Over the past few years, Google’s search results pages have changed a lot. Where lists of blue links once ruled, AI overview and shopping grids now answer questions and top products before anyone reaches the website. For products, that means fewer clicks.
The natural reaction is to expand, more platforms = more presence. But without a framework, you’re spreading the resource thin on channels that won’t move the needle for important keywords.
The most useful question is not “what arenas should we be in?” It says “which platforms are actually shaping our audience’s search journey?”
Data first, then open
The right approach starts before any content is created. Look at a set of keywords that you are targeting, check what the results are in the top 10 results on Google for those terms, and create a voice image assignment for each platform. What platforms are already emerging? At what frequencies? In all categories?
If YouTube has a low share of voice for a set of keywords, investing more in video content will not result in increased visibility. But if a Reddit thread is consistently showing up in all of your main categories, that’s a signal you should work on. The understanding is not that one platform is more important than the other. It is that nothing matters in the abstract. What matters is their visibility within a specific search area.
This applies at the category level, not just the product level. One corporate brand may find that YouTube has a strong voice in informational sectors but almost none in commercial ones. Or, that there are certain categories of transactions where it plays a major role, but not others. This significantly changes the investment story. A platform strategy should follow the data, not the other way around.
The scale needs to catch up
Knowing which platforms to open is part of the problem. The other part is knowing if it’s working, and that requires a measurement model that shows how search is currently working.
Traffic as a KPI topic is misleading. The goal was never the same. That is what those times produced. But since AI Overview drives clicks from informational queries and shopping grids do the same for transactions, organic traffic will decline even when your search presence is strong. Reporting a drop in sessions outside of that context tells the wrong story.
A very useful lens is revenue: what organic search actually impacts the bottom line. That shifts the focus from getting the traffic you get to working harder, which is when SEO and CRO need to start working more closely together.
In cross-platform search, measurement becomes even more difficult, because common ranking and visibility metrics don’t directly apply to platforms like Reddit or TikTok. An effective proxy for Google’s visibility of platform content: how often does a Reddit thread or a TikTok post from your brand show up in Google results? It’s an imperfect indicator, but it’s measurable, and it gives you a basis for investment decisions that isn’t just instinct.
Underneath all this, it helps to organize KPIs around four goals: acquisition (are more people getting the product?), influence (are they engaging with the content?), loyalty (are they coming back?), and conversion (are we improving the value of each visit?). Traffic is under influence, now as a secondary metric. Income is always subject to change as a primary. SEO has always been about driving it is precious traffic, that hasn’t changed. But if it wasn’t before, organic revenue should now be your main KPI.
Three rules of discipline are worth breaking
The measurement discussion naturally leads to a broader one: SEO can no longer work in a silo.
The three encounters are hard to ignore. The first is SEO and CRO. If you get fewer clicks from both informational and transactional queries, the conversion pressure from the clicks you get is proportionally higher. Every incremental visit is more important than ever. SEO and CRO teams need to work from the same playbook.
The second is SEO and paid social. This is less obvious but increasingly effective, especially on Reddit. When Reddit threads rank on Google for your target keywords, organic engagement may be one option. But for brands where direct organic participation is not appropriate or safe for the product, paid work in those chains can achieve the same visibility without the risks of organic shipments. The SEO team identifies the opportunity. A paid social team is open to it. And they can’t see the full picture independently.
The third is SEO and PR. Product perception is key to AI search results. When someone asks an AI assistant if a product is trustworthy, or if a product is worth buying, or if a company is a good employer, the answer is taken from content across the open web. Negative media coverage, forum complaints, and bad press can directly eat into AI-generated responses about your product in a way that organic rankings alone cannot protect. There’s a wealth of product insight data you can find on AI Overview and Reddit content that your SEO team should be communicating with your PR team, if they aren’t already.
And these are just three. AI has also brought SEO closer to Influencer, Organic Social, Retail and Programmatic. The way forward is clear: the boundaries between SEO and the rest of the marketing mix are dissolving, and the opportunity to use original channels has never been greater.
What good looks like
Business brands that navigate well in this way are not the ones that add multiple channels. They are the ones who ask the hard question before they add any: where exactly is our audience searching, and can we prove it with data?
From there, work builds a measurement framework that shows what’s really happening across all those touch points, and aligns the areas that need to work together to drive performance in this area.
After all, SEO has always been about adapting to change, and this time is no different. The Google SERP will continue to evolve, so should the strategy. Explore, learn from what the data tells you, and build from there.
