Victorious Tells CMOs to Measure AI Search Like Word of Mouth

Nine in 10 CMOs carry an AI search mandate and few can show results. Victorious says the channel can be influenced and observed, not attributed click by click.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, October 13, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Marketing leaders should measure AI search the same way they've always measured word of mouth, according to Victorious, a search agency focused on Google rankings and AI search visibility. The channel can be influenced and its effects can be observed, but it will not produce the click-level attribution executive teams and boards of directors are asking for.

The pressure is real. In a survey of CMOs by Brandlight and Censuswide, published through the Forbes Business Council, close to nine in 10 said they had a board or CEO mandate to build an AI search strategy. Few could show proof it was working. Google's new AI performance reports in Search Console, released this summer, show impressions and clicks from AI features without saying which questions produced them.

"We need to start thinking about holding this channel to the same bar as word of mouth," said Michael Transon, CEO of Victorious. "You can influence it, you can see its effects, and you can report on it as a picture built from several different directional metrics."

Victorious argues the current attribution gap is unlikely to close anytime soon. AI conversations are private, and an assistant has no reason to send a click when it can answer the question itself. That reverses 15 years in which every new marketing channel arrived more measurable than the last.

The agency recommends reporting AEO results with a dual-layered approach. First, leading indicators come from a fixed set of buyer questions run on a schedule across the AI platforms, tracking whether the brand is named and how it is described, against competitors. Then, lagging indicators come from systems the team already owns, including unexplained growth in branded search and direct visits, plus a "how did you hear about us" field on lead forms with AI assistants listed as options.

The lagging indicators matter because AI's influence rarely shows up labeled as AI in analytics. A Similarweb study published earlier this year found that people who received a brand recommendation from ChatGPT were about two and a half times more likely to visit that brand than a direct competitor within seven days, and most of those visits arrived through ordinary search rather than a visible AI referral.

Victorious reports its own program the same way: a monthly one-page view of named-mention rate and share of voice by assistant, and a quarterly narrative that connects the work done to visibility and to pipeline. The agency cautions against daily readings, since answers vary from run to run and are influenced by personalization and location.

The full discussion is in The Search Signal podcast episode on measurement and reporting.

About Victorious
Victorious is a search agency founded in 2013 that helps brands grow their visibility in Google and in AI search platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The agency has been named Search Agency of the Year five times and is headquartered in San Francisco.

Jill Maldonado
Victorious
+1 (415) 621-9830
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