The SEO industry is entering its most turbulent period yet.
Traffic is declining. AI is absorbing informational queries.
Social platforms now function as search engines. Google is shifting from a gateway to an answer engine.
The result is a sector running in circles – unsure what to measure, what to optimize, or even what SEO is meant to do.
Yet within this turbulence, something clear has emerged.
A single marketing metric that cuts through the noise and signals brand health and future demand.
A metric that marketers and SEOs can align around with confidence.
That metric is share of search.
Discovery is changing, and measurement must change with it
The old model of being discovered by accident through classic search behavior is disappearing.
AI Overviews answer questions without sending traffic anywhere.
Meta is already rolling out its own AI to answer user queries.
TikTok and YouTube continue to grow as product discovery engines.
It is only a matter of time before LinkedIn becomes a business search engine powered by conversational AI.
We are witnessing a seismic shift. In moments like this, measurement becomes even more important.
Many SEO metrics are losing meaning, but one is rapidly gaining importance.
What share of search actually measures
Share of search is a metric developed by James Hankins and Les Binet.
It is calculated by dividing a brand’s search volume by the total search volume for all brands in its category.
The result shows the proportion of category interest the brand commands.
The value is not in the calculation itself, but in what the metric correlates with.
Studies published by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) show that share of search correlates strongly with market share and future buying behavior.
As the IPA notes:
- “Share of search is a leading indicator or predictor of share of market. When share of search goes up, share of market tends to rise. When share of search goes down, share of market falls.”
In simple terms, consumers search for brands they are considering, buying, or using.
That makes search behavior one of the clearest available signals of real demand.
Share of search was never designed to be perfect. It does not capture every nuance of how people find information across platforms.
It was built as a practical proxy for brand demand – and right now, practical measurement is exactly what the industry needs.
Dig deeper: Measuring what matters in a post-SEO world
From traffic to demand: Why marketers need a new signal
Traffic as a measurement has become almost meaningless.
It has been easy to inflate, manipulate, and misunderstand.
Goodhart’s Law explains why. When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
Traffic was treated as a target for years, and as a result, it stopped being a reliable indicator of anything meaningful.
Now…
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