“AI ate my organic traffic—but does that metric still matter?”
Most of today’s marketers are tangled in the wrong question—”Are LLMs siphoning my organic traffic?” Of course they are. (Sorry. We hate it too!) But once you finish panic-breathing into your paper bag, ask yourself something different: “What organic traffic is AI stealing?”
Because things might not be as bad as you think.
If you don’t know how your organic traffic translates into conversions, you can’t measure the real cost of AI traffic erosion.
What kind of traffic does AI steal?
Google’s AI Overviews and LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude have captured a significant amount of low-intent, informational traffic. Let’s say you’re trying to understand what makes a Roth IRA unique. Before, Google Search probably led you to a site like Nerdwallet or directly to a financial institution’s explanation. Were you going to open a Roth IRA today? Almost certainly not. You just wanted the info.
That kind of low-intent, informational query is a great use case for LLMs. In fact, Consumer Reports found that 35% of Americans use AI chatbots instead of a search engine to answer questions or explain concepts. Before, these users might have landed on your site… but only to skim a paragraph or two before leaving.
Many users will still utilize traditional search when performing complex research—for instance, if they’re looking for the best salad spinner to buy or trying to understand the specifics of buying and selling a home simultaneously (and ideally finding peers who’ve survived the process). These are high-intent, conversion-oriented queries, and are less impacted by the rise of LLMs.
(One caveat: OpenAI is likely directly integrating Shopify, which means super high intent retail customers may never touch your servers. They can do all the research inside ChatGPT and then buy the product without ever clicking to another website.)
Understanding the precise impact of LLMs on your brand requires understanding how many of your organic visitors converted—and how much of that traffic has shifted to AI.
Not sure how to tell if your organic traffic is high or low search intent? Get in touch for a complimentary 30-minute analysis, or just learn more about Masthead.
How much is AI really hurting your brand?
If you already have clear conversion metrics established for your organic content, pay close attention to those numbers as LLMs’ userbase increases. Are they declining at the same rate as organic traffic? Or have those conversion numbers stayed relatively steady even though your search channels are losing blood? Those numbers tell you if you’re losing low- or high-intent traffic.
Low-intent visitors have their value, which I’ll discuss in a moment. But if the numbers show that you’ve maintained high-intent organic traffic, you can breathe a very modest sigh of relief.
However, many brands haven’t yet quantified the value of their organic traffic, so they don’t know how much that lost traffic impacts the bottom line—and you can’t fix a problem you can’t quantify. Digging into metrics like organic conversion rates, session duration, pages per session, and assisted conversions help analyze your traffic changes.
Here’s how to quantify the real effects of LLM search:
Review organic conversions. How many organic visitors converted before the introduction of ChatGPT and AI Overviews? How many are converting now?
Give organic the assist. Utilize multi-touch attribution models to understand how often organic traffic supports other channels in your conversion pathways. Have those numbers shifted?
Segment traffic by intent. Pull a list of your top-performing queries from Google Search Console. What’s shifted year-over-year? Are transaction-oriented queries still performing?
Monitor engagement: Have metrics like bounce rate, session duration, and pages per session improved? If you’re losing low-intent traffic but maintaining high-intent traffic, they should grow.
Identify trends for repeat visitors. Analyze return visitor rates and evaluate the lifecycle of first-touch organic visitors. Does your organic content drive repeat engagement and eventual conversions? Or are most visitors one and done? This will determine if lost informational traffic is valuable.
Wait. Are you saying that low-intent visitors are worthless?
No! Low-intent traffic still has lots of strategic value, some of which can be measured using that first-touch attribution model mentioned above. Even if you’re maintaining high-intent traffic, organic declines can impact your brand long-term. Informational organic queries are great for:
Brand awareness and recall. Even if visitors only read a paragraph or two, they’ve still been exposed to your brand. This lays the groundwork for future engagement.
Authority and trust-building. High-quality, expert-informed content establishes your subject matter expertise for readers and Google’s algorithm.
Long-term lead nurturing. Winning informational queries drives crucial early touchpoints in extended, multi-interaction sales journeys.
We absolutely don’t recommend ignoring a traffic decline, even if conversions stay steady. But when it comes to prioritizing, we recommend addressing the loss of high-intent traffic before strategizing ways to regain low-intent, low-converting organic visitors.
Turns out AI is stealing my high-intent traffic. What can I do?
If all of your traffic is being siphoned by LLMs, it’s time to think seriously about conversion rate optimization. Let’s start with the basics: What do you really want this traffic to do? Do you want to drive newsletter signups? Purchases? You’d be surprised how many brands don’t know!
Then, start tweaking.
Align content with user intent. Find the center of the Venn diagram between “what the content does” and “what you want users to do” and laser focus. For instance, an informational page explaining a core feature of your SaaS product should guide visitors toward the signup page.
Contextualize your CTAs. Don’t rely on traditional banners or end-of-post CTAs. Hubspot found that 93% of leads came from in-text CTAs.
Personalize, personalize, personalize! Utilize dynamic, personalized messages and offers based on visitor behavior to boost the likelihood of conversions. For example, returning visitors might see messaging prompting the next step in their buying journey.
Create content journeys. Strategically interlinking content can progressively lead users from general, informational pieces to high-intent transaction-oriented pages.
Giant organic traffic drops can be scary. But once you’ve dug into the metrics, it’s easier to know just how anxious you ought to be — and strategize a solution.
AI is reshaping how and why users find your content. It’s our job to create content that solves a user’s specific need and guides them toward a specific conversion goal. Organic traffic may never reach pre-AI highs. But the bottom-line impact of your organic efforts can easily outperform the past.
Need a hand in analyzing exactly where your organic traffic is going—and how to win back or increase high-intent search traffic? Let’s chat through what you’re seeing—and how we can help.
