Look, I’m tired of getting pitched “revolutionary” SEO tools every week. Another dashboard with fancy charts? No thanks. I’ve got enough tabs open already.
After running SEO campaigns for years and watching tool after tool collect digital dust, I need to vent about what’s wrong with the current landscape and what would actually help us get work done.
The Dashboard Graveyard is Real
My bookmark folder is basically a cemetery of SEO tools I tried once and forgot about. You know the drill – sign up for the free trial, spend two hours figuring out the interface, realize it’s showing me the same data as three other tools, then never log in again.
The problem isn’t that these tools don’t work. They just don’t solve the right problems.
I manage SEO for multiple clients, and honestly? Most days I’m drowning in data but starving for direction. I can tell you exactly how many backlinks competitor X has, but I can’t quickly figure out why ChatGPT never mentions my client when people ask for recommendations in their industry.
That’s the real issue we’re facing in 2025. Traditional SEO metrics feel increasingly irrelevant when a huge chunk of searches never even reach our carefully optimized pages.
What Keeps Me Up at Night (Spoiler: It’s Not Keyword Rankings)
Here’s what actually worries me these days:
When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for software recommendations in my client’s niche, does their brand even come up? And if not, why the hell not?
I’ve started doing manual checks – literally asking AI tools about my clients’ industries and taking screenshots. It’s tedious, but it’s the only way to see where we actually stand in the new search world.
Last month, I discovered that one of my biggest clients was completely invisible in AI search results, even though they rank #1 for their main keywords on Google. Their competitor, who ranks #8 traditionally, gets mentioned in almost every AI response.
That’s when it hit me – we’ve been optimizing for the wrong search engine.
The Tools I Wish Existed (But Probably Don’t)
Instead of another keyword tracking tool, here’s what would actually make my life easier:
Show me the AI visibility gaps. I want to see exactly where my brand shows up across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI overviews, and wherever else people are getting their answers. More importantly, show me who’s getting mentioned instead and why.
Give me the fix, not just the problem. Don’t just tell me my content isn’t being cited. Tell me specifically what’s missing – is it freshness? Missing internal links? Wrong content format? I don’t have time to guess.
Prioritize ruthlessly. I get maybe 2-3 hours a week to work on each client. Don’t give me 47 optimization suggestions. Give me the ONE thing that will move the needle most.
The closest I’ve found to useful AI tracking is SE Ranking’s new AI visibility tool, but even that feels like it’s built by developers who’ve never actually done client SEO work.
Why Most SEO Tools Miss the Mark
I think the disconnect comes from who’s building these tools versus who’s using them.
Tool builders seem to think we want more data, bigger dashboards, fancier visualizations. Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to explain to a client why their organic traffic dropped 15% even though their rankings look fine.
The reality is messier than most tools account for. We’re not just tracking keywords anymore – we’re trying to understand how AI systems decide what to recommend, how to get cited in conversational search results, and how to measure success when traditional metrics don’t tell the whole story.
What I Actually Track These Days
My daily routine has changed completely in the last year. Here’s what I’m actually monitoring:
Brand mentions in AI responses – I manually test key queries across different AI platforms. Time-consuming but necessary.
Competitor AI visibility – When my clients ask why competitor X is doing better, I need to show them it’s not just about traditional rankings anymore.
Content freshness correlation – I’m starting to see patterns between when we update content and when it starts appearing in AI citations.
Question-answer optimization – Instead of just targeting keywords, I’m optimizing for the specific questions people ask AI tools.
The weird part? Some of our “worst” performing pages (low traffic, poor rankings) are getting cited by AI tools regularly. It’s completely flipped my understanding of what content actually matters.
The Real Problem with Current Tools
Most SEO platforms are stuck in 2019. They’re still optimizing for the blue links that fewer people are clicking.
Don’t get me wrong – traditional SEO still matters. But when a significant portion of searches end without clicking any website, our entire measurement framework needs updating.
I’ve tested probably 20+ AI SEO tools in the last few months. Most are either:
- Too expensive for small agencies
- Too complex for daily use
- Too narrow in scope to be useful
- Too new to have reliable data
What Would Actually Get My Money
If someone built a tool that could do these three things well, I’d pay for it tomorrow:
- Real AI citation tracking across platforms – Show me exactly when and how my brand appears in AI responses, with historical data so I can see trends.
- Competitor AI analysis – When competitors get mentioned instead of my clients, show me specifically what content or signals led to that choice.
- Actionable recommendations based on AI requirements – Not generic SEO advice, but specific suggestions for improving AI search visibility.
Everything else is nice to have. These three things would actually change how I work.
The Measurement Challenge Nobody Talks About
Here’s something that bugs me: how do you prove ROI when traditional attribution models break down?
A client gets mentioned in ChatGPT responses, but there’s no easy way to track that back to conversions. The customer journey is becoming invisible, which makes our jobs infinitely harder.
I’ve started asking new clients how they heard about the company. Increasingly, I’m hearing “I asked ChatGPT for recommendations” or “Perplexity suggested you guys.” But there’s no good way to scale that kind of attribution tracking.
This is probably the biggest unsolved problem in SEO right now. We’re optimizing for visibility in systems that don’t provide clean attribution data.
Where Things Are Heading
Based on what I’m seeing with clients, AI search optimization is going to dominate SEO strategy within the next two years. The brands that figure this out early will have a massive advantage.
But we need better tools to make this scalable. Right now, everything requires manual checking and custom workarounds. That might work for agencies with big budgets, but most of us need solutions that don’t require a dedicated data scientist.
My Advice for Tool Builders
If you’re reading this and building SEO tools, please listen:
Stop trying to replace everything. Build one thing that works perfectly.
Stop adding features nobody asked for. Talk to actual SEO professionals about their daily frustrations.
Stop making tools that require PhD-level statistics knowledge to interpret. We need insights, not raw data.
And for the love of all that’s holy, stop building tools that take 3 weeks to set up. If I can’t get value in the first 30 minutes, I’m not going to stick around.
The Bottom Line
The SEO industry is going through its biggest shift since mobile-first indexing, but most of our tools haven’t caught up. We’re trying to navigate AI search optimization with traditional SEO instruments, and it’s not working.
Until someone builds tools that actually address these new challenges, we’re all going to keep cobbling together manual processes and hoping for the best.
If you’re dealing with the same frustrations, you’re not alone. The gap between what we need and what’s available has never been wider. But that also means there’s never been a better opportunity for someone to build something that actually helps.
You Can Also Read Here Guest Posting in 2025: What’s Really Working (And What’s Not)
