@tjrobertson52

So a lot of people are wondering right now when is ChatGPT going to beat Google? Or when will traffic to ChatGPT surpass Google's traffic? Now if you've been seeing these comments online that no one uses Google anymore, you might have thought this already happened.

But no, Google still gets more traffic. However, it does seem like Google's traffic is slowly falling while ChatGPT's is quickly rising. And so a lot of people are making predictions about when ChatGPT will pass Google.

For example, the SEO. Expert Kevin Indig used similar web data to predict that this will happen in 2030. However, keep in mind that ChatGPT is only one large language model.

Google is also pushing their AI very hard, as are other players like anthropic and Deep Seek. So if you're wondering when you should start caring about showing up in AI more than traditional search, you have to factor all of these in. And that's exactly what Semrush did in their prediction.

And they predict that L L M traffic will surpass search traffic in the middle of 2026, about one year from now. But also, not all traffic is created equal. From early data we see that traffic from these large language models is much more likely to convert into paying customers.

People just trust the recommendations they get after a long conversation with ChatGPT. Than they do from a typical Google search. So what We should really care about is the point at which it's more valuable to be recommended by large language models than it is by traditional search engines.

And that point might only be about six months away. Let's also consider that these optimization efforts, whether it's SEO or AI optimization, is a long term project. While you typically can get some quick wins in the first month, it really starts to pay off after six months, a year, or more.

So when's the right time to start caring more about AI. Results than traditional search engines? Probably like six months ago.