What 6 Months of LLM traffic (ChatGPT, Perplexity & Gemini) Data Actually Showed Me?!
While many SEO professionals on LinkedIn stack flashy titles in their headlines with the rise of LLM & AI models —GEO, AIO, SXO… and perhaps CNN, BBC… 😀
Here is my 5 cents opinion based on 6-month continual observation of referral traffic coming from chatgpt, perplexity, claude, and gemini.
Contrary to Google search, LLMs (especially Chatgpt) are inconsistent and the output of ‘searching the web’ can differ in the same day. That means that it can give two different answers for the same prompt and within the same day!
Also, they are very stingy in citations, that’s why there will always be huge gap between organic search traffic & referral traffic from LLMs, even for well-known brands. Why? The reason is straightforward: generative AI models were simply not built to serve as source directories. Unlike, traditional google search (typical SEO work) with the typical blue links, Gen AI is about generating token-based answers, so it’s not obliged as a model to send referral traffic to websites!
Conclusion: They are not replacing Google search anytime soon.
Why Google’s index is the golden asset for LLMs?
I have two evidences here for this hypothesis… First, GA4 data which proved me that whenever there is upward trajectory from ‘google organic search’ source for a specific timeframe, there will be same upward trajectory from “chatgpt” referral traffic!
The following graph demonstrates Chatgpt’s referral traffic from GA4 for a certain website.
See the notable growth over the past months.
Was there any specific practices (so-called GEO) really done other than typical SEO?
No.
The only thing I did, despite of traditional SEO, was writing FAQs that match some prompts (using a technical crawling method).
The second evidence I’ve experienced myself is related to News/trending topics. For instance, whenever a hot / trending topic is published as an article and showing up at top of google search results, I found out that it gets cited simultaneously at top of a relevant prompt on chatgpt!
Nevertheless, ChatGPT’s traffic is still tiny compared to Google Search, and that’s expected, since generative AI models were never designed to drive referral traffic to websites, which proves again that it’s not replacing it anytime soon.
However, the conversion rate is super high in chatgpt (usually > 4%), and that alone makes it worthy as a channel!
One final point worth mentioning here: LLMs, including ChatGPT, still fall short of Google Search when it comes to commercial and transactional queries, particularly at the local level. I’ve tested that several times.
Interested in boosting the visibility of your business for both google search & LLMs? Feel free to contact me!