Events & Webinars
IAB AI Growth Summit 2026 takeaways: confidence, challenge and the grief of letting go
9th July, 2026
Summary
- To measure AI search visibility, track how often AI answers cite or mention your brand and how often AI crawlers visit your site, and judge both against conversions, leads and revenue.
- Session two of The Media People’s (TMP) reAImagine AI summit in Leeds (January 2026) asked clients how to measure success when clicks and rankings matter less.
- The group’s answer: lead with business outcomes (conversions, leads, revenue and ROI), then add softer signals such as reviews, sentiment and citations in AI answers.
- AI visibility tools such as Semrush Enterprise show where your brand appears in AI answers; log file analysis shows how often AI crawlers visit your site.
- Free first-party reports now help too: Search Console’s generative AI report, Google Analytics’ AI Assistant channel and Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance.
If your SEO reports still lead with clicks and rankings, this is for you. AI now sits inside search engines and assistants, answering questions before anyone clicks. At The Media People’s (TMP) reAImagine AI summit in Leeds in January 2026, session two tackled how to measure AI search visibility and success in that new search ecosystem.
What is AI search visibility?
AI search visibility is how often, and how well, your brand appears in AI-generated answers: as a mention, a recommendation or a cited link. It covers Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode as well as assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, and sits alongside your rankings in traditional search results.
What are AI Overviews and AI Mode?
AI Overviews and AI Mode are Google’s AI features in Search. Here’s how Google describes them, alongside the LLM assistants people also search with.
- AI Overviews give you “an AI-generated snapshot with key information and links to dig deeper” within your Google results, according to Google Search Help.
- AI Mode is what Google calls its “most powerful AI search experience”: you ask a question, get an AI-powered response, and can go deeper with follow-up questions and links to the web. It splits your question into subtopics and searches for each one at the same time (Google Search Help).
- LLM assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot answer questions in conversation, and people increasingly use them to find information. Our write-up of the summit’s “what is AI?” discussion explains what AI and LLMs are.
Why do clicks and rankings matter less?
Clicks, impressions and rankings matter less because AI features can answer a question before anyone visits a website. Historically, SEO success has been measured with those three metrics. As AI becomes part of search through AI Overviews, AI Mode and LLMs, they’re becoming less dominant.
How do you measure success when clicks and rankings matter less?
Measure business outcomes first. That was the clearest theme when we asked the group: “If clicks and rankings matter less, how do we measure success?” Conversions, leads and ROI remain the measures of success, but qualitative signals like brand perception and user trust are increasingly important.
Google’s own guidance looks beyond Search Console too: it says you could also track conversions and time spent on your site in other tools, such as Google Analytics (Google Search Central).
Success is also defined by presence across platforms. Brands need to be visible in AI models, referenced in AI answers and recognised as authoritative. Achieving that takes a strategic rethink of how you approach search.
Which metrics show AI search performance?
The session pointed to a combination of hard metrics and softer signals.
Hard metrics
- Conversions and leads generated from AI-driven search journeys
- ROI and revenue, the ultimate indicators of effectiveness
Softer signals
- Reviews and overall brand sentiment
- Brand recognition and advocacy
- Citations and mentions in AI-generated content
Visibility in LLM outputs is now a performance indicator. Appearing often in AI responses and recommendations signals authority and trust.
How can you track AI visibility?
You can track AI visibility from two directions: what AI tools say about your brand, and how often AI crawlers visit your site. Pair both with business outcomes such as conversions and revenue.
| Method | What it shows | What it doesn’t show |
|---|---|---|
| AI visibility tracking (for example, Semrush Enterprise) | Where your brand appears in AI answers, how often, and which sources are cited | Every answer every user sees; results come from a set of tracked prompts |
| Log file analysis | Which AI crawlers request which pages on your site, and how often | Whether your content then appears in AI answers |
AI visibility tracking. At the summit, TMP showed how Semrush Enterprise, Semrush’s enterprise SEO and AI search platform, tracks visibility within AI models. Semrush says the platform offers “brand visibility tracking across AI models”. Instead of guessing, you can see what’s appearing, where it appears and how frequently.
Log file analysis. Your web server’s log files record requests to your site, including the name (user agent) each crawler gives. Many AI companies’ crawlers identify themselves this way: OpenAI, for example, publishes its crawlers, including OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search and GPTBot for model training. Reviewing your logs shows how often these bots visit and which pages they request.
What free AI visibility data do Google and Microsoft provide?
Google and Microsoft now report some AI visibility directly, free of charge. Search Console shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google Analytics groups visits from AI assistants, and Bing Webmaster Tools shows citations in Copilot. Each report shows part of the picture, and none shows everything (all checked 30 September 2026).
| Report | What it shows | What it doesn’t show | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search Console: generative AI performance report | Impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates for links shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode (Search Central blog; Search Console Help) | Clicks: Google lists impressions as the report’s metric | Announced 3 June 2026; rolled out to all websites by 31 August 2026 |
| Search Console: Performance report (“Web” search type) | AI Overviews and AI Mode appearances, counted in your overall search traffic (Google Search Central) | AI features separately from other search results | Google guidance last updated 10 December 2025 |
| Google Analytics: “AI Assistant” channel | Visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok (Analytics Help) | Visits from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, which it excludes, and assistant visits that don’t pass a referrer | In the default channel group when checked |
| Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance | How often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot, AI summaries in Bing and select partners, with a sample of the grounding queries behind them (Bing Webmaster blog) | Citations in AI tools outside Microsoft and its select partners | Public preview from 10 February 2026 |
Use these reports alongside AI visibility tracking, log file analysis and your conversion data.
How do you bring AI into your search strategy?
Start with a clear framework for tracking performance, then optimise from what you find. Tracking makes ongoing optimisation possible: you can refine content, strengthen technical foundations and position campaigns to perform in AI-influenced search.
The fundamentals still carry most of the weight. Google says there are “no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode” beyond its usual SEO best practices (Google Search Central). Combining technical SEO, content strategy and AI performance analysis keeps your brand visible and trusted.
What did session two conclude?
Visibility within AI-driven search is a real driver of growth, and brands that understand how they appear, how they’re referenced and how that influences decisions can adapt with confidence. It’s less about earning a click or reaching position one, and more about being visible in the right places and earning trust.
You don’t need to adopt every new AI feature to succeed. What matters is a measured approach: bring AI into your SEO strategy thoughtfully, monitor evolving signals like brand reputation, and focus on results that deliver real value for your business. Rather than abandoning traditional metrics, broaden your view and evolve your strategy alongside the new ways people search.
This was session two of our reAImagine AI summit in Leeds.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between AI Overviews and AI Mode?
AI Overviews are AI-generated snapshots with links that appear within Google’s search results. AI Mode is a fuller, conversational Google search experience where you can ask follow-up questions and get deeper AI-powered answers with links to the web.
Can you see AI Overviews data in Search Console?
Yes. Search Console’s generative AI performance report shows impressions for links to your site in AI Overviews and AI Mode; Google says it had rolled out to all websites by 31 August 2026. Those appearances also count in the main Performance report, under the “Web” search type.
Does Google Analytics show traffic from ChatGPT?
Yes. Google Analytics has a default “AI Assistant” channel for visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot and Grok. It excludes Google’s own AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Can you track your brand's visibility in AI answers?
Yes, to a degree. AI visibility tools such as Semrush Enterprise track where and how often a brand appears in AI answers for a set of tracked prompts, and Bing Webmaster Tools reports citations in Microsoft Copilot. No tool sees every answer every user gets.
What is log file analysis in SEO?
Log file analysis means reviewing your web server’s records of requests to your site. It also shows which AI crawlers visit your pages and how often, such as OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot (for ChatGPT search) and GPTBot (for model training).
Want to see how visible your brand is in AI search? Talk to us about Total Search.
