Search Visibility Index
A monthly reading of where search impressions actually land on the click curve across 120 portfolio properties, including the share falling into the band where clicks effectively do not happen.
Most visibility reporting tells you impressions went up. This measures something more useful: where those impressions actually landed on the click curve, and therefore whether they were ever going to become traffic.
Published monthly from the same warehouse behind the <a href="/datasets/ctr-by-position/">CTR by position dataset</a>, filtered to the portfolio constellations, currently 120 properties. The date matters here and it is deliberate: an index reading is a measurement, and a measurement without a date is decoration.
Latest Reading
Dead zone share is the metric worth watching. It is the percentage of impressions landing at position 21 or worse, where measured click-through sits at or below 0.19 percent. Impressions in that band are visibility on paper. They are counted, they are reported, they look like growth, and they produce almost nothing.
The Trend
| Period | Impressions | Clicks | Page one | Dead zone | AI crawler requests | Partial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05 | 4,908 | 256 | 10.17% | 87.65% | no data | |
| 2026-06 | 17,583 | 119 | 4.23% | 94.55% | 36,338 | |
| 2026-07 | 77,589 | 142 | 4.25% | 90.31% | 116,780 | |
| 2026-08 | 145,470 | 173 | 2.66% | 93.73% | 395,497 | |
| 2026-09 | 20,988 | 7 | 2.66% | 93.62% | 26,098 | yes |
What the Current Series Shows
Impressions grew roughly thirtyfold between May and August 2026, from under five thousand a month to over one hundred and forty thousand. Dead zone share stayed between 88 and 95 percent the entire time. Those two facts together are the whole point of publishing this.
Most of this portfolio was built or rebuilt inside a few months, and new pages start at depth. So the impression count climbs steeply while the share of it capable of producing a click barely moves. Read impressions alone and it looks like a growth story. Read the distribution and it looks like what it is: a large and fast-growing base that has not yet converted into position.
That is not a failure state. It is what the early stage of a portfolio build looks like when you measure it honestly rather than reporting the impression count on its own. The reading that would signal the next phase is dead zone share falling while impressions keep climbing. It has not happened yet. When it does, it will show up in this table.
Method and Limits
- Source is Google Search Console query-level daily data in the Digital Karma Data Warehouse, filtered to the portfolio constellations and aggregated by rounded average position. Client and non-portfolio domains held in the same warehouse are excluded.
- This is a portfolio reading, not an industry benchmark. It describes a specific set of predominantly young, niche informational and B2B sites and should not be read as representative of search generally.
- AI crawler figures come from server logs. Logging began on 2026-06-11, so windows before that report no data, and June 2026 is flagged as partial coverage rather than presented as a complete count.
- The current month is always partial and is labelled as such. Comparing a partial month against complete ones on absolute totals will mislead you; the share percentages remain comparable.
- Position is a Search Console fractional average rounded before bucketing, so the bands are approximate at their boundaries.
Machine-readable /data/visibility-index/latest.json for the current reading, /data/visibility-index/index.json for the full series. Each month is also archived at its own dated endpoint.
Where does your site sit on the curve?
The same measurement applied to one page: whether AI systems can reach it, read it, and attribute it.
Run the AI Search Visibility CheckerFrequently Asked Questions
What is the dead zone share?
The percentage of search impressions landing at position 21 or worse, where measured click-through sits at or below 0.19 percent. Impressions in that band are recorded and reported but almost never produce a click, so tracking their share separates real visibility growth from growth that only exists in a chart.
How often is the Search Visibility Index updated?
Monthly, generated directly from the Digital Karma Data Warehouse. Each reading is archived at its own dated endpoint and the current month is always flagged as partial until it closes.
Why do impressions rise while page one share falls?
Because new pages start at depth. A portfolio built or rebuilt inside a few months keeps adding impressions, and most of those arrive at positions where clicks do not happen. The aggregate rises while the share capable of producing traffic stays flat or falls. Reading impressions alone makes this look like growth; reading the distribution shows it is a widening base that has not yet converted into position.