Search was always a vanity metric – why I’m unworried about its decline

Opinion

If search is a vanity metric dressed up as a performance indicator, how worried should we be about its demise and what should we be measuring instead? Havas Market UK’s MD has the answers.

If I had a pound for every panicked conversation I’ve had this year about organic traffic declining due to LLMs and zero-click searches, I’d be writing this from somewhere considerably warmer than Leeds.

The anxiety is palpable. CEOs are looking at their dashboards, watching those lovely green lines flatten. Marketing teams are frantically trying to explain why their Google Analytics numbers are heading south. And frankly, the collective hand-wringing across the industry has reached fever pitch.

But here’s the thing: I’m not worried. And neither should you be.

The illusion of traffic

Let’s be honest about what search traffic has always been: a vanity metric dressed up as a performance indicator. It looks brilliant on a slide deck. It makes for impressive year-on-year comparison charts. But what does it actually tell you about your business?

Very little, as it turns out.

For years, we’ve been seduced by traffic numbers because they were easy to measure and nice to look at. But somewhere along the way, we forgot to ask the crucial question: Does this traffic actually convert? Whether that’s online sales, in-store visits, or any other meaningful business outcome.

I’ve seen brands with millions of monthly visits struggle to turn a profit, while others with far less traffic thrive. What sets them apart isn’t volume. It’s intent, quality, and relevance. These are the things raw traffic numbers fail to capture.

The shift was already happening

Here’s what makes the current panic particularly amusing: this decline isn’t new. According to our own research, over 60% of searches already don’t lead to a click. That’s not a future problem; it’s been the reality for some time now.

The search landscape has been fragmenting for years. Amazon now dominates product searches. Gen Z are increasingly turning to social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest for product discovery. The traditional “Google it, click through, buy” journey is already a relic of a simpler time.

LLMs and AI search platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT aren’t creating the problem; they’re simply accelerating a trend that was already well underway. 

From vanity to real impact

So what should we be measuring instead of search traffic? The answer is refreshingly simple: outcomes.

Did the customer convert? Did they return? Recommend you to others? Spend more? Stay loyal?

These are the metrics that actually matter, and none of them require a click from a traditional search result.

Today’s customer journey is fragmented and nonlinear. Discovery might start on TikTok, research on YouTube, reviews on Reddit, and comparisons via ChatGPT before a purchase happens on your site, a marketplace, or in-store.

At each touchpoint, your job isn’t to chase traffic. It’s to build trust, deliver value, and guide the customer toward conversion.

And here’s the opportunity: fewer visits, but higher intent. Less noise, more relevance. The users who do reach you are more likely to convert, because they’ve already done their research, possibly with an LLM that cited your brand as authoritative.

This shift is forcing marketers to focus on what they should have been prioritising all along: creating genuinely useful content, building brand authority, and showing up in the moments that matter.

The publisher problem

Now, I’m not completely blasé about this shift. It is genuinely problematic for publishers who have built their entire business model around display advertising that depends on traffic volume. That matters, and it’s a challenge the industry needs to address.

But for brands? This is a distraction from the real issue.

The real issue is whether you’re showing up in the moments that matter. Whether you’re building meaningful connections with your customers. Whether you’re driving genuine business outcomes.

So, what should you be doing differently?

Stop obsessing over organic traffic numbers in your monthly reports. Start tracking how many of those visitors actually convert, how their lifetime value compares to customers from other channels, and whether your presence across the fragmented search landscape is actually driving business outcomes.

Invest in creating authoritative content that AI platforms will want to cite. Build your brand presence across multiple platforms where your audience actually searches. Focus on the quality of engagement rather than the quantity of visits.

And perhaps most importantly, remember that the goal was never to get traffic for traffic’s sake. It was to grow your business. If you’re achieving that with fewer site visits but better outcomes, you’re winning.

The rules of commerce and performance have changed again. But to be honest, they’ve been changing constantly for the past two decades.

This is just the latest evolution, and like all the ones before it, the brands that will thrive are those that adapt to serve their customers, rather than chase algorithms.

Alex Walker is the MD of Havas Market UK