Measure What Matters - Croatia SEO Summit 2026

Transcript

1. Measure what actually matters . Amanda King @ FLOQ Consulting / Topic Compass Croatia Search Summit Jun 2026
2. It’s the quarterly review.
3. It’s not that the work isn’t valuable. The metrics we’ve been using to prove it were never the right ones .
4. We are marketers. Full stop.
5. What’s what 1. What was always broken 2. What just stopped working 3. Three anchors 4. The wrong answer being sold 5. The harder conversation
6. What broke, because it was already broken.
7. 1. Google doesn’t like keywords
8. Google acknowledges query-only based matching is pretty terrible. “Direct “Boolean” matching of query terms has well known limitations, and in particular does not identify documents that do not have the query terms, but have related words [...]The problem here is that conventional systems index documents based on individual terms, rather than on concepts. Concepts are often expressed in phrases [...] Accordingly, there is a need for an information retrieval system and methodology that can comprehensively identify phrases in a large scale corpus, index documents according to phrases, search and rank documents in accordance with their phrases, and provide additional clustering and descriptive information about the documents. [...]” - Information retrieval system for archiving multiple document versions, granted 2017 (link)
9. “Rather than simply searching for content that matches individual words , BERT comprehends how a combination of words expresses a complex idea.” Source: https://blog.google/products/search/how-ai-powers-great-search-results/
10. 2. Google personalises everything
12. Google is much more than a search engine. h/t Jes Scholz for the visualisation concept Google Home Google Groups Google Discover Google Lens Google Arts & Culture Google News Google Assistant Google Play Google Images Google Videos Google Maps Google Shopping Google For Jobs Podcasts Google Travel Buy on Google Google Finance Google Books Google Classroom Google Search Gemini AI
13. 3. Search behaviour is changing
14. In the US, Most growth appears in mid-length queries, particularly 6–9 word searches Searches 15+ words show more volatility than all other query lengths. https://datos.live/report/state-of-search-q4-2025/
15. Don’t lie. Don’t lie. We’ve all looked at page-level organic uplift and seen it was a glossary page or a 300-word definition with a 2-second dwell. And reported it as growth anyway.
16. Nobody wants to buy from exactmatchdomai n.com any more. Brand trust wasn’t necessary. Brand sentiment was disregarded. Brand recognition slowed us down.
17. What stopped working.
18. Click rates collapsed where AI Overviews appeared. Pew Research 8% click rate with AI Overview 15% without one Ahrefs 58% click drop at position 1 Feb 2026
19. “Zero-click rates didn’t actually go up. Those queries weren’t driving clicks already , before AI came in and made it obvious.” Source: Semrush AI Overviews Study
20. The Bermuda triangle of measurement
21. 363,000 Discover clicks on one article. Practically no traffic reported in GA4.
22. LLM visibility: high quality. Mostly invisible. AI Mode 93% of searches no click ChatGPT 1:1500 referral rate 4.4x convert vs organic
23. This feels like a loss if you’re used to last click. But it’s always been overstated.
24. Where the new (old) metrics come from
25. Talk to finance. Or your brand team. Directional measurement is better than none. 1. Ask how the business measures TV, radio, sponsorship.Channels that never had clean attribution. 2. Brand teams have done directional measurement for decades. 3. If you have no other recourse, set the goal value to $1. Start the conversation.
26. Directional, not deterministic. • Privacy laws. • JS-blocking. • App-to-web journeys. Dark social. Attribution has been eroding for years. AI just made it impossible to ignore.
27. Three anchors. Wrap proxies around them.
28. Anchor 1: Share of Voice. • Brands whose SOV exceeds market share tend to grow. • Free: share of search via Trends, or top-20 SERP visibility.Paid: Demandsphere or Profound. • Never report on individual query movement. Use it representationally. • Pick one. Stick to it. Consistency matters more than the choice.
29. Anchor 2: Branded Search Trend. If your work is building anything: recognition, salience, the next-purchase consideration set — this should grow. • Available in Search Console. Free. • Stakeholders already understand what it is. • If branded search is flat across a year of sustained work, something isn’t landing. • Slowly, lumpily, but it should grow.
30. Anchor 3. Everything underneath the surface.
31. Visibility is a reflection of the brand underneath. Strengthen the signals, you become easier to find. Don't, and no amount of prompt tracking is going to fix it.
32. Six structural capabilities. Visibility is a reflection of these. 1. Experience integrity 2. Physical availability 3. Mental availability 4. Distinctiveness 5. Reputation 6. Commercial proof
33. Make yourself legible . So machines can read your signals accurately.
34. What legibility looks like. It takes work: • An 80-year-old company • A Wikipedia page • Integrated traditional & digital PR • Thorough technical work This isn’t ranking. It’s making yourself measurable.
35. 30 encounters isn’t a ranking factor. It’s the threshold at which your brand becomes a measurable entity .
36. Schema as instrumentation, not optimisation. Name, Address, Phone (NAP) is one of the few languages where you tell the machine what you are. Local search figured this out 15 years ago. The rest of SEO is catching up.
37. Supporting metrics worth watching. • Infrastructure reliability. • Brand mentions. • Direct demand. • Reviews & reputation. • Repeat purchase. Pick two or three. Report quarterly.
38. It’s ORM. With new infrastructure.
39. Three framings. Same conclusion. • Jono Alderson: visibility is a reflection of structural capability. • Lily Ray at Affiliate Summit West: brand visibility is the new KPI. • Jes Scholz in Search Engine Land: the analytics stack moved underneath you. Most new tools are pretending things haven’t changed.
40. Movement , not position
41. “Our share of voice is 14%.” 14% of what? Compared to whom?
42. Incremental change against the market. Every other department does this. SEO has been weirdly resistant. • Sales reports revenue growth, not revenue. • Product reports adoption rate, not install count. • Finance reports margin improvement, not margin.
43. Track the gap. Report the gap. Excess SOV is the metric that correlates with what happens next.
44. The wrong answer being sold
45. The dashboards you’ve seen
46. “Stop relying on synthetic AI rank tracking. It’s the Lighthouse of AI — looks scientific, isn’t. Use first-party log files.” Source: Jamie Indigo, Tech SEO Connect 2025
47. SparkToro’s experiment: 600 volunteers, 2,961 runs. Rank in AI <1% same list, same prompt <0.1% same order Presence frequency 55-77% of responses, top brands Stable at sample size
48. Run the query set. enough times to be statistically meaningful. Like a panel survey. Not a fact.
49. What goes on your dashboard
50. Share of voice. Tracked as the gap.
51. Branded search. It should grow.
52. What’s underneath. Watch these quarterly. • Infrastructure reliability. Does the experience hold up across surfaces? • Brand mentions. How often are you in the comparative set? • Direct demand. Branded direct traffic, directionally. • Reviews & reputation. Volume, recency, sentiment, stability. • Repeat purchase. Hardest to fake.
53. How to share them. • Track movement, not absolute values. • (direct) is now polluted with Discover, AI Mode, AI Overviews. Watch it alongside branded search, not alone. • Reputation isn’t just positivity. Stability matters as much. Different stories in different places confuse customers and machines.
54. The harder conversation
55. Most of the trouble with new measurement isn't the measurement .
56. It's that someone's bonus is tied to the old one.
57. They’re going to fight you
58. “Cut all traffic projections in half for 2026. You’re acknowledging that the input changed by half, and rebuilding around what’s still trustworthy.” Source: Ross Hudgens, Tech SEO Connect 2025
59. “You’re looking for explainability, not truth . If you can explain in a sentence what your number is and why it moves, it’s good enough to start the conversation.” Source: Tom Critchlow, Input Metrics for SEO
60. Don't make one dashboard serve everyone. Translation is the thing. Ian Lurie’s progressive detail (influenced by Tufte). • Top (CxO/board): one or two outcome metrics. • Middle (VPs/directors): outcomes plus the proxies for their function. • Bottom (your team): the operating data. Don’t make one dashboard serve everyone.
61. Take a step back and think of everything SEO is and includes
62. Does that sound like an acquisition channel focused on keyword visibility?
63. And yet.
65. Less sexy. Also less wrong .
66. 3 takeaways 1. The metrics were always lying. AI revealed it. 2. Pick anchors. Wrap proxies, including entity legibility, around them. 3. Translation is your job, not the dashboards.
67. Amanda King is human • 15+ years in the SEO industry • Business- and product-focussed • AI & LLM forward strategies • Visited 40+ countries, lived in 3 • Always learning • Slightly obsessed with tea
68. Thank you LinkedIn: Amanda King, FLOQ https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandaecking/ Topic research: topiccompass.io Growth consulting: floq.co