How to measure AEO: A practical guide for lean teams
Published July 15, 2026
So you’ve started to focus more on AEO, but now what? Whether you’re a business owner or a marketing manager, you’re going to need to report on performance at some point. But visibility into AI search is not as robust as it has been for SEO. There’s just not a ton we can track at this point, and the tools that do offer more robust tracking are priced for enterprise-level teams.
As a small business owner who’s focused on my own AEO as well as my clients’, I’ve put together my recommendations for how to measure AEO—all without adding another high monthly cost to your budget. Here’s what I’ll cover:
Reframing your SEO & AEO goals
I’m a believer that a solid SEO strategy is a solid AEO strategy—there’s not a ton that’s different, especially since many LLMs pull from Google and other search engines. But what has changed is the outcomes you used to be able to rely on from SEO (and now AEO).
The bottom line is that AI search is driving more zero-click search results. From ChatGPT/Claude answers to Google’s AI overviews, a lot of people are getting what they need from those small snippets, without the need to click into a web page.
It’s frustrating for sure, because it means we need to shift how we think about and grow organic traffic. But we also need to shift how we frame our SEO and AEO goals overall. Local and high-intent product searches can still drive traffic to your website, but search strategies should be more focused on awareness. This means asking questions like: Am I coming up when people are in the research phase? Is my brand equity competitive in the market? Is it easy for people to find me as a solution to their problems?
Now that we’re on the same page, let’s dive into tools and measurement.
What tools do I need to measure AEO?
If you’ve already used SEO tools in the past, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of them have been adding AI-specific measurement directly in their platforms. But the catch is that it’s typically a significantly greater cost than what you’re already paying.
If you do have the budget, I always recommend ahrefs or SEMrush as go-to content marketing tools and great options for reporting on both AEO and SEO. But if you’re a small business owner like me or you're operating with a small budget, you do have other options.
Google Search Console and Google Analytics (both free) can still provide some of the best analytics for SEO and AEO (more on the specifics below). From my research, I’ve also found that Rankscale and Atomic AGI are other great low-cost or free options that help you view AI metrics, understand how to optimize your website for AI, and track specific prompts that you want your brand to show up for.
Once you have the tools set up that you want to use, here’s what to track:
Awareness metrics
Your AEO awareness metrics will help you quantify how often you’re showing up and getting your brand in front of people through AI results.
Number of mentions in AI overviews: This is one metric that you can see in ahrefs if you have any paid account. It tells you how many times your brand showed up in a given month across search engine AI overviews.
Number of mentions in AI responses: Also in ahrefs, this metric is specifically for AI responses in LLMs and AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and more.
Generative AI impressions: If you don’t have ahrefs, Google Search Console is starting to roll out Generative AI performance (as of July 2026), which also gives you a number to track how often you’ve shown up across AI features in Google.
Consideration metrics
Moving down the funnel, your AI consideration metrics are where you can track how often people are taking action from your AI visibility.
Clicks from AI mentions: This is a metric that I was able to capture for free using Atomic AGI, which shows how many times people clicked into a website from an AI result.
Traffic from AI sources: If you don’t have Atomic AGI, you can track a similar metric in Google Analytics by heading to your Traffic Acquisition report and sorting by Source/Medium. Traffic from AI tools will typically show up as referral traffic with the platform named in the report (e.g. chatgpt.com / referral)
Share of voice & tracked query results: These metrics are both extremely helpful, though the tools I’ve found only show this data at an extra cost. If you can swing it, this will help you understand how you’re showing up against the competition and how often you’re showing up for specific queries that are relevant to your business, just like how you would track SEO keyword performance.
Conversion metrics
Just like any other channel, tracking conversion is still crucial to understand full performance. Even though I recommend framing AEO & SEO as predominantly Awareness channels, they still can (and should) drive conversion from high-intent searches.
You can track conversions for free using Atomic AGI or set up specific tracking in your Google Analytics account to be able to see how users referred from AI tools are converting on your website.
Hand off your AEO strategy and measurement
If you’re a business owner or marketer who’s stretched thin, AEO might be pretty overwhelming right now. It feels like just another thing to add to the list, and there’s a ton of noise about it right now.
In my professional opinion, there’s no need to panic. You aren’t going to fall behind if you aren’t developing a specific AEO strategy for your business. Instead, focusing on site health and authentic, trustworthy content is always the best place to start.
But understanding how your business shows up in the ever-changing AI landscape can be helpful in the long run. If you just don’t have room on your plate right now, I’m here to help! My content strategies and management services include both SEO & AEO, so you don’t have to feel like you’re putting it on the back-burner or taking stabs in the dark to figure it all out.
If you’re ready to get started, let’s chat!
