Like I said in my previous post about AI Search traffic, AI Search is here, it’s growing, and it’s important to analyze. It’s still a tiny piece of traffic for most sites (less than 1%), but again, it’s growing. Based on that growth, many site owners are extremely interested in understanding their visibility in AI Search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc., but they are unfortunately in the dark… Sure, there are third-party tools popping up left and right for tracking AI Search visibility, but they won’t capture everything, they can be expensive, etc.
And unlike Google and Bing, there is no reporting from the AI tools themselves. That data from the belly of the beast is incredibly important for site owners, but it can help AI tools as well… I’ll cover more about that soon. As of now, you can’t see the prompts that trigger your brand, your content, the urls rankings, you can’t see trending for impressions and clicks from AI answers, you can’t see indexing levels (for AI platforms building their own search indexes), and more.
On the flip side, Google provides Search Console and Bing provides Webmaster Tools which provide a ton of data and information from the belly of each beast. We desperately need that for AI Search tools, and yesterday. Let’s call it AI Search Console, or ASC, for each major AI Search platform.
Like I wrote earlier, providing a search console-like reporting platform would benefit site owners, marketers, and the AI search tools as well. First, let’s take a quick look at the data and functionality that AI Search Console could contain.
AI Search Console (ASC) reporting and functionality:
- Prompts your site shows up for (i.e. queries). And even better, maybe a flag to show if it was an initial prompt or a follow-up prompt.
- Impressions in AI answers based on a site’s content being referenced or quoted.
- Clicks and engagement based on your content ranking in AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot. You know, traffic levels!
- Trending of data would be essential to view impressions and click data over time.
- The ability to filter prompts and landing pages (with regex functionality like Google Search Console contains).
- Reporting by device and country just like GSC has.
- For AI companies building their own search indexes, ASC could provide Index Coverage reporting to show indexing levels over time, which urls are indexed, and which ones have not been indexed after being crawled or discovered. Again, like Google and Bing provide.
- User feedback trends to see if users thumb up/down answers when your content was used.
- Flagged content – An area to see if your site, or specific pieces of content, are being flagged for spam or misuse, and if your visibility is being impacted based on those actions. Basically, a manual actions viewer for AI Search.
- Crawl stats reporting to understand how often the AI Search tools are crawling sites (including a breakdown by response code). Again, like Google and Bing provide in their own respective search consoles.
- Removal tool – so site owners can request temporary removal from AI answers by url or path. Again, Google provides this functionality now.
- API access! It would be incredible to have an API to export this data in bulk. Again, like both Google and Bing provide.
How this could benefit site owners. They would:
- Be able to understand how their sites and content perform within AI Search tools. As of now, they are completely flying blind and making decisions based on a subset of prompts via new tracking tools that are unproven and only provide a snapshot of what’s going on within AI Search for any given site.
- See traffic from AI search tools right from the belly of the beast.
- View potential gaps based on understanding the prompts they are currently ranking for.
- View trending over time and understand how AI Search tools view their site and content over time.
- For AI platforms building their own search indexes, site owners could understand indexing levels, how that changes over time, which content is not being indexed, and more.
- Be able to export and archive performance data via an API. An API is also essential for building advanced reporting tools by companies, agencies, and consultants.
- View crawling over time, including crawl errors, status codes, etc.
- Be able to temporarily remove content from AI Search tools.
How this could benefit AI Search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others:
- Providing transparency to site owners about AI Search visibility could build more trust with site owners, which could drive more interest in ranking in the AI Search tools.
- That transparency via the reporting could also yield more site owners opening up crawling to AI search tools as they see visibility, traffic, and the value of ranking there.
- Analyzing rankings, engagement, and traffic from the belly of each beast could help site owners understand the value in ranking across AI Search. And that can drive higher-quality content creation, more engagement, and more interest in each AI platform.
- ASC could help cut down on spam as site owners understand tactics that yield manual actions (penalties), reduced visibility in AI Search, etc.
Again, we need AI Search Console (ASC)… yesterday:
I’m sure there’s much more I could add, but I’ll stop here. I think I speak for many site owners and marketers when I say it would be incredibly valuable for AI Search tools to build their own versions of AI Search Console (ASC). It would be valuable for site owners, but also valuable for each AI Search platform. The reporting could help site owners expand visibility across AI Search the right way, while also helping AI Search platforms build more trust with those site owners (which can fuel even more growth).
Without a search console-like product, site owners will continue to fly blind. That’s regardless of third-party AI Search visibility tools popping up which only provide a snapshot of visibility for any given site. They will never be able to provide the wealth of information that the AI Search platforms could via ASC. You know, like data from the belly of the beast.
So bring on ASC! We’re ready for it. :)
GG