Definition
Top of funnel (TOFU) is the awareness stage: people discovering a problem and the products that solve it, through search, social, content, recommendations and, increasingly, AI assistants.
Typical measures
Visitors who are people (not bots), new visitors by channel, and the share who move to the next stage, such as viewing pricing or signing up.
A changing top of funnel
People now ask AI assistants for recommendations. Those conversations happen before any visit, and the clicks they lead to often arrive without a referrer. AI visibility shows which pages assistants read and the visits they send.