AI referral conversion

AI is quickly replacing Google search results, and it looks like we've just about hit the halfway Mark. So I want to talk about what I mean by that, what I think Google search results will look like going forward, and what this means for anyone with a business or a website.

Roughly half of Google searches now trigger an AI overview, which is the AI summary at the top of the search results page. Every time Google integrates a new Gemini model, these results get a little better.

People trust them a little more, and they interact with them more. Early on, it was a running joke how bad these AI summaries were.

Then they started slowly eating away at organic website traffic, that trend still continuing with no end in sight. When I say we're at the halfway point, I mean that for the average search, it's about equally as valuable to be recommended by the AI overview as it is to be rank one organically.

Now, admittedly, it is very hard to measure the exact value of a recommendation in Google's AI overviews...

this for about 40 brands right now. I would say that if the average business could choose between being rank one organically for all their main keywords, or being the top recommended brand in all the AI results, that would be a really tough decision.

Right now I think they're about equally as valuable. However, of course, this is only moving in one direction.

It should be very clear by now that getting recommended in the AI response is just more important than ranking in traditional search. With that in mind, tomorrow I'll do a video on exactly how you should adjust your SEO strategy.

Traffic from ChatGPT converts at 23 times the rate as traffic from Google. That's the least what a trust found in a recent study they conducted looking at traffic to their own website.

The actual conversion rate will depend on your industry. I've seen a handful of studies like this, but I think the lowest I've seen is about eight times the rate of Google traffic.

Just wanna talk really quickly about why this is and what you should do about it. The thing is if someone's searching in Google, they only learn about your company once they visit your website.

However, in ChatGPT or any other large language model, they're learning about your company and your competitors all inside of the conversation and they're only clicking through to your website once they've decided they wanna do business with you. The entire buyer's journey is happening right there inside the chat conversation.

And so even though Google still gets way more traffic, you're much more likely to accept the recommendation from ChatGPT...

ors. For each such information source, you wanna make sure you're either being recommended there or you're creating your own content to replace that information source.