Semrush launches framework to measure brand visibility in AI search

Organic traffic is dying, and companies now have a tool to understand what is happening to their brand in the age of AI search. Semrush unveiled its Brand Visibility Framework at Adobe Summit, introducing a new discipline called Agentic Search Optimisation.

The framework arrives at a critical moment. According to the company's own data, clicks on organic results have fallen 61% for queries where Google shows an AI Overview. Another figure is even more telling: 62% of brands are not mentioned at all in AI answers on topics relevant to them. Users get answers, just without links to websites and without click-throughs.

Traditional SEO was built on simple logic: reach the top 10, get the click, convert. That logic is collapsing. When ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google Gemini answer a user's question directly, the familiar metrics of rankings and organic traffic no longer reflect reality. A brand can hold the top spot in search results and still be invisible to millions of users who get their answers through AI.

Semrush built the framework on an analysis of 213 million queries to language models. It measures brand presence across three dimensions at once: in traditional search results, in the AI answers of systems such as AI Overview or Perplexity, and in the actions of autonomous AI agents that make purchase or recommendation decisions on their own. The last is the newest and, probably, the most important area.

Agentic Search Optimisation is an attempt to give structure to a new discipline. Agentic AI systems, such as those that book flights, choose contractors or order goods on their own, form their own preferences based on data from the web. If a brand is poorly represented in structured data, in authoritative sources and in the models' training corpus, an agent will simply ignore it, with no ill intent.

The company positions the framework as a response to demand from large businesses: marketers already see traffic falling, but lack the language to explain the causes to management. The new tool lets them set KPIs not on search positions but on share of voice in AI answers, which Semrush calls Brand Voice Share.

Semrush is the first to try to create a standard for measuring this new kind of visibility: not an SEO ranking, but AI mentionability. If the framework catches on, it could become as basic a unit for measuring a brand's presence online as PageRank or Domain Authority were in the era of classic SEO. The market for AI optimisation tools is only taking shape, and the stakes are huge.