Optimize for Mentions, Not Citations: Coffee and AI Search with Chris Green

In this sixth episode, Myriam sits down with SEO measurement specialist Chris Green to take apart why clicks, citations and vanity metrics are failing anyone trying to measure GEO and AEO, and what to track instead. Chris has spent years picking holes in search measurement, and his argument here is blunt: most of our analytics were built around human-shaped data rather than actual human data, and that gap is breaking everything from CTR to attribution. Myriam and Chris dig into why clicks are disappearing, why bot and agent traffic is wrecking Google Analytics, and why "share of voice" in AI answers is often a fiction dressed up as a metric. They get practical too — how to build the case for budget when your boss doesn't believe in prompt tracking, which three metrics actually deserve a place on a monthly dashboard, why sentiment scores are mostly noise (with one solid counter-example from Myriam), and why Chris reckons average bot hit rate is the most honest signal available right now, however reluctant anyone is to put it in a board deck just yet. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro and the drinks icebreaker 1:19 The number one measurement problem in GEO and AEO 2:00 Human-shaped data vs. human data 3:19 Bot and agent traffic breaking Google Analytics 4:15 Proxy metrics and Goodhart's law 5:32 Q&A: Making the case for prompt-tracking budget 7:49 Why new visibility metrics all sound the same 9:07 Citations vs. mentions — chasing the wrong receipt 9:42 Valuing work you can't attribute to a click 10:22 Why sentiment scores mostly aren't worth reporting 14:11 Does position in the answer still matter? 16:12 Are you in the room, or holding court at the party? 17:10 Reword a prompt, change the result: testing stability 19:25 The three metrics worth getting confident with 19:49 Q&A: Getting server log access as a junior 21:29 Bot hits as the earliest popularity proxy 22:54 What actually convinces the board 24:54 The one metric Chris tracks for himself 27:11 Parametric memory and brands that won't let go 28:22 Rebrands, blind spots and model cutoff dates 29:24 Do you need to be a data expert to do this job? 31:32 What actually changes in your monthly dashboard 32:59 Telling the story when you can't flatten it into a table 34:35 Being a credible communicator beats being a data wizard 35:52 Outro: join us and get in touch SPEAKERS Myriam Jessier — PRAGM:   / myriamjessier   Chris Green — StrategiQ:   / chrisgreenseo   ABOUT SBC Search Bar Crawl is an unscripted marketing podcast about search, brand, and whatever else is on tap. Enjoy hot takes, served chilled. Hosted by marketers Jojo Furnival and Myriam Jessier—with friends and guests joining the crawl—the show brings together people working across SEO, search marketing, brand strategy, content marketing, digital PR, website accessibility and AI search. And every guest gets the same opener: if we were buying you a drink to pick your brain, what would it be? All the hot takes in this episode are the speakers' own — not the official line of any brand, company or organisation they're affiliated with. LinkedIn:   / search-bar-crawl   Subscribe on YouTube:    / @searchbarcrawl   Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2cHmgwq... #SEO #TechnicalSEO #GEO #AEO #AIOverviews #SEOMeasurement