New study from Previsible reveals significant changes in search behavior, with AI language models (LLM) is gaining ground as referral traffic sources.
THE analysis on over 30 websites shows that Perplexity and ChatGPT are emerging as alternatives to traditional search engines.
David Bell, co-founder of Previsible, believes this indicates that Google’s growth has stalled:
“Google is basically at a standstill and its search dominance is starting to decline. The reason is people are starting to use ChatGPT, Claude, Co-pilot, Bing, all these different experiences to better resolve their search intent.
Here are some key points from the study. Although it does not provide a complete picture, it offers the best information available at this time.
Main findings
Referral traffic
The study found that Perplexity and ChatGPT command approximately 37% of LLM reference traffic, while CoPilot and Gemini follow with 12-14% each.
Notably, the financial sector dominates the traffic generated by LLMs, representing 84% of all the references analyzed.
In a video step by step procedure of the study, Bell explains:
“Finance, in particular, is seeing an outsized increase in traffic from language models. This could be because Perplexity and other language models have integrations or relationships with different platforms that allow more direct access to users.
Content distribution
Study Reveals Blog Posts Receive 77.35% of LLM referral traffic, followed by:
- Visits to the home page (9.04%)
- News content (8.23%)
- Guides (2.35%)
“Informational content is still important in the age of AI search,” Bell noted. However, he advises focusing on conversion rate optimization (CRO) and user journey, as product pages do not appear prominently in language models.
According to the study, product pages receive less 0.5% of LLM referral traffic, suggesting challenges for e-commerce strategies.
Looking to the future
LLM referral traffic currently represents 0.25% of total traffic for the most impacted industries, although the study notes significant growth rates.
Over the last 90 days of the study, Previsible discovered:
- 900% growth of ChatGPT references for the events sector
- 400%+ ChatGPT traffic growth for e-commerce and finance industries
- Constant growth on all models except CoPilot
Bell explains what this could mean for websites:
“If you extrapolate, if you average all of these, let’s say about 200% growth in organic or AI traffic every 90 days over the next 12 months, that can be up to 20% of overall traffic to a website.”
🚨 Free tool alert 🚨
Previsible has created a free Looker Studio dashboard to help businesses track website traffic from language learning models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Co-pilot, Gemini and Claude.
You can select your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) account and a date range to display the data.
The dashboard displays:
- Organic sessions: Total organic sessions during the selected period.
- Total number of LLM sessions: Number of LLM sessions, with percentage distribution.
- LLM traffic over time: A line chart showing LLM traffic trends, with separate lines for each LLM.
- LLM traffic by landing page: A chart of top LLM traffic landing pages, including sessions, percentages, average time on page, and how it compares to site averages.
How it helps
By analyzing this data, you can:
- Evaluate the impact of LLMs on your traffic compared to organic traffic.
- Identify which LLMs are generating the most traffic and adjust your content.
- Track LLM traffic growth over time and adapt your strategies.
- Discover popular landing pages among LLM users and improve them for engagement.
- Compare the time LLM users spend on each page to the site average to identify areas for improvement.
In summary
Here are three key takeaways from the study:
- Finance websites see the highest LLM SEO activity, with blog content receiving the majority of visits.
- Product pages rarely appear in LLM results, suggesting the need to adjust e-commerce strategies.
- Growth rates are significant, potentially reaching 20% of total traffic within a year if current trends continue.
When looking at these trends, it’s important to maintain a balanced approach to driving traffic and optimizing your strategies.
Don’t chase AI traffic if it could hurt your sales.
AI language models are becoming new sources of website traffic. However, they currently only represent around 0.25% of overall traffic in the most affected sectors.
It will be interesting to see how this figure develops over the next year.
Featured Image: Koshiro K./Shutterstock
