Key Findings From Our Analysis of 600K AI Sessions
We analyzed nearly 600K AI sessions across 2,500 URLs spanning businesses in 15+ industries. The data uncovered several clear patterns, including:
Nearly one-third (31%) of all AI traffic goes to homepages
More than 90% of AI referrals land on consideration and decision-stage content
98% of AI referral traffic comes from ChatGPT
“What content do we actually need to get found in AI search?”
It’s a question we hear from businesses every day. As more customers turn to ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI platforms to research products, services, and providers, marketers know AI search matters. The challenge is knowing which content investments are most likely to improve visibility and ultimately bring customers to your website.
To answer that question, we analyzed nearly 600K AI sessions across 2,500 URLs spanning businesses in 15+ industries. The data uncovered:
Together, these findings provide a practical blueprint for the content businesses should prioritize to earn more visibility, website traffic, and customers from AI search.
What types of content earn the most AI traffic?
Our data revealed several clear winners.
Homepages generated the largest share of AI traffic by a wide margin (31.3%), followed by product pages (16.8%), service pages (11.4%), blog articles (11.3%), and FAQ/resource pages (7.2%).
These “big five” page types accounted for more than two-thirds of all AI traffic in our dataset.
Looking across the distribution, three findings stood out.
Key finding #1: Homepages drove nearly one-third of all AI traffic
Homepages generated 31% of all AI sessions, more than any other page type in our analysis.
This reflects how people increasingly use AI. Instead of navigating through multiple search results, users often ask AI to recommend businesses, products, or providers. Once AI identifies a strong match, the homepage naturally becomes the starting point for learning more.
For example, when we asked ChatGPT for the best AC repair company in Hershey, PA, every recommendation pointed directly to a company’s homepage, where we could explore services, reviews, and decide whether to take the next step.
Key finding #2: Product, service, and resource pages are AI traffic magnets
After homepages, product pages (16.8%), service pages (11.4%), blog articles (11.3%), and FAQ/resource pages (7.2%) generated the largest share of AI traffic.
Although these pages serve different purposes, they all help users move forward. Some answer detailed questions. Others compare solutions or explain services. Many help users evaluate whether a business is the right fit. AI platforms consistently referred users to pages that supported those next steps.
Key finding #3: AI rewards comprehensive websites
Homepages drove the largest share of AI traffic in our study, but they weren’t the whole story. Product pages, service pages, blog articles, FAQs, industry pages, and tools all earned meaningful AI referrals.
The highest-performing websites weren’t relying on one standout page. They built a portfolio of content that answered different questions and supported different stages of the customer journey, giving AI multiple opportunities to recommend their business.
Business takeaway: Build a content ecosystem that establishes authority in your niche
Every page contributes a signal about your business:
A homepage introduces who you are
Commercial pages explain what you offer
FAQs answer common questions
Educational content demonstrates expertise
Together, they create a digital fingerprint that helps AI understand where your business has authority and when it’s the right recommendation for a customer’s next question or next step.
Why AI traffic is more bottom-of-funnel than you think
More than 9 in 10 AI sessions landed on consideration or decision-stage content, while awareness pages accounted for just 2.3% of AI traffic.
That finding aligns with another WebFX study showing AI traffic converts 1.2× higher than traditional organic search. Together, the data suggests AI is increasingly connecting businesses with customers who have already moved beyond initial research and are actively comparing options, evaluating providers, and preparing to make a decision.
“Users coming from AI search have already used AI chat to educate themselves. So by the time they’re coming to your website, they’re more brand-aware than ever before. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that AI is not just talking about your brand, but is talking about your brand in a favorable light.”
Key finding #1: AI users are evaluating, not just learning
Decision-stage content accounted for 55.3% of all AI traffic, while consideration pages generated another 36.7%.
Combined, 92% of AI traffic landed on content designed to help users compare providers, evaluate solutions, or make purchasing decisions.
That paints a very different picture than many marketers and business owners we talk with have.
Key finding #2: AI is shortening the research process
Traditional search often encourages users to research one question at a time. AI changes that experience.
Instead of bouncing between multiple websites, users can ask AI to compare providers, summarize reviews, explain tradeoffs, and narrow their options before ever clicking a link. By the time they visit your website, they’re often looking for validation rather than an introduction.
That helps explain why service and product pages, FAQs, and comparison content consistently appear among the strongest AI performers.
Key finding #3: Transactional content drives the majority of AI traffic
The content intent data tells a similar story.
Nearly 7 in 10 AI sessions landed on transactional content, while informational pages accounted for just 18% of AI traffic. Both the funnel stage and commercial intent data point in the same direction: The majority of AI traffic reached pages supporting evaluation and decision-making.
Business takeaway: Prioritize content that helps customers make decisions
For years, many organizations invested heavily in top-of-funnel educational content to grow organic visibility. That foundation remains important. Educational resources build authority, earn citations, and help AI understand your expertise.
Our research suggests the biggest opportunity for AI traffic often comes later in the customer journey. Businesses that invest in strong service pages, comparison content, pricing resources, FAQs, and other decision-stage assets are better positioned to capture users after AI has already helped narrow their options.
As AI becomes a larger part of the buying process, some of the highest-value content on your website may be the content that helps customers confidently take the next step.
What content performs best in AI vs. organic search?
For decades, content strategy has largely been shaped by one question: What content performs best in Google Search?
As AI search becomes a growing source of discovery, a new question is emerging: Will the same content continue to perform as customers shift from search engines to AI assistants? The answer has important implications for where businesses invest their time, budget, and content strategy over the next several years.
The answer? Both yes and no. Many of the same page types perform well across both channels, but AI platforms don’t distribute traffic the same way Google does. Comparing the two reveals where AI is creating new opportunities and where traditional search continues to have the upper hand.
AI Lift compares each page type’s share of AI traffic with its share of organic traffic. Positive values indicate page types that overperform in AI search relative to organic search, while negative values indicate page types that remain stronger performers in traditional search.
Key finding #1: AI creates the biggest opportunities for product, blog, and resource content
The largest AI Lift came from blog articles (+7.3 percentage points), product pages (+7.1 points), and FAQ/resource pages (+5.3 points).
These pages all serve a similar purpose. They help users compare options, answer detailed questions, and continue evaluating solutions after AI has narrowed the field. For businesses looking to grow AI traffic, they’re some of the clearest opportunities in the dataset.
Key finding #2: Google still leads branded and local discovery
While homepages generated the largest share of AI traffic overall, they accounted for an even larger share of organic traffic (44.0% vs. 31.3%). The same pattern appeared with location pages (−4.7 AI Lift) and tools/calculators (−3.0 AI Lift).
That suggests traditional search continues to play a larger role in branded, navigational, and local discovery, while AI increasingly connects users with deeper content that supports evaluation and decision-making.
Key finding #3: Service pages consistently perform across both channels
One result stood out for a different reason.
Service pages generated nearly identical shares of AI and organic traffic (11.4% vs. 10.9%), resulting in an AI Lift of just +0.5 percentage points.
That’s encouraging because it suggests investments in high-quality service pages continue to pay dividends regardless of how customers discover your business.
Business takeaway: Invest where AI Lift is highest without losing sight of your strongest SEO assets
Comparing AI and organic search reveals a clear pattern.
Homepages, service pages, and product pages consistently perform well across both channels, making them some of the strongest long-term investments.
Blog articles, FAQ/resource pages, and industry pages generated the highest AI Lift, signaling opportunities to grow AI traffic beyond traditional SEO.
At the same time, location pages and tools continue to be important drivers of organic search visibility and remain worth protecting.
Expert insights from
Sarah B.Lead SEO Consultant, WebFX
“Where businesses need to start is with an audit to understand their content distribution and funnel coverage, which you can do with an AI-enabled tool like Screaming Frog. Your next steps will depend on what you find, but there’s a shared thread across action items: Surface-level content doesn’t cut it anymore. Whether it’s a product page, blog post, or interactive experience, your content will need to provide depth, such as through product specifications, original research and first-hand anecdotes, or Q&As specific to your offerings.”
Knowing where to invest is only part of the equation. The next question is what makes those pages successful enough for AI to recommend them in the first place?
Content playbook for winning AI traffic
Throughout this report, we’ve explored the pages earning AI traffic, where users enter the buying journey, how AI search differs from traditional organic search, and where businesses have the biggest opportunities to invest.
Those findings naturally lead to one final question: What does content that consistently earns AI traffic have in common?
Looking across the 2,500 URLs generating the highest levels of AI referral traffic, five consistent patterns emerged. No single tactic guarantees AI visibility, but together they provide a practical playbook for creating content AI systems are more likely to recommend and customers are more likely to visit.
1. Start with a trusted homepage
Homepages generated 31.3% of all AI traffic, making them the single largest destination in our dataset.
That reinforces the important role homepages play in AI search. Before recommending a product, service, or resource, AI often introduces users to the business itself.
A clear, trustworthy homepage gives users a place to validate that recommendation and continue exploring. Make sure your homepage clearly communicates:
Who you are
Who you serve
What makes your business different
Why people trust your business (think reviews, awards, certifications, and other trust signals)
2. Build commercial depth
Product and service pages accounted for 28.2% of AI traffic, helping users move from discovery to evaluation.
Rather than stopping at a homepage, AI frequently recommends commercial pages that answer buying questions, explain services, and help customers compare solutions.
Expand your service and product pages beyond basic descriptions by addressing pricing, implementation, comparisons, FAQs, and the questions prospects ask before contacting sales.
3. Help customers make decisions
Earlier in the report, we found that 92% of AI traffic landed on consideration and decision-stage content.
That tells us AI is often introducing users after much of their early research is complete. The strongest-performing pages reduced uncertainty and helped customers confidently take the next step.
Content types that help support the decision-marketing process include:
Comparison pages
Buyer’s guides
Pricing resources
FAQs
Industry-tailored content
For example, a quick search in ChatGPT for “what’s a good price for a new garage door,” yields content geared toward helping searchers evaluate pricing and what’s worth the investment.
4. Answer specific questions completely
Pages most likely to be cited by AI-generated answers averaged a 4.76 out of 5 specificity score* and a 4.15 out of 5 completeness score, outperforming other pages on both measures.
The strongest-performing pages focused on clearly defined:
Audiences
Industries
Services
Customer questions
These pages also backed up their content with:
Specific facts
Named entities
Statistics
Product names
Pricing details
Real examples
They also anticipated the next question a user might ask, addressed common objections, and expanded beyond the initial answer with comparisons, FAQs, implementation guidance, and other supporting information that helped users continue making decisions without returning to AI or Google.
Businesses looking to increase AI visibility should create focused content around specific customer needs, then build those pages into comprehensive resources that:
Answer related questions
Explain tradeoffs
Provide examples
Support the entire decision-making journey
*Specificity score measures how specific a page’s content is based on the presence of concrete details such as facts, named entities, dates, statistics, pricing, and product names (1 = generic, 5 = highly specific). Completeness score measures how thoroughly a page answers its primary topic and addresses related questions and context (1 = minimal coverage, 5 = comprehensive coverage).
5. Demonstrate authority and expertise
Trust signals consistently appeared across the strongest-performing pages in our study too.
More than two-thirds included expert credentials, 52.6% featured original research or first-party data, and pages with citations averaged 26% more AI traffic than those without.
Rather than relying on a single trust signal, the highest-performing pages built confidence from multiple angles. You can do the same with your content by:
Publishing original research
Incorporating subject matter experts
Supporting claims with credible citations
Identifying authors all help reinforce that expertise
Business takeaway: Become the source AI wants to recommend
Looking across nearly 600,000 AI sessions, the strongest-performing pages all shared the same goal: Helping users confidently take the next step.
That’s ultimately what AI search is trying to do.
Businesses don’t need a completely different content strategy for AI.
They need content that’s trustworthy, specific, comprehensive, and genuinely useful throughout the customer journey. Those are the pages AI consistently recommended throughout our study, and they’re the pages most likely to earn visibility, traffic, and customers as AI search continues to evolve.
Do different AI platforms recommend different content?
Most discussions about AI search treat it as a single channel. In reality, businesses are competing for visibility across multiple AI assistants, each with its own user experience and recommendation patterns.
Looking across the data, one platform currently stands apart: ChatGPT accounts for 97.5% of AI referral traffic in our dataset.
That doesn’t mean Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, or Copilot aren’t important.
AI search is evolving rapidly, and today’s platform mix will almost certainly change over time. But it does mean the broader trends throughout this report largely reflect how users interact with ChatGPT today.
Although traffic volumes remain much smaller outside ChatGPT, we included a platform-level breakdown to provide additional context on where those referrals are landing.
The differences are subtle, but a few early patterns emerge:
ChatGPT sends traffic across a broad mix of page types
Perplexity directs a relatively larger share of traffic to blog content
Gemini appears to over-index on tool and calculator pages as well as homepages
Given the relatively small volume of traffic outside ChatGPT, it’s too early to draw broad conclusions about platform-specific optimization strategies. As adoption grows, however, these referral patterns will be worth monitoring.
Business takeaway: Prioritize the content, not the platform
Rather than building separate content strategies for individual AI assistants, focus on creating high-quality content that serves users well regardless of where the recommendation originates.
As the AI search landscape evolves, businesses with strong homepages, commercial pages, educational resources, and decision-support content will be well positioned across platforms.
Insights to action: What this study means for your AI content strategy
AI search is becoming an increasingly important part of how customers discover and evaluate businesses. Looking across nearly 600,000 AI sessions, one theme appeared again and again: The pages earning AI traffic made it easy for both customers and AI systems to:
Understand who the business served
What made the business credible
Why the business deserved a recommendation
That gives businesses a practical direction for the years ahead.
Investing in trusted homepages, stronger commercial pages, deeper educational resources, and first-party expertise creates more opportunities to earn visibility across both AI and traditional search.
Those investments improve the customer experience while strengthening the signals AI systems rely on when deciding what to recommend. If you’re looking to understand how your business appears across ChatGPT, Google AI, Perplexity, and other AI search experiences, WebFX can help.
With 617,125 AI sessions driven for clients, our AI SEO services combine AI visibility audits, content strategy, technical optimization, and ongoing performance tracking to help businesses grow their visibility and traffic from AI search.
Methodology
WebFX analyzed 590,868 AI sessions across the 2,500 URLs generating the highest levels of AI referral traffic spanning businesses in 15+ industries.
Each URL was classified by page type, funnel stage, commercial intent, and additional content characteristics, including specificity, completeness, trust signals (such as citations, expert credentials, original research, publish dates, and authorship), and organic search performance.
The dataset included referral traffic from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Grok. Unless otherwise noted, percentages throughout this report represent each category’s share of total AI sessions.
Methodology Notes:
This study measures AI referral traffic, not AI citations. We analyzed visits sent from AI platforms rather than how frequently brands appeared in AI-generated responses.
The dataset focuses on high-performing AI pages. Findings reflect characteristics commonly shared by the pages generating the most AI traffic rather than the average webpage.
AI search continues to evolve. While referral patterns and platform behavior will change over time, the broader themes around content quality, trust, and user intent are expected to remain relevant.
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Emily Carter is the Sr. Content Team Lead at WebFX, where she leads the creative team behind the company’s content. With an M.S. in Digital Marketing and 10+ years of experience, she’s written and reviewed hundreds of articles on marketing, SEO, and tech. These days, her focus is on content strategy and operations, with a special interest in the systems, processes, and people that help great content come to life. Her work appears across WebFX and its brands, including SEO.com, Nutshell, and TeamAI, and has been featured by Social Media Today, HuffPost, and more. Outside the office, she’s usually road-tripping, hiking, or planning her next national park adventure. View full profile@emcarter16
Sarah Berry is a Lead SEO Consultant at one of the largest digital marketing agencies in the USA — WebFX. With more than 10,000 hours of experience, she offers practical insights and strategies to grow your digital revenue. Her work has been cited by Michigan State University, Business Insider, and Ars Technica. When she isn’t polishing her Time Magazine Person of the Year Award, she’s spending time with her flock of ducks. View full profile
