Eric Siu and Neil Patel argue that SEO attribution is broken. Last-touch models miss the real impact of organic search, AI chatbots like ChatGPT are stealing traffic before it reaches your site, and companies juggling data from Google Analytics, Stripe, and custom tools can't piece together what actually drives conversions.
So I have this topic here on why SEO attribution is dead. So, but I can't log into my LinkedIn right now, so you can pick another topic.
That's okay. We can just go with SEO attribution is dead and why we agree with that. I don't know what you're referencing there, but I believe SEO attribution is dead for 2 reasons. I don't have the chart in front of me, but when we look at where people learn from a company versus where they buy, SEO is a big chunk of where they learn about a company, but it doesn't pass as the last conversion source a lot of times from where they convert. 2, SEO has evolved into optimizing for, you know, AI overviews, these LLM platforms like ChatGPT, and you're getting the brand mentions, but it's really screwing up your conversion tracking because a lot of people are learning about a company through these LLMs, assuming you can get your brand cited more, but the conversion source isn't always where they first found you. So you got to do, you know, multi-touch attribution, plus it's not Not all trackable. When someone sees your brand, they don't necessarily convert right away or even click right away, but they come back. And I think attribution, not just for SEO, but for SEO, organic, social, a lot of these channels are dead. And the attribution for paid, what we see is it skews more where the platforms try to take credit for the conversions.
Mm-hmm.
When I'm not saying they didn't help assist, but they weren't the only touchpoint.
Remember what was said a long time ago with advertising? It's like, you know, 50% of my marketing on the dollar works. I just don't know which 50%. And this is where we're going again. Because back in the day, when we first started doing this, let's call it like 15, for you, like maybe a little longer, 20 years ago or whatever, you had attribution, you can see keyword attribution, you see this, everything was very much last touch. But you can't look at it that way. And this post actually came from our mutual friend, Gaetano. And like AI traffic could go to your homepage, your pricing, your solutions, like you don't know what's actually driving, like, sure, you're good. We're not saying don't look at your analytics. But it's no longer gospel. I think you and I in the very beginning, we looked at it as gospel. It's not like that anymore.
When's the last time you checked your analytics?
I actually checked it like earlier this week, but I was looking at, I was looking at AI traffic data. That's what I was looking at.
I don't think I've logged into my Google Analytics for probably 6 months.
And Neil used to look at it every day. Whenever I went to Neil's house, Google Analytics was pulled up.
I used to look at it like 5, 6 times a day. But on the flip side, I do have a decent-sized team at this point. I don't know how many people are marketing, but we have over 1,000+ people.
So there's so many people that log in and send me reports.
I don't need to log in. So that's one—
To be fair, Neil gets a bunch of text messages in different text groups. That's your team. Yes.
And they break down all the data for me. And some of it comes from Google Analytics. Some of it comes from our own homegrown solution. Some of it comes from, you know, things like Recurly, Stripe, you get the point. But I do look at data probably 2 to 3 times a day. It's just, I don't have to log into Google Analytics. But I agree with you on attribution. I think there's been a big issue for attribution for time. Eric had this headline on his Single Grain homepage for a long time. I'm going to butcher it, but you know what I'm talking— actually, you better forget to say it.
I think it's 78% of CEOs don't believe that marketers measure ROI. We do.
Yes, it was something like that. And I think it's totally spot on in which most marketers never really measured attribution and executives never really believed in it, but Back in the day, it was easier to measure than it is now. I think it's just, we have more tools to help us, but it's more complex because data's in so many different areas and all the sources don't give you the data. And then the second problem is, is because of that, you don't really know what's fully causing the conversions. So you can show reports, it's just making marketer— it's making a marketer's job much harder in today's world.
Yep.
