle of last
year, which is like summer of 2024.
So this one starts to see some non-zero
traffic from chat GBT in August, 2024.
We have these numbers.
What you, what I notice immediately
is these numbers are much smaller,
so what I did is make a little
ratio sheet on the left side
where I just took for each client.
The last three completed months,
which when we're recording this
is June, July, August, 2025.
The total Google organic traffic for them
to our articles versus chat gt, which.
For those of you that are looking
at the graphs, you can see when
we say AI traffic, it's like 98%,
95% chat GT versus the other ones.
And the ratio is the AI traffic
is in the ratio of about 3%.
We see 2.5%, 3.1%.
One of 'em is extremely low 'cause
we have crazy SEO traffic at 0.2%.
Ignore that for a second.
One of 'em is as high
as 7%, but the point is.
AI traffic.
These graphs are also up into the right.
They're growing, but they're
less than 10%, most of them.
Less than 5% of SEO.
Yeah.
You, you want my action?
I'm gonna pause there in case
you have anything to add.
Yeah, I mean, there, there's
a lot of stuff to add.
So yes, SSEO is not dead.
The, the AI traffic is growing.
Some things that are interesting
though, I, I will say I've been
looking more at the conversion side
of things recently for some of these
accounts that are mentioned here.
Um, even though chat GPT makes up
a majority of the traffic there,
what, what is interesting is that
we're seeing conversions come
from some of the other tools.
So I just wanted to point that out.
So, for example, I know like who, uh,
like chat or sorry, like perplexity
and even deep seek on a couple of 'em.
So that's interesting.
So everyone seems to be focusing
only on chat, GPT, and I'm sure
it's largely because they're seeing
these kind of traffic numbers.
And I, I think most people talk about
chat, GPT, it has a bigger brand, but
again, focusing on the wrong metrics.
If, if you just focus on traffic
and, and you're not really looking
at the conversion data, you're
gonna over index, on focusing on
chat GBT, when that might not be.
The best thing for your business.
So for example, I've seen multiple
conversions come from per perplexity, but
if you look at any of these graphs, you,
you won't even really see traffic numbers.
And so all that to say kind of the
same concept when we're talking
about focusing on the right intent.
Keywords can have drastically different
conversion rates than if you're just
a focus on really top of funnel,
broad things that drive traffic.
Same thing applies to ai, which is
traffic is doesn't mean everything just
because all the traffic's coming from
chat, GBT, doesn't that mean that's where
all the conversions are coming from?
Overall AI traffic is increasing
and it's largely correlated with
the SEO side increasing as well.
So we're, so for our clients, we're not
doing any AI optimization or a EO or GEO.
So all, all of this traffic is
just coming from us ranking for SEO
keywords and the brand growing as well.
So a lot of these clients are doing
other marketing activities beyond SEO.
Some of them we are their marketing,
like this is all they're really doing
and they have, they're sales led or
they're doing other things inside
of the company to grow them, but.
What's interesting is we're not like doing
any optimizations on the AI side yet.
We're still seeing increasing traffic.
Just indicating to us that all these
ideas around things that you need
to do to show up in ai, you need to
have like the LM txt on your site.
You need to be on Reddit, you need
to have all these other sites that
are mentioning you like that's not
necessarily true because we see
this, we see these numbers increasing
without us doing much more than just.
Our normal SEO process.
Um, another thing that we don't
have here that I want to call out
is we're also just measuring overall
AI sessions to the site overall.
Um, which is interesting.
Yeah.
These graphs, I should double, sort
of confirm is AI traffic to our
articles for on the client site.
Yeah.
And so those, those numbers are actually.
Larger, which you would expect
because it's just all queries that
potentially mention this company.
It's sending more traffic to the site.
But I still, what's interesting from
the data that I've crunched so far,
I don't, I haven't seen it, seen
it exceed 10% of overall traffic.
And I think even so that numbers are
pretty consistent, that it's mu, it's,
it's within that five to 10% range
for a lot of these clients where.
Uh, the AI traffic, even at this
point is just not making up a
large portion of overall traffic.
And we're, we're also seeing kind of
the same trends on the conversion side.
So on the conversion side, we're
also seeing something like 5%
or less of conversions coming
from AI tools at this point.
So.
I think all this to say, there's a
lot of people, especially these AI
tools, claiming that SEO is dead
because that's self-serving to them.
They want people to spend money on.
Wait, you should say that very carefully.
When you say these AI tools,
you don't mean chat PT clotted?
No.
Yeah, not, not chat.
PT and Claude.
No.
There's the AI visibility tools.
There's the profound, there's
the pro, there's the peaks.
I think the HRES and the SEM rushes
are not saying that as much because.
They also have data.
They also do, they also do SEO and
they're seeing the same data that
we are, but the Profounds and the
Peaks, these funded companies that.
Their whole business is to try to grow
the AI category as much as possible.
Have all these like case studies and
like things that they're trying to show
that don't really make sense to me, or
like I really don't believe their data
that's trying to show that AI is like the
next big thing and that all this traffic
is coming and all these conversions
are coming from these channels.
But when we look at our client
data, we're just not seeing that.
We're just not seeing the same thing.
And, and this is also
confirmed by many other.
Marketers in our space.
I know, uh, gaitano just posted something
on Twitter earlier today, pretty much
showing the same percentages across,
uh, clients that he works with as well.
And so it's not just our data seeing
this, I've seen multiple other agencies
and SEO people and marketers kind of
posting the same data here and yeah,
it's just, it's just frustrating.
I think being a marketer and seeing these
narratives fly and seeing people try to.
Basically push the narrative that AI is
what you should spend money on and focus
on when just the numbers don't support it.
Uh, I, I guess, is kind of the takeaway
from here, but I think what is interesting
is, look, it's, I, I don't think anyone,
any marketer, any person in-house, any
CEO should be thinking of SEO versus ai.
Like, that's also another thing that
really bothers me about this space.
It's like, yes, we are
an SEO agency first.
Or a content marketing agency first.
But you can see we're also paying
attention to AI because it is a
growing trend and it's something
that's gonna continue to be important.
And we're measuring this stuff and
we have an interest in it, and we're
testing how different things work.
We're doing both.
It's not like it's SEO versus AI and,
and you're seeing here, again, there's
a lot of correlation between doing SEOL.
And also getting good results from ai.
And so I also just think this narrative
that SEO is dead and AI is better, or
SEO is better and AI is, is not good.
I just think the whole trend of
saying this kind of stuff needs to
die because they all go together,
like they impact the same thing.
We're we're all trying to achieve
the same goal, which is how to grow
business through both channels.
I think that's what the narrative should
be focused around is like how do we do
and both things index written content.
Yes.
Or actually video or whatever.
Also, and we've talked about this in
another video, but both things like we
know that chat, GPT and all Google things,
and you see that in the graphs here.
And so you have this double whammy if
you produce this SEO content one, if you
rank for more and more of these keywords
as as this data and these graphs are
showing you can grow your SEO traffic,
like direct SEO traffic and number two.
That's gonna help you get on the
radar of Chachi pt, which is the other
big one besides Google AI overview.
Um, question for you.
Yeah.
What about if people have an objection
and say, okay guys, your measurable.
Chat.
PT traffic is an average of
3%, 3.8% of your Google, SEO.
But how many people actually click
on the source link inside chat?
Pt, what about the unmeasured
traffic isn't that much higher?
That would be like seeing the brand and
Googling over or something like this.
I, I mean, the, the same concept
applies on the organic side.
Like we're, we're not able to measure
all the conversions coming from organic.
We're not able to measure.
The impact of AI overviews
even, uh, from organic as well.
I said I was gonna save some of these
thoughts for another video when we
have more conclusive data, but I'll
just kind of share my thoughts on this
and, and things that I'm seeing and
anecdotal evidence that I have is, I, I
think largely what's going on with the
SEO is dead narrative is there's some.
Sites that have been around for a
long time that have have seen largely
steady growth in organic traffic, and
in the last year or so they've seen.
Kind of a steady decline,
not something crazy.
Not like 50% declines.
You mean like via sites or something?
Like travel?
No, j No, just like any, any site that
has largely grown from organic traffic.
Like it could be a HubSpot, like I, there
was that HubSpot report or the HubSpot
case study and there's all the, all, all
these sites that were just content-based
sites or SaaS companies that had a blog.
That have largely grow or
grown from organic traffic.
Yeah.
That was like killing it with regular se.
Yeah.
And, and over the last year, they've
seen these steady declines of like
10 to 20% of their traffic declining.
Yet rankings have largely stayed positive.
We've seen this across a number of our
clients where we're at all time highs
for rankings we're at all time highs
or near all time highs for conversions.
But for some reason, organic
traffic is declining.
And, and every marketer, every
in-house person is like, is asking
the question why they just don't
like, it doesn't make sense.
You, you, you're at all
time highs for rankings.
You're at all time highs for conversions,
but your traffic keeps declining
and it just doesn't make sense.
And even if you just look at the,
like the, the conversions, like
the referrals from AI again, is
only making up a small percentage.
It's like 5% or something like that.
So where are the rest of
these conversions coming from?
Uh, one thing that I have been
noticing across a number of accounts
is that kind of at the same time
that organic traffic to specific
pages on the site has been declining.
You're starting to see an
increase in branded searches.
It just makes me question our AI
overviews and just more impression shares.
So like another thing that people
are seeing is in search console
is impression share is rising.
While clicks are declining to me,
the, the, the simple explanation
for why that could potentially be is
just your organic traffic isn't dead.
It is just the way that we were
attributing traffic in the past where
you would show up for, like, you would
rank number one or two for an article,
someone would click into the article.
And then you get a visitor on your site
for organic has changed a little bit.
Now what's happening is you can
show up in HRES or SEM Russia as
the number one position, but that
number one position actually means
you're showing up in an AI overview.
And that AI overview is mentioning
your brand as one of the options.
And so instead of you getting the traffic
directly from ranking in that number
one position, someone is now seeing.
Oh, one of the top agencies
is Grow and Convert.
Let me go and Google Grow and Convert.
And they come to your, your site that way.
And so what's interesting is around
the beginning of this year in, in a
couple different clients, and again,
I'm not saying this is conclusive
evidence, I'm just saying this is a
hypothesis that I have, is that the
sources of the traffic is changing.
Like people are discovering your
brand in Google through AI overviews.
And then Googling you.
So it looks like all of a sudden
your branded organic traffic is
starting to increase, or your
branded searches are increasing.
Or another client, uh, uh, like last
week or the week before said, it's
been really interesting the last
few months my, my branded paid ads.
We're getting a lot more
conversions and traffic from that.
That also makes sense to me.
If, if someone's discovering you and
then you're paying anding them and then
clicking on that first sponsored listing.
Exactly.
So like the, the, the decline in
organic traffic that everyone is
calling out and saying SEO is dead,
is just manifesting itself in other
ways, is it, is just people are finding
you and then googling your site and
so it's showing up as branded traffic
and it's unattributable to SEO.
But around those same times
that the organic traffic is
decreasing, you're starting to see
these branded searches increase.
And of course, there's other
things that affect branded search.
If you're running a lot of paid ads,
if you're doing other campaigns, if
you're going to conferences, yes, all
your marketing channels can affect that.
But I find it really interesting that
you're starting to see these increases
in brand around the same times that you
are, um, starting to see the, the decline.
And I think.
This is why a lot of people
are saying SEO is dead.
Because if you're just looking at the
traffic numbers, yes, it looks like
it's starting to decline a little bit,
but like the declines are not crazy.
Like if we look at some of those
numbers, like these, these, these client
accounts have grown from zero to hundreds
of thousands of visitors or like.
10,000 visitors or they're just
starting to grow and we're only seeing
those declines for the ones that
we've been, we have a ton of rankings
for like these bottom two graphs.
Like this upper graph right now is
a client where like the first data
point is back in 2023, so that's means
we have over 100 rankings for them.
If I just do quick math of how
much we usually publish and.
It was increasing all the way to like
March, 2025, and there's a few months
of a slight decrease from what, 3,700
sessions a month to 2,800 of these
really nice bottom of funnel keywords.
This client, like our content's
converting like gangbusters for them.
So these are really high converting.
Yeah, that, that one on the top
right there we're at all time
high conversion numbers for 'em.
Yeah.
Even though we're, we're, we're,
we're at a lower organic than we were.
In March, you're saying we're at an
all time high conversion for them.
Yeah.
And the, and these dips for
a few months often happen.
And when this happened, like as a
client, yes, you get concerned 'cause
you see the, the graph going down
a little bit, but like again, we're
looking at a drop of 3,500 to 2,800.
So.
Yes, it's, it, it's a decent decline.
But you can see in November, 2024,
you had one month dip and then
you, you see it go back up again
and, and sometimes these happen.
Sometimes it's just Google updates happen
and it can affect things for a few months.
Yeah, I was say that sometimes
they happen for reasons that
have nothing to do with ai.
Like the bottom graph, we're showing
that I actually, and you and I talked
about this before we started recording,
a lot of agencies wouldn't show this
because overall it looks like a decrease.
But if you look at the actual
value, this is a client we've had
for I think over five or six years.
So there's data even to the
left that we're not showing
of how we got here initially.
Um, and it's 200,000 visitors
a month to just our articles
at its peak back in 2023.
It has dips and rises from before chat.
GPT was a thing.
Those happen because of just regular SEO.
When you have 200,000 visitors a month and
you have hundreds of page one rankings,
SEO is a different game where you're
just like playing defense and seeing like
algorithmic changes and all of this stuff.
And so some of that's gonna
happen naturally regardless of ai.
Even if this top graph, you attribute that
March, 2025 to a slight decrease to August
of like a slight linear decrease, like oh,
that corresponds to when AI is increasing.
That could be, we are doing, I should
say we're doing much more analysis
and we're gonna continue to crunch
those numbers and release videos and
articles with that later where we're
isolating to specific single articles
that are ranking for a single keyword
and the ranking is held steady.
And seeing does the organic
traffic from that go down.
Um, and like as a preview,
a lot of them do go down.
So we do see some evidence
of like traditional Google
organic traffic going down.
But as you are, what you're saying is,
but for this exact client, as an anecdotal
example, even though the traffic has gone
down, conversions are at an all time high.
Why?
And the client's saying their
paid homepage, branded search.
Is all of a sudden high.
Why?
And a lot of that seems to early
hypothesis, as you said, point to maybe
people are just seeing their brand
name, whether it be in chat, BT or
Google AI overview, and they're just
opening up a new tab and Googling them.
And so like you just, it's still driving.
So Yeah.
So it's coming, it's coming.
It's coming from branded
instead of organic.
And so like for, for us as an agency.
We're not technically getting credit
for those conversions, but it, it,
like, again, it doesn't really matter.
It like, I, I think just even bigger
picture, we're looking at just our overall
conversions from online going up now,
like there, there's different ways that
we're looking at attribution because.
Attribution is getting a lot harder.
It's like browsers are coming
out with cookie blockers.
There's just like all sorts of things
that are happening, like even to create
these graphs are not easy anymore.
Like we used to be able to do all
this an out of the box GA four and
now amethyst on our team, who's been
amazing in, in terms of trying to
figure out all this stuff up, like.
What turned from a four page looker
studio now has seven pages for a lot
of our clients because we're trying
to look at the data in different ways
and try to see different trends and
what's going on behind the scenes,
and explanations for why traffic is
declining or what's happening in AI
or what's happening to the overall
site traffic, what's happening to the
overall homepage traffic, uh, in brand.
So yeah, I think.
Largely attribution's getting harder,
and SEO is not getting as much credit
as it used to because it used to be
more of like a direct response channel
where you could see someone click into
the article and then directly convert.
And that's just, it's changing now.
And so we're having, we're having to look
at like different attribution windows.
I just got off a call today
where the client just wants to
see a report of conversions of
someone that touched the article.
Before they converted because we're
only looking at first and last and
they're just like, I don't think
this is giving you guys full credit.
And so I, I like, again, I think we,
like us as an industry, just needs
to start thinking about attribution
a little bit differently and not
jump to the conclusions that a
certain channel is dead because the
numbers show a 10 to 20% decline.
And then also what metrics actually
matter to the business if overall
conversions are going up from organic.
Or just overall or from the website
and like your traffic is declining,
is, is that a reason to stop
investing in the channel or is that
a reason to say this channel is dead?
No, it's just like, I think we should
just be more curious as an industry and,
and keep asking these tough questions
until we come up with conclusions.
Yeah.
The browser thing makes sense.
I was on a client call this morning,
uh, that you weren't on where.
Their internal reporting tool I think
is reporting like, I could be wrong
here, but it's something like two, three
or four x what GA is reporting because
something happened in their cookie consent
that their internal tool somehow is like
passing through that and GA is just like
drop the moment they put the consent stuff
on their site and you're just not even
getting anything accurate there as well.
Yeah, I think what you said,
you, you said it quickly, but.
One thing we're starting to do with is
just measuring overall leads For a lot
of these clients, and, and, and you might
have said this to today, or on a separate
video, a a lot of our clients we're kind
of their main or only marketing activity.
So for those, it's easy and those
clients literally just give us
more credit than the numbers say.
'cause they're like, we're
not doing anything else guys.
And our total number of
demos or leads is going up.
So it must be this.
Um, and so then we were, that got us
thinking, why don't we just measure
overall leads as in general as well
to see if they're going up, because
a lot of 'em were gonna show up as
direct, none to the homepage in ga.
And you just normally
wouldn't take credit for that.
And now you're like, I think people are
just seeing the brand name in Googling.
So a lot of this is on definitive.
Yes.
It was nice when we lived a few
years ago in a world where everything
was like directly attributable.
We don't necessarily anymore, but.
You know you gotta change and adapt.
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