Part 2: The Great Decoupling: Adjusting Your Strategy for AI

Everyone in the digital marketing world who is worth their salt knows about The Great Decoupling. Google coined the term to explain a phenomenon that became widespread this year.

If you watch your website analytics closely, you may have noticed it: impressions are rising but clicks are not keeping pace. In other words, your website is showing up more in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), but fewer people are clicking through to your site.

This is not a bug. It does not mean your website is poor or your agency suddenly got worse. It is a byproduct of how search is evolving under AI.

An impression is the moment your site appears in search results, even if no one clicks it. For years, impressions and clicks moved together. That is what first made SEO so valuable: ranking well meant visibility, which translated into traffic and then leads.

Now those lines are splitting apart. More search queries are being answered directly on the results page or inside AI summaries. If someone searches “how long does it take to recover from LASIK” and Google serves a quick AI answer, they may never visit your site, even if the source was your website’s content.

This can be frustrating if you rely on traffic alone as the measure of progress. The point is you cannot put so much weight on clicks to your website anymore. The Great Decoupling changed the rules of measurement. If you dismiss rising impressions, you risk missing the bigger picture of how AI is reshaping search and why your digital strategy should evolve to meet the moment.

Impressions prove you are visible. Missing web traffic mostly reflects how users consume information, not a loss of your website’s authority.

What’s happening is AI and search engines are holding onto top-of-funnel traffic (early researchers, casual browsers, and comparison shoppers) and answering them quickly. Most of that traffic was not ready to engage services anyway. The real value is in bottom-funnel searches, where buyer intent is clear.

If you read Part 1 of this series (AI is Changing SEO by Raising the Bar for Your Brand), you know that with AI, brand is even more integral to digital marketing success. Top-of-funnel visibility like impressions may not create an immediate lead, but it is a strong signal of brand authority. It shows your website’s content is credible enough to surface repeatedly in AI and search results, building brand awareness over time.

Another key point: a drop in traffic does not always mean a drop in leads. In many cases, we’re seeing leads remain steady even while top-funnel clicks decline. Bottom-funnel traffic is still moving through. The challenge is to stop treating impressions without clicks as wasted effort and start treating them as brand exposure that fuels demand later. The smarter move is to analyze whether fewer clicks are truly lowering leads, or simply the result of The Great Decoupling. The AI era requires that we take a more granular approach to analyzing your marketing.

Bottom-funnel searches are high-intent queries such as “breast augmentation surgeon near me” or “car accident lawyer in Miami.” For the most part, these are still driving clicks, consultations, and sign-ups. Even if a user engages with an AI response, they often still click through to the source (your website). So, the impression and click match up.

This means we must keep your core service web pages sharp. Refresh FAQs, update calls to action, and make sure your Google Business Profile is optimized. You want to control bottom-funnel terms in your market to protect the leads that matter most.

The surest way to win in an era of shrinking clicks is to make people search directly for you. That means more branded searches like “Dr. Rahban plastic surgery” or “Goldberg & Rosen law firm.”

Branded searches rarely get filtered into AI summaries because the intent is clear. Even if an AI summary does appear, since you’ve already earned the users interest, they click through to your website or contact your practice another way because they are looking for you.

You build branded demand by strengthening presence outside of internet search:

• Streaming and connected TV is becoming more of a performance channel as well as a branding one
• Programmatic campaigns that keep your name visible to the right audience
• Social media content that highlights client outcomes and results (boosting posts is now essential for visibility)
• Community events where your presence builds recognition

The more people know your business name, the less you depend on generic search results. Branded traffic also signals to AI and search engines that you are an authority, which boosts visibility for generic searches that drive SEO success.

AI favors clear, authoritative answers, not filler.

• Your website content should answer common client questions as you would explain them in a consultation
• Include practitioner quotes or process details. Highlight your staff by name and how you care for people.
• Offer trade-offs, risks, or “when not to choose this option”. Be real with people. 

Substantive FAQs are especially valuable because they often surface in AI answers. The goal is to make your content the source AI pulls from, even if the user does not click. These impressions are part of your top-of-funnel and future business pipeline.

The most important metric in digital marketing is ROI. Not impressions, not clicks, not even calls or forms, but new clients signing up and generating revenue.

Measuring this requires cooperation between your office and our Digital Marketing Managers. We have full digital data on who contacts you through your website and where they came from. What we need is your team’s sign-up data, so we can connect the two.

If you already provide this, you know exactly how your marketing translates into new revenue. Perfect. This means we are managing on the right metric.

If you aren’t yet providing this information, please do. It’s what our Digital Marketing Managers are trained for: to produce an ROI for your business. With this information, we can optimize your digital initiative against what matters most.

The Great Decoupling may look concerning if you look at website traffic as the goal. In reality, this phenomenon is a sorting mechanism. AI tools like AI Overviews or AI Mode powered by Google Gemini are keeping casual researchers on the results page while high-intent prospects click through to websites, searching for the right business to engage.

Protect your bottom-funnel search terms. Grow demand for your brand name. Answer better, not longer. Measure success by proof and ROI, not by pageviews.

The Great Decoupling just means we must focus even more on the authority of your brand and the results that matter most: ROI.