Clicks are becoming a weaker way to judge marketing spend. A better test is which job each service is paid to do.
Most businesses buy digital marketing services as a bundle. Some SEO, some content, a few social posts, maybe ads and email. For years the whole bundle was judged on one number that was easy to report: traffic.
That number is getting less reliable. Google now answers many questions on the results page itself, and some people read the answer and move on. The work may still be doing something useful. The trouble is that the dashboard can no longer tell you what.
What did Pew find?
Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. Its study of clicks on Google AI summaries found that 18% of searches in the sample produced an AI summary.
When one appeared, users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary. Links inside the summary got clicked about 1% of the time. Longer searches and questions were far more likely to produce a summary than one- or two-word queries.
This was an observational study of one panel over one month, so it doesn’t prove that summaries alone caused every difference. But it’s a clear signal that clicks per search can fall even when a business is still visible.
Three jobs inside a marketing package
Here’s the reframe. It helps to sort the services in a retainer by the job each one does:
- Getting found: content and SEO that put the business in front of people searching
- Getting trusted: listings, reviews, reputation and expert content that make the business credible
- Getting chosen: service pages, offers, conversion paths and follow-up that turn interest into a lead or sale
AI summaries put the most pressure on the traffic generated by informational searches. Content whose main purpose is to attract informational clicks carries the biggest risk, because those are the searches most likely to be answered on the page.
That doesn’t make visibility work worthless. Content that builds authority, answers buying questions or gets a business cited can still matter. But it needs a different scorecard than raw sessions.
Getting trusted and getting chosen depend less on informational clicks. Service pages and conversion paths give customers somewhere to evaluate a business and act on what they’ve learned. No high-intent search is immune to change, but those pages tend to sit closer to revenue.
Bundled or separate?
How the services are bought affects how easy it is to see which job each one does. Some agencies sell each channel as its own line item. Others bundle them under one plan and one report.
One example is hqdm’s comprehensive digital marketing services, which include SEO work focused on technical foundations, on-page optimization, content, link building and performance reporting. The broader principle applies whether services are bundled or handled by separate vendors: reporting should connect each activity to a clear business objective and measurable result.
Keep an eye on timing, too. Organic results tend to move slowly, so judge strategy over quarters. Technical problems, lost leads or sudden traffic drops still need watching week to week.
What investors should ask for
For anyone reviewing a portfolio company’s marketing line, the three jobs offer a simple split. Ask the team to tag each part of its spend by job, then report each against its own measure:
- Getting found: visibility, impressions and branded search, not only sessions
- Getting trusted: review volume, listing accuracy and citations
- Getting chosen: leads, close rate and revenue from the pages that convert
A single blended traffic number can still be useful, but it can’t clearly attribute performance to individual services. A company that splits its spend by job can cut weak visibility work without touching what drives sales.
Do you need a separate AI search service?
Probably not. Google’s guidance on AI features in Search says there are no additional requirements or special changes needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, the same baseline as regular search.
Measurement is improving as well. Google introduced a generative AI performance report in Search Console in June 2026, and its help documentation says the report had rolled out to all websites worldwide as of August 31, 2026. The report shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, drawn from the Web search data in the standard Performance report, though sites with too few of those impressions may not see it. So visibility in AI features is becoming easier to track without buying a separate product.
That’s a reason to question any “AI search package” sold as a brand-new discipline. Google’s guidance points back to the fundamentals: a site Google can crawl, pages that answer real questions, accurate listings and a reputation people can verify.
One rule before the next renewal
Before renewing any marketing contract, go line by line and ask two things. Which job is this paid to do, and what number proves it’s doing that job?
If a service can’t answer both, it’s the obvious place to cut or restructure. If it can, keep funding it, even if it no longer shows up as clicks.
