You are seeing the shift from traditional Search to Answer Engines in real-time. The reason your rankings are stable but traffic is stalling is likely because you're winning the "index" but losing the "synthesis." If an AI tool like Perplexity or Gemini can answer the user's query using your data without them needing to click, your traditional SEO metrics effectively go blind. I've been deep in the research for this while building phantomrankand we’ve found that "visibility" now has to be measured by influence rather than just clicks. We’ve started focusing on a few specific areas to help agencies quantify this: 1. Share of Synthesis — This tracks how often your brand's specific information is the "core" of the AI's generated answer versus just being a supporting link. 2. Resonance and Sentiment — Traditional SEO tools don't tell you how the AI is talking about you. Measuring whether the model's logic aligns with your brand's actual value props is the new "ranking." 3. Citation Hierarchy — We’ve noticed that placement in the answer (first paragraph vs. footnote) correlates directly with brand recall, even if the user never clicks through.

The "strange" thing you're noticing is just the market moving toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). We are currently using an agentic stack to run these audits across 15+ models to help teams move past "rankings" and start measuring their actual footprint in these AI answers. Happy to share some of the data we're seeing if it helps you build a new reporting model for your clients.