Many search teams are reporting higher rankings, greater visibility, more traffic, and an uptick in leads. However, the feedback on pipeline, revenue, and sales impact often doesn’t mirror those gains. Even when SEO KPIs are green and charts trend up and to the right, the actual business results may lag behind. Why doesn’t strong search performance always translate into business outcomes? Search can appear to be performing well on the surface while breaking down in areas that search teams don’t control or can’t fully see. It’s easy to jump straight to questions about attribution models, data accuracy, or how KPIs are defined. In reality, the problem is frequently what happens after the click – in parts of the journey that sit outside the search team’s ownership. Although search work has become easier to scale with automation, software, mature workflows, and frameworks, efficient execution doesn’t automatically create deeper understanding or tighter control. This issue has been around for more than two decades and can be amplified as organizations grow. Ending analysis too soon, or keeping it too high-level, limits visibility into how performance fits into the broader business or brand context. In larger companies, organizational silos widen this disconnect. When CRM and sales operations aren’t closely aligned with search, each group works in isolation, and no one is accountable for the entire journey. Leadership pressure can make this worse. When top-line metrics look strong but fail to show up in the bottom line, the lack of clear answers becomes uncomfortable for everyone. This isn’t a new pattern, but it’s becoming more visible. To start closing these gaps, here are five key breakpoints to examine. 1. Intent misalignment Intent is what search…