Lately I’ve been seeing more and more tools claiming they can show “AI search volume” or “visibility in AI results.”
Here’s what I don’t get - where are they getting the numbers from?
As far as I know, OpenAI, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s AI Overviews don’t release any kind of public query data. Are they just pulling from Google keyword volume and applying some kind of formula?
My gut tells me not to trust these tools. Anyone know how reliable (or totally made up) these “AI volume” metrics might be?
If it’s all predictive, does it even matter? Or should we be focusing more on whether our content shows up in AI answers, not how often people ask the AI?
Spending any time investigating this stuff makes my brain hurt 🤯
Yeah, I’ve seen those 'AI visibility' dashboards too. Nothing screams trust me like a metric built on 0 actual data and 100% vibes 😅
Someone on Reddit said it best ... these tools are basically taking Google search volume, running it through a secret 'AI multiplier' and calling it insight. Until OpenAI or Google start publishing query logs, I’m treating those numbers like horoscope readings - entertaining, but not really worth the bits and bytes they consume.
“0 actual data and 100% vibes” - that’s exactly how it feels.
Although, I did come across one company claiming they’ve got real numbers - apparently they collected anonymized data from people who opted in to share their ChatGPT and Perplexity conversations.
It sounds legit on paper (GDPR-compliant and all that), but I can’t decide if that’s brilliant or borderline impossible. Like… how do you even scale something like that without the data getting super biased?
I’ve been wondering the same thing. I don’t think any of these “AI volume” numbers are reliable yet, but there are maybe a few small ways to get clues.
For example, if you check referral traffic in GA4, you can sometimes spot hits coming from ChatGPT or Perplexity. It’s not perfect (and often tiny), but it at least shows whether AI tools are starting to surface your content.
Right now I’m treating that as a kind of “AI visibility baseline” - not a real volume metric by any means!
I think part of the problem is that we’re looking at a fundamental shift in the way people search.
Because it’s a much more conversational way to interact with your preferred AI tool, traditional search volume numbers don’t really apply any more. In that, pinpointing specific queries that people use is much less important.
It’s much more about the semantics of the search query now. AI is pretty good at working out what you mean when you ask it something and there might be 50 different ways to ask, essentially, the same question.
So I think it’s going to become less about distinct search query volume and more about just covering concepts semantically … which we should all be doing anyway
When I write an article, I always ask Chatty to list me 20 or so related LSI keywords. Then I rewrite those keywords so that they will fit more naturally into an article. Then I write the article. Seems to work quite well for parasite SEO at least!
Yeah, that makes perfect sense Rohan. I also like the idea of using GA4 or other signals just to spot when AI tools are surfacing your content - but maybe that’s just part of a bigger shift anyway.
If AI results are pulling from concepts more than exact keywords, I agree that it’s time we stop obsessing over “search volume” altogether and start focusing on semantic coverage - how well our content actually represents a topic.
Feels like the future metric isn’t going to be “how many people searched this,” but “how often do AIs trust your content enough to use it.” … only problem is, AI can make mistakes!
“0 actual data and 100% vibes” - that’s exactly how it feels.