Businesses should no longer rely on web traffic as a measure of their online marketing effectiveness.
You’ve likely noticed that over the past few years, Google’s strategy has evolved to retaining users (searchers) on its own website rather than sending users to other websites. This, of course, makes sense as Google would rather retain users on its properties so that it does not have to share advertising revenue with publishers (i.e., other websites).
In light of this, you should no longer rely on web traffic as a good measure of your online marketing effectiveness (you can get little traffic but still be effective if Google consistently tells your customers about you without sending them to your site). Rather, consider the broader perspective of how well you’re feeding your business information to Google so it can present your business information to its users (your potential customers) effectively. The more information you can give Google, the more it’s likely to help promote your business.