I often get asked in 2026, “How do we measure this?” when it comes to AI visibility.
People want to know if their brand is appearing in ChatGPT or if Perplexity is recommending them. They also wonder if their work on AI grounding last quarter made any impact.
The truth is, the solution doesn’t exist yet. Anyone offering a straightforward dashboard for tracking your brand’s presence in AI spaces across search, assistive, and agent modes is just making an educated guess.
Tracking queries we assume users might ask, or adapting search keywords as a best guess, won’t cut it. These prebuilt lists often miss the mark as they choose easily mapped or ideal scenarios that don’t reflect reality.
The visibility question itself is valid, but the precise answer everyone seeks simply isn’t feasible.
Brands looking for perfect AI-era visibility KPIs are chasing a mirage. Instead, we need a methodology inspired by economic measurement of complex systems—this is where my Funnel Query Pathway comes in.
This unique approach serves as strategy, measurement, and analysis, unlike traditional metrics that were reliable when search rankings were predictable and measurable.
Now, we must rethink our approach in a complex AI landscape, asking new questions and measuring different signals.
I studied economics at Liverpool John Moores University, which gives me a unique perspective on measurement challenges where traditional tools fail at larger scales.
As with macroeconomics dealing with vast, unobservable systems, AI visibility is too opaque and personalized for old tools. We need macro principles to guide AI-era brand measurement.
AI systems have similar structural complexities as macroeconomics:
Opacity hinders visibility into the system’s state, with AI algorithms operating like a black box. Personalization means users receive unique outputs from the same inputs, influencing the visibility paths.
With expanding possibilities across apps, systems, and devices, AI environments now introduce variables that weren’t present in traditional search models.
The Funnel Query Pathway methodology focuses on these macro aspects, shifting away from keyword mapping to a broader approach focused on cohorts and intent at the node level.
AI-era acquisition begins at the conversion moment projected upward, contrary to traditional funnel methods.
Inspired by this post on Search Engine Land.
Leave a Reply