LLM visibility and AI-driven search: what replaces “rankings” as the primary KPI - BrightonSEO April 2026

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO LLM visibility and AI-driven search: what replaces “rankings”
as the primary KPI Judith Lewis DECABBIT CONSULTANCY @decabbit | Speakerdeck.com/decabbit

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO ➢ CANADIAN ➢ Run DeCabbit Consultancy doing SEO,
PPC, Social Media and integrated marketing campaigns ➢ Online since 1985, online marketing since 1996 ➢ B2B, B2C, M2B, SaaS, Publishing & FinTech ➢ Have worked with GalaCoral, Google, NatWest/RBS, National Gallery, CIPD, Fidelity, NBC Universal, Bayer, Amadeus, AMD, AmEx, TotalJobs, Virgin.com, Zopa, NSPCC, GE & more ➢ Contact: [email protected] AM I Who Obligatory slide ! Judith Lewis

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO How LLMs find things and understand them

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO The LLM ingests content including webpages

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO It chunks and tokenises the content

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Content is no longer recognisable

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Entities and their relationships

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO LLMs do not store facts the way we
assume they do

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Factual recall in LLMs is additive rather than
driven by one single “fact neuron”

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO It treats facts as triples like (subject, relation,
attribute)

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO The right answer appears because these mechanisms reinforce
one another

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO LLMs combine several partial clues until one answer
stands out 1

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Uh, no. You just cannot see it because
you cannot render a page… but that’s important to know!

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Off topic??!?

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Metrics

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO These KPIs Matter – Not Keywords Conversions from
each channel Brand awareness (brand searches) Profitability performance User engagement Cost per acquisition overall & by channel Visibility by channel Information accuracy within LLMs

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Conversions from each channel

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Brand awareness

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Profitability performance

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Cost per acquisition overall & by channel

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Visibility by channel (build a dashboard/report)

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Information accuracy

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO WAIKAY shows where info came from

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Getting it right for LLMs

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Content Structure for AI https://www.aleydasolis.com/en/ai-search/ai-search-optimization-checklist/

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO 2

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Trust Signals for LLMs

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Technical Tips

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Site Architecture Counts 3

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Page Speed Matters

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Schema is genuinely important

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Internal and external links are essential

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO thinking New ways of

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO The money is what is important here

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Not just rankings…

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Not only visibility

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Reporting

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO I like SE Ranking for visibility PLUS…

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO I also like Semrush One

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Citations and brand inclusions

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Semrush One has lots of AI reporting tools

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO For prompt tracking, the only way is WAIKAY

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Reporting needs to reflect… Business aims both with
regards to the mission statement and revenue goals. The top-level strategy based on your understanding of client or company that your team (or you) are working to. This is a great way to keep on track and prove value. Targeting things like countries, personas, and ways you will target them. Your target audience and their intents based on search queries (especially in B2B and M2B). This is a great way to demonstrate you understand and have reflected back corporate goals/needs.

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO KPIs must be tied back to corporate goals
Conversions from each channel “SEO’s KPIs are to increase visibility to contribute £2M to the annual turnover with AI contributing £150k to that overall figure”. Brand awareness (brand searches) “In January of 2026, we saw a 26% growth over the same month in 2025 and Q1 of 2026 is showing an uplift of 34% of branded or brand related searches, with an increase of 22% of traffic coming to generic pages from AI.” Profitability performance “We continue to push customers to higher margin product pages through improved user flows through the site and from all digital channels.” User engagement “Users increased time on site and flow through the site, which correlated with an improvement of 17% in overall number of sales.”

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO KPIs must be tied back to corporate goals
Cost per acquisition overall and by channel “Overall, our CPA is £277.21 with a breakdown by channel as follows (SEO is based on per month cost) Visibility by channel “Our visibility in ChatGPT has increased by 72%, with Gemeni lagging behind with only a 12% increase, while Claude shows a 55% increase” Information accuracy within LLMs While our visibility has increased, we are seeing increasing numbers of 404 page visits and some inaccurate information is showing up in GPTs. We are addressing this with our schema implementation later this quarter.”

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Tools can help but ONLY YOU can deliver
proper strategic insight

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Check out this Wix Course https://www.wix.com/studio/academ y/courses/seo-reporting

@JudithLewis #brightonSEO Image Sources 1. https://www.themoonlight.io/en/review/summing- up-the-facts-additive-mechanisms-behind-factual- recall-in-llms 2. https://brandwell.ai/blog/seo-content-template/
3. https://saltmarketing.ie/effective-website- architecture-practices-you-should-know/ 76

LLM visibility and AI-driven search: what repla...

LLM visibility and AI-driven search: what replaces “rankings” as the primary KPI - BrightonSEO April 2026

Other Decks in Marketing & SEO

Featured

Transcript