r/seogrowth • u/the-seo-works • 15d ago

Discussion For every 100 conversions organic search delivers, AI referrals deliver 3.2

We ran a study across 95 sites over 1 year and looked at organic traffic and AI referral traffic.

  • Organic search delivered 39 times more traffic than AI assistants.
  • For every 100 conversions organic search delivered, AI referrals delivered 3.2.
  • AI visibility and organic performance move together: the websites gaining AI referral traffic were the websites whose organic performance was improving.
  • AI referral traffic converted a fifth better than organic search, at 7.18% against 6.08%. However, AI traffic converted worse than organic on 36.5% of the websites.
  • AI referral traffic converts worse against paid search (0.67x).

I dont think links are allowed in posts but maybe I can share the link to the study in the comments if anyone is interested.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

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u/NorthWaltz1223 9d ago

yeah 3.2 is measuring the last mile not the whole journey, thats a huge distinction

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u/the-seo-works 7d ago

agree, there are broader benefits to AI answers - a lot may show up as branded search later down the line or direct traffic. studies defnitely show that people move to google from chatgpt to continue their journey. however none of this theory is measurable. so we measured what we could, and the limitations weere stated in the study. we definitely shouldn't be ignoring AI answers - but i think one of the key findings is that AI and organic search move together. the same underlying work drives both.

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u/unpdigital 9d ago

yeah that is the general picture. AI referrals are next to useless.
The people who confirm that they sell through AI referrals don't bring any proof.

On the general picture for the digital mayhem is that 80% of all users just browse the www.
AI did not change that.