We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic. Here’s What We Learned.

We set out to explore how AI-driven search tools, such as Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, could shape the future of digital marketing and SEO by influencing traffic and revenue trends in the years ahead.

Our research analyzed over 500 high-value topics and subtopics within the digital marketing and SEO space, turning them into real-world search queries and AI prompts.

The insights we uncovered offer a glimpse into what lies ahead—and how the industry can adapt to thrive in an AI-first era.

Here’s what we discovered and why it matters to you:

5 Key Findings from Our AI Search Study

1. AI Search to Surpass Traditional Search by 2028

According to our research, digital marketing and SEO-related topics are expected to drive more traffic from AI search engines than traditional search by early 2028—a shift that likely signals broader changes across all industries.

If Google makes AI Mode the default search experience, this transition could happen even sooner.

As AI tools become more user-friendly and widely adopted, reliance on traditional search results will diminish. For instance, ChatGPT’s weekly active users surged 8x between October 2023 and April 2025, now exceeding 800 million.

Google is also accelerating its AI transformation:

• AI Mode: A ChatGPT-style interface that replaces the classic search results page.
• AI Overviews: AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional results, influencing click behavior.

As user habits evolve, clicks will shift from traditional search to AI search, and in some cases, disappear altogether.

Initially, total traffic may dip before stabilizing and gradually increasing. That’s because AI search:

• Compresses the marketing funnel by delivering comprehensive answers directly within the search experience, reducing the need to visit multiple websites.
• Deprioritizes links, often offering minimal or less prominent references to source content compared to traditional search results.

2. AI Search Visitors Are 4.4x More Valuable Than Traditional Search Visitors

Our data shows that the average visitor from an AI search platform (like ChatGPT or other non-Google LLMs) is 4.4 times more valuable, in terms of conversion rate, than a visitor from traditional organic search.

As AI search adoption accelerates and traditional search declines, we project that AI-driven traffic will deliver comparable global economic impact by the end of 2027, with even greater potential in the years that follow.

Why AI Visitors Convert Better:

• LLMs pre-qualify users: By the time someone clicks through from an AI-generated response, they’ve typically researched their options and understand your value proposition.
• AI feels personal: LLM-generated responses often resemble trusted, word-of-mouth recommendations, making them more persuasive than traditional SERPs.

What This Means for You

AI search visitors are more qualified and ready to act, which means even modest traffic gains can significantly boost ROI.

The good news? Many traditional SEO strategies still influence how LLMs mention your brand. For example:

• Publishing helpful, high-quality content
• Making your pages crawlable and accessible
• Earning branded citations—even unlinked mentions

To go further, you can optimize your brand for AI discoverability by:

• Structuring information in quotable, concise chunks
• Keeping brand messaging consistent across platforms
• Embedding brand info in LLM training sources (e.g., forums, FAQs)
• Publishing machine-readable data to back up your claims
• Actively managing your brand reputation

Tools like Semrush Enterprise AIO can help by analyzing how your brand appears in AI outputs and offering actionable steps to strengthen your position.

3. ChatGPT Often Cites Lower-Ranking Pages—But That’s Not a Bad Thing

Our research shows that when ChatGPT cites sources, nearly 90% of the time, those pages rank 21 or lower in traditional organic search results for the same queries.

This trend isn’t limited to ChatGPT—Perplexity and Google’s LLMs also frequently pull from lower-ranking pages. However, some LLMs tend to cite content from the top 1–5 search results more than from positions 6–20. This suggests that while traditional rankings still play a role, they’re not the only path to visibility in AI search.

In fact, you can earn citations in LLMs even if your page doesn’t rank well in traditional search. Here’s why:

Why LLMs Favor Lower-Ranking Content

1. Wider Content Pool
   AI systems scan and select from a much broader range of pages, especially those beyond the top 20 rankings.
2. Focus on Information, Not Pages
   Traditional search aims to surface the best webpages. AI search, on the other hand, is designed to extract and present the most relevant information, even if it’s buried in a lower-ranking page.
3. Deeper Understanding of User Intent
   LLMs process natural language better, understand nuanced queries, and build context through ongoing interactions. This allows them to deliver the best match for an individual user, not just the average one.

What This Means for You

While traditional SEO still matters, especially for helping AI systems find and assess your content, ranking in the top 3 is no longer the only way to be seen. AI tools are more likely to cite content that’s:

• Highly relevant to specific use cases
• Written and easily quotable
• Focused on user intent rather than broad search appeal

To succeed in this new landscape, go beyond generic content. Instead, focus on:

• Creating tailored product guides for niche industries
• Answering ultra-specific user questions drawn from support logs
• Structuring your content into digestible, semantically rich blocks

This kind of content is more likely to be surfaced and cited by LLMs, even if your page doesn’t top the search results.

4. Quora Is the Most-Cited Website in Google AI Overviews

According to our AI search study, Quora tops the list of websites most frequently cited in Google AI Overviews, with Reddit coming in second.

These platforms thrive on user-generated, niche-specific content, often answering highly targeted questions that few other websites address. This makes them ideal sources for LLMs responding to
nuanced or complex prompts.

Google’s strong preference for Reddit may also stem from its formal partnership with the platform and its use of Reddit content to train AI models.

Importantly, both Quora and Reddit are high-authority domains that also perform well in traditional organic search, just like trusted brands such as Travel + Leisure, Good Housekeeping, and NerdWallet.

What This Means for You

If you’re not already leveraging Quora and Reddit for brand exposure, now is the time. These platforms can be powerful tools for increasing your AI search visibility.

To expand your reach even further:

• Pursue mentions on other high-authority, relevant websites through digital PR and strategic link building.
• Use tools like Semrush Enterprise AIO to uncover:
  • Which pages are most frequently cited in LLM responses
  • Where your brand is missing or underrepresented
  • Opportunities to improve your AI visibility through smarter content placement

5. Half of ChatGPT Links Point to Business or Service Websites

While Quora and Reddit dominate as individual domains, our research reveals that 50% of all outbound links in ChatGPT-4o responses go to business or service websites. We expect similar patterns across other LLMs.

This indicates that AI models perceive brand-owned websites as trustworthy sources, particularly for queries related to products and services.

What This Means for You
Your website has a real opportunity to be featured in AI-generated content, but it needs to be structured for AI systems to understand and trust it.
Here’s how to boost your LLM visibility:

• Focus on content quality: Publish original, helpful, and intent-matched content that speaks to your audience.
• Create multimodal content: Utilize a combination of images, video, audio, and text to make your content more versatile and AI-friendly.
• Write for NLP (Natural Language Processing):
  • Use clear language and grammar
  • Mention relevant entities
  • Use semantic headings and structured formatting
• Publish detailed comparison guides to help both users and AI models understand how you differ from competitors.
• Ensure technical crawlability: Avoid relying on JavaScript for essential content. Many AI crawlers won’t render it.

A Note on Traffic & Attribution

Many AI-generated visits don’t show up as referral traffic in analytics. Our projections account for users who:

• Click AI links with no referral data (appearing as “direct” traffic)
• Manually visit your site after reading an AI answer
• Are influenced by AI responses but return later through other channels (like branded search)

This behavior highlights why brand consistency and strong content across channels are essential in an AI-first search environment.

Start Preparing for an AI-First Future

Optimizing for AI search isn’t just a trend—it’s a strategic investment in your brand’s long-term visibility and growth.

Large language models (LLMs) learn by identifying patterns in the content they crawl today. The sooner you begin shaping those patterns, the more likely your brand will be cited frequently, accurately, and favorably in AI-generated results for years to come.

Our research suggests that by 2027 (or sooner), AI-driven search could become a primary source of traffic and revenue across industries.

The takeaway? Now is the time to act.

Start measuring your brand’s presence in AI search results and build a strategy to stay ahead of the curve with:

• Semrush Enterprise AIO – for large-scale, AI-optimized visibility and brand intelligence
• Semrush AI Toolkit – powerful tools accessible to businesses of all sizes

Your next big opportunity may not come from traditional search.

It may come from a chatbot.

Still confused? Engage Coders offers AI-driven SEO, content optimization, chatbot integration, and strategy development to future-proof your digital marketing presence. Contact us today!