Fabrice Canel from the Microsoft Bing team said that search engines, including Bing, can’t fully see what happens after someone clicks a link from AI search. That means it’s up to SEOs and marketers to study how those clicks turn into sales, sign-ups, or other results.

In a LinkedIn comment, Fabrice explained that AI search is delivering more valuable clicks because results are becoming more accurate, which means fewer wasted clicks and more meaningful visits. But he stressed that search engines themselves don’t know the conversion rates — only website owners do.

He encouraged the SEO community to research and share findings on how clicks from AI search translate into conversions, saying the topic “deserves more research and more studies.”

Here is his post:

A few months ago, Fabrice also said that SEOs should focus on conversions when thinking about AI search.

Google, for its part, has said that overall clicks remain steady and that the average quality of clicks has improved with AI Overviews. However, Google measures “click quality” by whether users stay on the site instead of clicking back to search results — not by whether the visit leads to a conversion. That said, in May Google did say marketers should track conversions, which lines up with Bing’s view.

Google has also questioned some click-related studies, calling parts of them flawed or incorrect.

It’s likely that there are already studies happening now to compare conversion rates from AI search versus traditional search.

You can find the related discussion on LinkedIn.