Content Journey Map and the AI Black Box

Read the journey phases horizontally, comparing the number cells with the live-test topics inside the black box.

Content Journey Map for the AI Era: S1 to S10 (2026/3/3–10/8)
Four phases, ten steps; gray dashed boxes mark the inside of AI Platforms. Site-wide 196,702,526 requests.
Readiness
Phase One · S1
Phase Two: AI Information Acquisition
S2–S4
Phase Three: AI-Assisted Decision and Action
S5–S8
Phase Four: Convert & Return
S9–S10
S1 Prepare
(requests)
S2 Crawl
(requests)
S3 Train
(requests)
S4 Index
(requests)
S5 Ask
(requests)
S6 Mention
(impressions)
S7 Answer
(citations)
S8 Act
(requests)
S9 Visit
(Organic Traffic)
S10 Return
(Tracking)
Who acts
Target
Measured
count
Black Box
Platforminternal
Site share
requests
Volume curve
square-root scale
Merchant
Website
Search Engine
AI Crawlers
AI Crawlers
Search Engine
AI Platforms
AI Crawlers
Search engines
AI Platforms
AI Agent
Humans
Humans
AI Platforms
196,702,526
Requests
2/12–10/8
105,487,618
Requests
AI and search engines
52,203,119
Requests
Training collection
45,253,224
Requests
Both indexes
650,528
Requests
Live Retrieval
~8.22M
times
Search impressions
31,711
times
Copilot citations
7/22–10/8
17,948,162
Requests
8/26–10/8
309,826
times
Organic Traffic
Tracking
Tracking
Found by AIs
Identity: Tracking
How content is filed and ranked after reading
Platform internals: Tracking
How choices are made after AI mentions and answers
External records: ongoing tracking
Whether customers ask again later
Tracking
Site baseline
53.63%
26.54%
23.01%
0.33%
Different units
Different units
9.12%
Separate log
Tracking
S3 and S4 are binned by each family's primary use and are mutually exclusive in this table; S6, S7, and S9 use units other than requests.
196,702,526
Phase 1
105,487,618
Phase 2
17,948,162
Phase 3
309,826
Phase 4
Source: crawler requests follow the approved list; site-wide totals, use categories, Organic Traffic, citations, and search impressions follow approved values.
S4 total = AI indexing 3,991,283 + search indexing/AI Overviews 41,261,941; each type is counted once in this table.
The curve only indicates the order of magnitude of the four phases: S1 site-wide, S2 AI requests, S8 automated browsing, S9 Organic Traffic; each unit shows its own magnitude.
ID
EO