How LLMs Change Traditional SEO Metrics

Everyone’s tracking rankings, impressions, and CTRs. But what if your audience gets their answers without ever seeing your link or site on a SERP? Then, these metrics will not give you the answers you are looking for.

Traditional SEO metrics are built around keyword-driven SERPs. But search behavior is changing. We are moving from keyword-based searches in search engines to conversational queries in Large Language Models (LLMs). Naturally, the way we measure success in SEO must evolve.

From Queries to Conversations

LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are reshaping search. Where users once performed multiple searches to research, compare, and decide, a single LLM prompt can now do it all and more — summarize information, compare brands, and recommend products.

But what is the problem? These LLMs often summarize or paraphrase content without sending users to the source. Some tools cite their sources depending on the prompt, while others do not offer any attribution. This creates a new challenge for SEO professionals. LLMs may use your content or mention your brand, but you may never know when and how.

What Today’s SEO Metrics Miss

We know brand exposure is happening in LLMs, but often, you do not know when, how, or how frequently they mention your brand in their answers. And traditional SEO tracking methods will not cut it. Here is why:

• Rankings say nothing about AI answers.
• CTRs do not matter in zero-click environments.
• Impressions do not exist in closed interfaces.

So, how do these methods track when AI summaries mention you, but you do not receive a click? Or what about how your content shapes the LLM’s answer, but no source is given? The answer: they do not. They cannot track visibility without traffic or attribution. We need something else.

Rethinking Visibility in SEO

We must reconsider how we think of and measure visibility in SEO. In these closed interfaces, presence, not clicks, becomes an essential indicator of visibility. Thus, SEOs should ask:

• In which LLMs are we present?
• How often do AI answers mention or recommend our brand?
• Which prompts trigger our brand mentions?
• How is our brand included and presented in the answers?

These questions point to a new direction for SEO performance. The focus is not just on traffic but on presence in the places where users make decisions, and these decisions are not only made through search engines like Google.

What the Future of SEO Reporting Looks Like

As LLM searches become more prominent, SEOs must answer new questions. Are we mentioned in AI-generated responses, even if we are not ranking on page one? Are our competitors being recommended by LLMs when we are not?

These questions influence how you report on SEO performance. In this new blended search environment, SEO performance should include measuring presence, not just clicks. The focus changes from measuring where your site appears on the SERP to understanding when and how your brand appears in LLMs.

We should still track rankings, traffic, and clicks, but in addition to these traditional metrics, you should account for LLM mentions and citations, your position in the answer, and how the LLMs use your content. This data helps you understand your visibility in LLMs and analyze how you can create content from which LLMs want to pull information.

A New SEO Mindset

For years, SEOs have been trained to think in clicks and visits. But in an AI-powered search environment, presence is now performance. We should start rethinking SEO success: it is not just about ranking high but being present in the right place. In this case, it is in the AI answer itself.