Staying ahead and making great decisions on what to do next means understanding the data. We’ve run dozens of data studies helping SEOs and marketers figure out what’s going on and what they can do next. If you’d like...
This post's estimated monthly organic search traffic.
From how content is created to how brands are appearing in search, AI is transforming modern marketing.
Staying ahead and making great decisions on what to do next means understanding the data. We’ve run dozens of data studies helping SEOs and marketers figure out what’s going on and what they can do next.
AI Overviews are reshaping search behavior, traffic patterns, and brand visibility across Google.
AI Overviews reached 1.5 billion monthly users. (Google)AI Overviews have grown by 116% since the March Core Update. (Ahrefs)AI Overviews show for 9.46% of all keywords on Desktop, 16% in the US. (Ahrefs)AI Overviews show for 54.61% or more of all Google searches by volume. (Ahrefs)AI Overviews show more than normal for informational queries, longer search queries, and queries with higher search volumes. (Ahrefs)AI Overviews show up less than normal for branded queries, local queries, and shorter search queries. (Ahrefs)AI Overviews mostly show on non-monetized searches. (Ahrefs)AI Overviews reduce clicks by 34.5%. (Ahrefs)43% of AI Overviews point back to Google. (SERanking)
Search behavior in AI Overviews
With AI Overviews, search behavior is evolving.
7 in 10 searchers never read past the first third of an AIO. (Growth Memo)Younger mobile users embrace AI answers and social proof while older searchers still dig for blue links and authority sites. (Growth Memo)Reddit threads, YouTube demos, and forum posts soak up roughly a third of the traffic that AIO leaves behind. (Growth Memo)90% of buyers click through to sources featured in AI Overviews. (TrustRadius)The average ChatGPT user clicks 1.4 external links per visit; Google’s users click 0.6 times per visit. (Momentic Marketing)
AI contributes little referral traffic now but is beginning to influence user journeys and brand exposure.
AI sends 0.1% of total referral traffic. (Ahrefs)Google sends 345x more traffic than the three main AIs combined. (Ahrefs)AIs send almost the same amount of referral traffic as Reddit. (Ahrefs)Perplexity has overtaken Gemini as a traffic referral source. (Ahrefs)AI sends the most traffic to business websites in the US, compared to UK or India. (Ahrefs)Sites receiving under 10K visits can expect 0.3% of their traffic to come from LLMs, vs. 0.1% for those exceeding 1 million visits. (Ahrefs)Best-of content, product pages, and guides drive the most AI traffic. (Ahrefs)
Off-site brand signals like web mentions and branded search volume drive AI visibility more than ads or backlinks.
The top 50 domains have 28.90% of all mentions. (Ahrefs)Only 14% of the top 50 mentioned sources were shared across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI. (Ahrefs)Brand web mentions show the strongest correlation with AI Overview brand visibility. (Ahrefs)Web mentions correlate much more strongly than backlinks. (Ahrefs)The top 3 correlations are all off-site factors: brand web mentions, brand anchors, and brand search volume. (Ahrefs)Paid factors like branded ad traffic and branded ad cost show weak positive correlations with AI mentions. (Ahrefs)Brands earning the most web mentions earn up to 10X more mentions in AI Overviews vs. the next closest quartile. (Ahrefs)26% of brands have zero mentions in AI Overviews. (Ahrefs)If your website ranks #1 in Google’s traditional results (blue links), you have a 25% chance of being used as a source in AI Overviews. (ZipTie)
AI use in content marketing
Marketers are using AI extensively for every marketing function.
74.2% of new webpages contained AI-generated content. (Ahrefs)AI use for content marketing is extremely prevalent: 87% of respondents use AI to help create content. (Ahrefs)AI use allows companies to publish 42% more content each month: the median monthly publishing frequency using AI was 17 articles, compared to 12 for those not using AI. (Ahrefs)ChatGPT is the most common AI model for content creation, used by 44% of respondents, followed by Gemini (15%) and Claude (10%). In total, 94 distinct AI tools were referenced. (Ahrefs)97% of companies edit and review AI content. Only 4% of respondents publish “pure” AI-generated content. 80% of respondents manually review AI content for accuracy. (Ahrefs)Blog posts are the most common type of AI-generated content (87%). Brainstorming (76%), outlining (73%), and content updates (67%) are the top AI-assisted tasks. (Ahrefs)
Platform differences and the websites AI assistants prefer
Each AI assistant prefers different content sources.
Wikipedia dominates all three AI assistants, but ChatGPT (16.3%) cites it most, then Perplexity (12.5%), then AI Overviews (8.4%). (Ahrefs)YouTube is a clear favorite in Perplexity (16.1%) and AI Overviews (9.5%) but is missing in the top in ChatGPT. (Ahrefs)Reddit and Quora rank high only in AI Overviews (7.4% & 3.6%). They don’t crack the top-10 in ChatGPT or Perplexity. It seems Google favors user generated content sites. (Ahrefs)News outlets like Reuters, Apple News (AP), and AS.com feature prominently in ChatGPT (4 - 2.6%) but are secondary or absent in the others. ChatGPT likes news sites. (Ahrefs)Health/medical sites (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic) register in AI Overviews but are not in the top 10 for ChatGPT or Perplexity. Perplexity does surface niche health sites (tuasaude, alodokter). (Ahrefs)
AI bots are rapidly increasing in number, but websites are increasingly choosing to block them.
The number of AI bots has doubled since August 2023, with 21 major AI bots now active on the web. (Ahrefs)GPTBot (OpenAI) is the most blocked AI bot, with 5.89% of all websites blocking them. (Ahrefs)ClaudeBot (Anthropic) saw the highest growth in block rates, increasing by 32.67% over the past year. (Ahrefs)
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