At this point, pretty much all of us are dabbling with AI, but how are those tools affecting our website traffic?

The reported numbers are still small, but when we dug into the data we found that, not only are the people who arrive on our sites unusually valuable, but the amount of people finding us via AI is probably under-appreciated, by a lot.

A Look At AI Traffic Right Now

First, let’s talk scale. According to recent studies, less than 1% of the average website’s traffic comes from AI chatbots today. While that sounds like a tiny number, it has the potential to make a significant impact.

Right now, 63% of websites are receiving at least some traffic from AI sources, with ChatGPT leading the way, accounting for 50% of all AI-driven referrals.

Here’s where it gets interesting: the smallest websites are pulling in the largest percentage of their traffic from AI referrals, with some sites showing as much as 18% coming from AI sites. That’s because AI is less biased toward established brands (for now). It’s driven by relevance and intent, not pure domain authority.

AI Visitors are Much More Valuable

Consider the difference in your own behaviour when you visit a website from a search engine versus ChatGPT. When you Google something, most of the time you’re looking for a quick answer, or you’re gathering information.

AI tools like ChatGPT take care of both of those things for us, so by the time you click a link to a website, chances are you have a pretty good idea of what you’re looking to do.

That means the intent level of people who land on your site from AI is through the roof, and the data back that up. A recent study showed AI visitors stick around longer, with session durations averaging 11.6 minutes and up to 13.6 pageviews per session. That’s at least 25% higher than your standard organic traffic.

And they’re not just landing on random blog posts. AI bots are more likely to send traffic directly to homepages — 22% of AI traffic ends up there, compared to just 10% from Google Search.

The way that people land on our sites from AI calls into question the whole practice of creating long-tail content, and may force us to rethink homepage navigation, but we’ll address that another time.

AI Traffic is (Probably) Wildly Underreported

1% is a tiny number, but let’s go back to your own use of ChatGPT. When was the last time you actually clicked one of those tiny links in an AI result?

Chances are, if you were planning a trip or searching for information about the best mattress/printer/running shoes, you probably took the information you got and Googled it.

There is no concrete data to back that up; However, the number of people who mention “AI” in customer feedback forms when asked “How did you hear about us?” is significantly higher than 1%. This suggests that the actual engagement goes beyond what is reflected in our Google Analytics data.

What Marketing Leaders Need to Do Right Now

  1. Monitor AI Mentions: Start tracking what AI chatbots are saying about your brand. Are you being recommended? Are your competitors? The easiest way to do this is simply to open a new chat with your favourite AI tool and start asking it questions that you think that your prospective customers are looking for.
  2. Optimize for AI Discovery: Just as SEO became non-negotiable, optimizing for AI discovery will be the next frontier. Fortunately, AI SEO is not much different. It relies on your headings, page titles, and the other content on your site to understand what your business is about and what problems you solve for people.
  3. Train Your Team: Any day now (if not already) you’re going to start getting questions from your customers who are using AI to find, buy, or book your services and products. It’s important that your team understands how these tools work so they are equipped to help those people when the inquiries come in.
  4. Prepare for the Shift: Traffic from AI might not be flooding in yet, but the signs are clear. Get ahead of the curve now, or risk scrambling to catch up when AI becomes the primary way people find and interact with brands online.