Throughout 2025, SEO experts reported the same story to leaders: organic traffic was down, clicks were down, and attribution was no longer meaningful.
AI-driven search experiences, zero-click results, and platform-level responses have widened the gap between discovery and measurable visits, making it harder than ever to accurately report on organic performance.
For many organizations, this has manifested as double-digit, year-over-year declines in reported organic traffic and leads.
I-suite asked the obvious questions: Why are clicks so low? Why does organic traffic seem to be 25% lower than last year? Is SEO actually hurting business?
The problem is not that organic search has stopped working. It was that the way most organizations measure it no longer reflects how adoption is happening today.
Why final touch is the wrong model for 2026
We are not sleeping well in natural search.
Many organizations still rely on defining the final touch, which measures the end of the customer journey – not the beginning.
Our linear attribute models – Search → Click → Convert – but user behavior is not.
Most traditional attribution models assume that discovery leads to measurable clicks.
Today, AI-driven SERPs are challenging that assumption and widening the gap between influence and income credit.
The definition of the final touch rewards the finish line – not the start of the race.
That is, the attribute of the last touch falls in the world of AI-first, zero-click, especially organic search. AI-driven search accelerates blind spots.
Our measure is not broken. It’s outdated and doesn’t tell the full story.
As an industry, we need to rethink our KPIs and how we measure success.
We need to tell the full data story across the entire customer journey, from up and down to clicks and conversions.
Dig deeper: Marketing guide: Models, tools, and best practices
So why is the final touch a problem?
The last touch attribute measures only the end of the customer journey.
As a result, it misses all the interactions that happened before the conversion, on all channels such as Google, Reddit, YouTube, AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Instagram, email, paid SERP listings, and more.
Many users of Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics rely on the last touch annotation when setting up their statistics.
This works as a foundation, but to tell the full story, you also need to understand where your first impression comes from.
This is especially true as traditional organic traffic – click-throughs from SERPs – continues to decline with the rise of AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Do you have the data you need to get the first touch feature?
Many organizations have data that is dirty, aggregated, and riddled with quality and integrity issues.
Look at yours and ask yourself if you can easily find the answers to these questions:
- How do my customers enter the organic marketing funnel?
- Should it be paid, direct, referral, or AI that gets the meaning of the conversion?
- Do I have a sense of AI transmission? Have we created a separate channel in our analytics environment to capture AI referrals directly?
- Can we see a difference in conversion rates based on which channel is the first touch point? For example, how is the paid conversion rate different if organic is the first touch point? Or if not?
If users aren’t searching much and clicking on your site, it doesn’t mean that organic is low or your SEO program is ineffective and inappropriate.
You may not be measuring SEO accurately or appropriately.
So what is the answer here?
Clean up your data, invest time in analyzing all the channels that drive traffic to your website, and understand how organic search still affects your overall SEO efforts.
Dig deep: Measuring zero-click searches: Visibility-first SEO of AI results
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Why first touch analytics will prove that organic results still matter
If a user searches and your brand is mentioned – but not connected – in the AI response, discovery has already taken place.
If that user visits your site the next day through social media or direct, or shows up in a brick and mortar store, does that mean SEO didn’t work?
Of course not!
Organic results bring the user into the funnel simply by referrals, citations, visibility – top of mind.
But how do you measure that when the last touch was a direct click, or social, or referral and/or conversion?
Organic search was the entry point – even without clicks – and is arguably more important for other channels.
Without knowing and measuring the first and last touch, marketers cannot answer this question.
Organic search often introduces category, issues, and establishes credibility and opinion about your brand before a consumer visits a website, watches a video, or visits a forum.
Dig deep: 7 marketing adjective meanings you need to know to avoid being played
Visibility is the key SEO phrase of 2026
The new currency of SEO in 2026 is not keywords, impressions, or clicks – it is seen in mentions and citations.
When AI systems choose which brands to quote, organic visibility becomes a consideration, not just traffic.
Remember what “organic” means today: a user searches and discovers your product himself, without paid promotion. Ten or 15 years ago, that usually meant Google.
Today, however, the potential customer can search, find, and research brands everywhere: YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, ChatGPT, and, of course, “Google it.”
They can also find answers and summary information about the Web Guide, AI Overview, and AI Mode without visiting the company’s website.
As marketers, we need to be smart about what visibility means today and how to grow it.
Dig deep: How to build search visibility before there’s a need
2026 is the year to increase SEO, not decrease it
As search becomes more fragmented and AI-driven experiences reduce clicks, SEO’s role in discovery hasn’t diminished – it’s gone earlier in the journey.
The problem is not that organic search has stopped working. It’s that post-click rate that we no longer capture where the influence begins.
The last-touch attribute reduces early detection and sub-SEO, especially in an AI-first, zero-click environment.
First touch analytics helps fix that by linking organic visibility to lower impact, conversions, and revenue.
AI Overview, AI Mode, and platforms like ChatGPT accelerate these measurement gaps, and best practices are still emerging.
But this is not a new challenge for the industry. We’ve navigated data silos and attribution blind spots before.
By 2026, teams that collaborate across analytics, SEO, and other channels — and invest in measuring the first touch — will be in a better position to prove organic impact and make better, more holistic decisions.
Those who modernize how SEO is measured will be the ones who continue to justify and increase investment, even if clicks decrease.
Dig deeper: MTA vs. MMM: Which marketing attribution model is right for you?
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