A comprehensive analysis by Previsible reveals a notable shift in search behaviour as businesses increasingly integrate AI language models (LLMs) as sources of referral traffic. The study examined over 30 websites, highlighting the emergence of platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT as viable alternatives to traditional search engines, a trend that suggests a stagnation in Google's search supremacy. David Bell, co-founder of Previsible, stated, “Google is basically plateaued and has begun to have its search dominance degraded. The reason being is that people are starting to use ChatGPT, Claude, Co-pilot, Bing, all these different experiences to better solve their search intent.”
The study discloses several striking findings concerning referral traffic. Perplexity and ChatGPT collectively account for about 37% of the total LLM referral traffic, followed by CoPilot and Gemini, both achieving between 12% to 14%. The finance sector emerges as the most significant player in LLM-driven traffic, contributing to 84% of all referrals studied.
Bell elaborated on this finance sector dominance, noting that “Finance, in particular, has an outsized increase in traffic from language models. This could be due to Perplexity and other language models having integrations or relationships with different platforms that allow more direct access to users.”
When it comes to content distribution, the findings reveal a preference for blog posts, which receive 77.35% of LLM referral traffic, while homepage visits account for 9.04%, and news content draws in 8.23%. Despite the rise of AI, Bell emphasized the enduring significance of informational content, stating, “Informational content still matters in the age of AI search.” However, he also warned that product pages are not prominently featured in results from language models, receiving less than 0.5% of total LLM referral traffic. This highlights ongoing challenges for businesses in the e-commerce sector.
Looking to the future, the report indicates that LLM referral traffic currently constitutes merely 0.25% of the total traffic in the most impacted sectors. Nonetheless, noteworthy growth rates have surfaced over the last 90 days. The study showed a 900% increase in ChatGPT referrals for the events industry and over 400% growth in ChatGPT traffic for both e-commerce and finance sectors. Bell forecasted this trend, suggesting that businesses could anticipate roughly 200% growth in AI-driven traffic every 90 days for the coming year, potentially translating to as much as 20% of overall website traffic.
In response to this evolving landscape, Previsible has unveiled a free Looker Studio dashboard which equips businesses with tools to monitor traffic stemming from LLMs such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, CoPilot, Gemini, and Claude. Users can interact with the dashboard to view specific data points including total organic and LLM sessions, indicative traffic trends over time, and insights on which landing pages are drawing the most attention from LLM users.
In summary, the key takeaways from the study indicate that:
- The finance sector displays the most significant LLM referral activity, with blog content dominating site visits.
- Product pages are not receiving adequate visibility in LLM results, signalling a need for revised e-commerce marketing approaches.
- Growth in LLM-driven traffic is accelerating, with projections indicating it could account for up to 20% of total traffic over the next year if current trends persist.
As businesses navigate these evolving trends in artificial intelligence and automation, adapting strategies will be essential to leverage this new wave of referral traffic effectively.
Source: Noah Wire Services