https://page2pod.com - Clicks are disappearing. Derek Hobson makes the case that direct traffic is the AI search signal most teams aren't measuring.

Derek Hobson — SEO strategist, writer behind SEO Humorist, and former Senior Director of SEO and AI Search at Brainlabs — argues that when organic clicks shrink, the proof of impact moves elsewhere: direct sessions, log files, and query fan-out data. On several of his accounts, direct and organic tracked in parallel for years until direct broke upward right as clicks fell and impressions climbed. His read: people research a brand inside an LLM, then go straight to the site. He can't prove it yet, and he says so out loud to clients — but directionally, it's the number he'd watch.

The second argument is organizational. Off-page SEO can't sit in an optional package anymore now that answer engines scrape, aggregate, and synthesize third-party sources. That means SEO, paid, PR, and social have to actually talk to each other — and most companies are still built around separate teams, separate budgets, and separate reporting.

Jon Clark and Joe DeVita also get into automating reporting with Apps Script, why LLM referral numbers in analytics are almost certainly wrong, and why Derek thinks every SEO should investigate a win as aggressively as a loss.

📊 In This Episode

- Is direct traffic the AI search signal most teams are ignoring?

- Who actually owns the direct channel — and why nobody claims it

- Why off-page SEO stopped being an optional line item

- Query fan-out and grounding queries: what the Gemini API and Microsoft Clarity now expose

- Why LLM referral traffic looks impossibly small in analytics

- Building a paid-and-organic gap analysis that starts real cross-team conversations

- Automating monthly data pulls with Apps Script and pattern-matching keywords with embeddings

- Investigating positive results the same way you'd investigate a drop

A practical look at what "proving the work" looks like when the click is no longer the unit of measurement.

Subscribe for new Page 2 Podcast episodes with the practitioners actually doing this work.

Comment: who owns direct traffic at your company — and have you seen the same uptick Derek describes?

Sponsored by Moving Traffic Media → https://www.movingtrafficmedia.com

Follow the Page 2 Podcast

✅ Page 2 Podcast on Youtube → https://www.youtube.com/@thepage2podcast922

✅ Page 2 Podcast on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/company/page2podcast

✅ Page 2 Podcast on Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/ThePage2Podcast/

✅ Page 2 Podcast on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/page2pod

✅ Page 2 Podcast on Tiktok → https://www.tiktok.com/@jonleeclark

Follow Jon Clark

✅ Jon Clark on Twitter → https://x.com/jonlclark

✅ Jon Clark on Linkedin → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonlclark

Find Derek Hobson

✅ SEO Humorist → https://seohumorist.com

✅ Derek Hobson on LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/dereknhobson/

✅ Derek Hobson on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@seohumorist

✅ Derek Hobson on Reddit → https://www.reddit.com/user/SEO_Humorist/

✅ Derek Hobson on Instagram → https://instagram.com/seohumorist✅ Derek Hobson on Bluesky → https://bsky.app/profile/seohumorist.bsky.social✅ Derek Hobson on X → https://x.com/Seo_humorist✅ Derek Hobson on TikTok → https://tiktok.com/@seohumorist