Is AI search worth it when ChatGPT sends 0.6% of Google's traffic?
For most small B2B sites, not as a separate project. In a sample of 100 websites, ChatGPT sent 0.62% of the sessions Google organic sent, and Google organic still drove 27 times more conversions than all AI assistants combined. ChatGPT visitors did convert better, at 13.8% against 3.02%, but on less than 1% of the sessions.
The figures come from SEO consultant Marie Haynes, who published GEO is a distraction on 21 October 2026. Haynes looked at 12 months of GA4 data across 100 websites of varying sizes, over 145 million sessions in total. The post does not say which 12 months. The main numbers:
- ChatGPT sessions were 0.62% of Google organic sessions. With every other AI assistant added, the figure rose to 0.73%.
- 55 of the 100 sites tracked conversions. On those, Google organic visitors converted at 3.02% and ChatGPT visitors at 13.8%, which Haynes describes as more than 4.5 times the rate.
- Google still drove 96.5% of the conversions across the channels analysed. Haynes calls it a small dataset, and in it Google organic drove 27 times more conversions than all LLMs combined.
Search Engine Roundtable grouped the post with two other studies on 22 October 2026 under the headline that AI visibility may not be worth investing in. The other two, from The SEO Works and Kevin Indig, are in the table below.
What did the October 2026 studies measure?
Three studies and one older vendor report measured different things, which is why their headline numbers disagree. Line them up before you quote any of them.
| Study | Sample and period | Traffic finding | Conversions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marie Haynes, 21 Oct 2026 | 100 sites, 12 months of GA4 data (dates not given); 55 tracked conversions | ChatGPT 0.62% of Google organic sessions; all AI assistants 0.73% | ChatGPT 13.8% vs Google organic 3.02%; Google drove 27x the conversions of all LLMs combined |
| The SEO Works, published 7 Sep 2026, updated 14 Oct 2026 | 95 sites, Sep 2025 to Aug 2026; 63 used for conversion figures | Organic sent 39x the traffic; AI was 2.6% of organic | AI 7.18% vs organic 6.08% (1.18x); 3.2 AI conversions per 100 organic |
| Kevin Indig, Growth Memo, 19 Oct 2026 | 12 sites, August to September 2026; plus a test on four brands | Direct sessions with identifiable AI traces were 0.003% of direct traffic | Conversions not measured; a separate four-brand test found no reliable link between AI visibility and later branded search or Direct traffic |
| Ahrefs, own site, 16 June 2025 | One company, last 30 days | AI search 0.5% of all Ahrefs traffic | 12.1% of signups; AI visitors converted 23x better than organic visitors |
The SEO Works benchmark is, in our view, the most useful of the four for a small business, because it publishes its method. It counted AI referrals by matching referring domains such as chatgpt.com and claude.ai, used organic sessions rather than total sessions as the baseline, and only compared conversions on sites with at least 100 AI sessions and 1,000 organic sessions in the year.
Indig's study tested the popular idea that AI traffic hides inside Direct. At one site, GA4 recorded 409,000 Direct sessions, of which 198 counted as engaged: much of the Direct growth was bots. Indig wrote that an effect could still exist, but couldn't isolate it across the four brands tested.
Why do the conversion numbers disagree so much?
Because the multiple depends on which channel you compare against and which sites are in the sample. The figures above run from 0.62x to 23x.
- The comparison channel changes the answer. In The SEO Works data, AI traffic converted at 0.67x paid search, 1.18x organic search, 1.37x total sessions and 2.48x direct, all from the same sites. Its authors say a multiple quoted without its comparison channel cannot be checked.
- One company is one company. Ahrefs' 23x figure came from Ahrefs measuring its own site over 30 days, written up by Patrick Stox. It says nothing about yours.
- B2B products did worst. On the 10 B2B product websites in The SEO Works sample, AI traffic converted at 0.62x the organic rate, and worse than organic on 6 of the 10. B2B service sites came out at 1.21x across 24 websites.
- AI search inside Google is counted as Google. GA4's AI Assistant channel covers visitors from sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot or Grok, and excludes Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Those clicks arrive as organic search, so studies built on GA4 referral data, like Haynes' and The SEO Works', count chatbots and leave out Google's own AI answers.
Haynes also found the trend has turned. Across the 100 properties Haynes studied, the fast growth in ChatGPT sessions ended around the GPT-5 release in August 2025, and ChatGPT has sent fewer visitors since. The SEO Works saw AI traffic rise as a share of organic from May 2026: 2.29% of organic sessions from September 2025 to April 2026, then 3.04% from May onwards, and calls a link change in ChatGPT a working hypothesis for the cause. Even after that rise, organic search sent 33 times the AI traffic from May 2026 onwards.
What is ChatGPT traffic worth on a small B2B site?
Roughly 2 to 4 conversions for every 100 that Google organic brings, if your site looks like the averages in these studies. You can check that with one line of arithmetic: AI conversions per 100 organic conversions = AI sessions as a percentage of organic sessions × the AI conversion multiple.
| Dataset | AI sessions per 100 organic | AI conversion multiple | AI conversions per 100 organic (our arithmetic) | Study's own figure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haynes, ChatGPT only | 0.62 | 4.57 (13.8 ÷ 3.02) | 0.62 × 4.57 = 2.8 | 27x for all LLMs, about 3.7 per 100 |
| The SEO Works, all 95 sites | 2.6 | 1.18 | 2.6 × 1.18 = 3.1 | 3.2 per 100 |
| The SEO Works, 10 B2B product sites | 3.40 | 0.62 | 3.40 × 0.62 = 2.1 | Not given |
The first two rows mix sample bases, so treat them as rough. The traffic share comes from all sites (Haynes 100, The SEO Works 95) and the conversion rates from a subset: Haynes' 55 sites that tracked conversions, and The SEO Works' 63 sites with at least 100 AI and 1,000 organic sessions. The Haynes row is also ChatGPT only, while its 27x figure covers all LLMs. Only the B2B row uses the same 10 sites for both numbers.
Now apply it to your month. Say your site gets 1,000 Google organic sessions and 20 demo requests from them. At 2 to 4 per 100, ChatGPT and the other assistants would add 0.4 to 0.8 demo requests a month. The SEO Works ran a similar scenario on its own sample: a 5% lift in organic search would add 10.3 conversions per website per month, more than the 6.6 from doubling AI referral traffic.
Run it with your own GA4 numbers before you trust ours. Our step-by-step guide to tracking AI traffic in GA4 shows where to find the AI Assistant channel and how to catch referrals it misses.
What do founders on Reddit report about ChatGPT traffic?
In the one detailed report in these threads, a founder guessed that their ChatGPT signups came from pages built for Google, while saying they weren't 100% sure. We read three r/SaaS threads on 24 October 2026; each is a handful of people's experience.
- A personal growth app with habit tracking, March 2026. One founder reported 514 sessions and 42 signups from ChatGPT, about 8% by our arithmetic, after building 40 or more free micro-tool pages aimed at specific Google searches. They said they hadn't targeted ChatGPT, and later replied that many of the tools rank high on Google and are also picked up by ChatGPT. Over 70% of their 1,600 users came from Threads, not search.
- A SaaS founder asking which prompts sent visitors, August 2026. In that thread, several commenters said ChatGPT does not pass the prompt in the referrer, so the founder couldn't see it. Three suggested running your own buyer questions through the assistants and logging whether you appear.
- An October 2025 thread on AI SEO tactics. Several of its replies promoted AI visibility tools, and one commenter told a tool vendor in the replies that it had been dropping the same promotional post across many subreddits, with three in that thread alone. Another said Perplexity traffic converted at 12% against 4% for ChatGPT: one commenter's figure for one product.
None of these is evidence of a general rate. They do show two things founders run into: no query data, and, in the one detailed report, a founder's belief that ChatGPT picks up the pages that already rank on Google.
How much time should a small team give AI search?
In proportion to conversions, with a small fixed slot for checking AI answers. That is our rule, and it starts from your own GA4 data. If assistants bring 3% of your conversions, they get a small slice of the time you spend on content, plus one hour a month to see what they say about you.
| What your data shows | Our suggested split |
|---|---|
| No key events tracked | Fix tracking first. Haynes found 45 of the 100 sites tracked no key events at all. |
| AI Assistant under 5% of conversions | Google-first content for nearly all your hours; one hour a month on a fixed list of buyer prompts. |
| AI Assistant 5% to 15% of conversions | Improve the comparison, alternatives and pricing pages that answer buying questions. Keep the monthly prompt log. |
| Over 15%, or buyers name ChatGPT when asked how they found you | Treat it as a channel: weekly prompt checks, and update the pages that get cited. |
Most of the work overlaps anyway. The SEO Works found that the websites gaining AI referral traffic were the ones whose organic search was improving, with a correlation of +0.534 after controlling for overall site growth. Our breakdown of what GEO adds beyond plain SEO lists the four tasks that are new or carry new weight, including prompt testing and third-party mentions. For the prompt list itself, see our guide to testing whether ChatGPT recommends you.
What to do this week
Set up one key event
Mark your demo request, signup or contact form as a key event in GA4. Without it, none of the arithmetic above works.
Pull last quarter's numbers
In GA4, compare sessions and key events for Organic Search and AI Assistant. Work out AI conversions per 100 organic conversions.
Ask buyers where they found you
Indig recommends combining self-reported answers with visibility tracking. The SEO Works notes that referral data misses people who read an AI answer and then search for your brand by name. Our guide to adding a free-text "How did you hear about us?" field shows how to code the answers.
Pick your split from the table
Write it down with a date, and check it again in three months.
Keep the Google posts coming
Siela's SEO Blog Writer checks search volume, cost per click, the top 10 Google results and People Also Ask before it writes. You approve the outline, and it drafts each section in your brand voice and saves the draft to notes for you to edit.
Frequently asked questions
How much traffic does ChatGPT send compared with Google?
In Marie Haynes' October 2026 sample of 100 websites, ChatGPT sent 0.62% of the sessions Google organic sent, or 0.73% with every AI assistant included. The SEO Works found AI assistants sent 2.6% of organic traffic across 95 websites from September 2025 to August 2026. Both put AI traffic at a few percent of Google's or less.
Do ChatGPT visitors convert better than Google visitors?
In some datasets, yes. Haynes found 13.8% against 3.02% on 55 sites that tracked conversions. The SEO Works found a much smaller gap, 7.18% against 6.08%, and AI traffic converted worse than organic on 23 of 63 websites. On its 10 B2B product websites, AI traffic converted at 0.62 times the organic rate.
Does GA4 count Google AI Overviews as AI traffic?
No. Google's GA4 help page says the AI Assistant channel covers sources like ChatGPT, Gemini, Deepseek, Copilot or Grok, and excludes Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Clicks from those Google features arrive as organic search, so studies built on GA4 referrals cannot separate them from ordinary Google clicks.
Should a small B2B company stop working on AI visibility?
Not entirely. The SEO Works found that sites gaining AI referral traffic were the same sites whose organic search was improving, which its authors read as the same underlying work driving both. Keep publishing for Google, track your AI Assistant channel and key events, and spend about an hour a month checking what assistants say about you.
Is AI traffic hiding in my Direct channel?
Possibly some, but it is hard to prove. In a study published on 19 October 2026, Kevin Indig checked 12 sites and could not detect hidden AI traffic in Direct without self-reported attribution; much of the Direct growth was bots. Indig also cites Ramp's own figure, via growth expert Eric Wu: 30 to 40% of its direct traffic came from answer engines, which Ramp checked with self-reported answers.
Sources
- Marie Haynes: GEO is a distraction (21 Oct 2026)
- The SEO Works: How Much Traffic Do AI Assistants Actually Send, And Does It Convert Better? (7 Sep 2026, updated 14 Oct 2026)
- Kevin Indig, Growth Memo: Does AI drive more direct traffic? (19 Oct 2026)
- Search Engine Roundtable: 3 New Studies Suggest AI Visibility & Search Not Worth Investing In (22 Oct 2026)
- Ahrefs: Does AI Search Traffic Convert Better Than Traditional Search? (16 Jun 2025, updated 5 Oct 2026)
- Google Analytics Help: Default channel group (checked 24 Oct 2026)
- r/SaaS: Nobody talks about ChatGPT as a traffic source. I have 42 registered users from it (12 Mar 2026)
- r/SaaS: Traffic from chatgpt or other chatbot (11 Aug 2026)
- r/SaaS: What AI SEO strategies for your Saas are actually driving leads (8 Oct 2025)