2. Can software generate that event? If yes, the count blends two populations.
3. Can we split the population before we average, rather than correcting afterward?
4. What does the human-only figure look like next to the blended one? The gap is itself a diagnostic, and it moves.
5. Which of our metrics end in a human confirmation step? Those you can keep trusting.
THE HONEST CAVEAT
This is one property, over 30 days, twice. A business services website with small click volume in absolute terms. I will not dress it up as a market study.
The narrower claim I will defend: on this property, in both windows, the two populations were distinguishable from the query string alone; they behaved in opposite directions on rank and on clicks, and averaging them produced a figure that described neither one.
Whether the same is true of your channels is an empirical question, and it has a cheap answer. Given what we found, I would encourage you to look.
ANYTHING THAT ENDS IN A HUMAN CONFIRMATION STEP STILL MEANS WHAT IT SAYS, BECAUSE A PERSON HAD TO BE PRESENT- AN AGENT OR A CUSTOMER- FOR THE METRICS TO MOVE.
METRICS
The dataset, the classification patterns, and the reproduction script are published under CC BY 4.0 through our site. Point the script at your own data and get your own number instead of borrowing mine.
Miki Furman is co-founder and CTO of Call Force Global, a nearshore call center company, where he builds its AI quality scoring systems. He publishes open datasets on measurement and AI, including the 2026 AI Search Impressions Study, released under CC BY 4.0.
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