How to Track AEO Success
Welcome to your new AEO measurement toolkit. Now that we have our new playbook (AEO) and our pillars (Authority, Content, Experience), we need to know how to keep score.
In our traditional SEO world, we lived by rankings, clicks, and traffic. In a world where a user can get a perfect answer without clicking, our old set of metrics is missing the full story.
This lesson will walk you through the five key metrics in your new toolkit. We'll show you how to find them, what they mean, and how to use them to prove your AEO success.
AI Visibility
What It Is
This is the most fundamental AEO metric. It answers the question, "Are we even part of the AI conversation?" It's measured in two ways:
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Mentions: When the AI names your brand or product in its answer.
- Example: A user asks, "What are the best running shoes for flat feet?" The AI Overview might say, “Some of the top-rated brands for this include [Your Brand], Brooks, and Asics.”
- This is a powerful signal that the AI recognizes your brand as a relevant and authoritative entity for that topic.
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Citations: When the AI directly links to your website as a source for its answer.
- Example: After providing its synthesized answer, the AI will display a list of sources that it used, with a direct link to your article on “How to Choose Paint Finishes.”
- This is the source of a new, high-value click. It's the "link" you win that gives a user the chance to become AI Referral Traffic.
Why It's Valuable
These are the new "rankings." It's your top-of-funnel for AEO. It tracks your brand's presence and authority for your most important topics. Are you growing? Are you losing ground? This is where you find out.
How to Track in Conductor
- Tool: AI Search Performance in Conductor Intelligence.
- What You'll See: This report will show you your total number of Mentions and Citations for the topics you track. You can monitor your visibility over time to see if your AEO efforts are helping you show up more often for important topics.
AI Share of Voice
What It Is
This metric takes your AI Visibility and puts it in context. It's your total Mentions and Citations compared to your top competitors for a given set of topics.
Why It's Valuable
Visibility is great, but Share of Voice tells you if you're winning. Knowing you have 100 mentions is good. Knowing you have 100 mentions and your top competitor only has 20 is great. This is how you measure your market share in the AI landscape.
How to Track in Conductor
- Tool: AI Search Performance in Conductor Intelligence.
- What You'll See: The AISP report is built for this. You can add your top competitors and see a direct, side-by-side comparison of your market share. This is perfect for competitive analysis and proving your growing authority to leadership.
Brand Sentiment in AI Responses
What It Is
This is a more advanced, qualitative metric. It's not just if you're mentioned, but how you're mentioned. Is the AI positioning your brand as a trusted leader? Is the sentiment positive, neutral, or negative?
Why It's Valuable
Not all mentions are equal. A mention like, "[Your Brand] is a trusted, industry-leading solution..." is far more valuable than just being in a list. A negative mention is a fire you need to put out. This is a crucial metric for brand health.
How to Track in Conductor
- Tool: AI Search Performance in Conductor Intelligence.
- What You'll See: The AISP report analyzes the context of your mentions to assign a sentiment (positive, negative, neutral). This lets you move beyond simple counts and understand the quality and impact of your AI visibility.
AI Referral Traffic
What It Is
This is the metric that answers, "Are people clicking on those citations?" This is the traffic that lands on your site from an AI-generated answer.
Why It's Valuable
This is the "money" metric. It's the high-intent, pre-qualified traffic we talked about in Lesson 1. By tracking this, you can prove that your AEO visibility is turning into high-quality site visitors who are more likely to convert. This is how you connect AEO to your core business goals.
How to Track in Conductor
- Tool: The new Pages report in Conductor Intelligence.
- What You'll See: This report can help you identify traffic coming from AI sources, and compare AI referral to traditional search traffic trends.
- Important Note: The new Pages report is currently in an opt-in Alpha. If you're interested in early access, please speak to your account team or reach out to [email protected].
AI Crawler Bot Activity
What It Is
This is a technical, diagnostic metric. It's the measure of how often AI-specific crawlers (like ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, etc.) are visiting your site.
Why It's Valuable
This is your technical “check engine” light. If your visibility metrics in AISP are low, this is the first place to look. Are the bots not crawling you? Is there a technical issue? Or are they crawling you, but just not using your content? This metric is the key to troubleshooting your technical AEO.
How to Track in Conductor
- Tool: Conductor Monitoring (as part of the Log File Analysis feature).
- What You'll See: This feature allows you to integrate your server's log files. You can see exactly which bots are visiting, how often they come, and which pages they're looking at.
- Important Note: This is an advanced feature available to enterprise package customers.
Lesson 2 Key Takeaways
- Your new AEO Measurement Toolkit includes five key metrics, all trackable in Conductor.
- AI Visibility (Mentions & Citations) is your new "ranking," tracked in AI Search Performance.
- AI Share of Voice is your competitive benchmark, also in AI Search Performance.
- Brand Sentiment tracks the quality of your mentions in AI Search Performance.
- AI Referral Traffic measures the high-intent visitors coming from citations, trackable in the new Pages report (now in Alpha).
- AI Crawler Bot Activity is your technical diagnostic tool, found in Conductor Monitoring.