-
ChatGPT, LLM referrals convert worse than Google Search: Study
Posted by on October 25, 2025 at 12:50 amBy the numbers. The dataset consisted of 12 months (Augusut 2024 to July 2025), 973 ecommerce sites, and $20 billion combined revenue.
- ChatGPT referral traffic was ~0.2% of total sessions – ~200× smaller than Google organic.
- >90% of LLM-originating ecommerce traffic came from ChatGPT (Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, etc., are were negligible).
- Affiliate (+86%) and organic search (+13%) conversion rates were higher than ChatGPT; only paid social converted worse than ChatGPT.
- ChatGPT trailed paid and organic search on revenue per session, but beat paid social.
- ChatGPT referrals had lower bounce rates than most channels, but organic/paid search was still best on bounce rate. Session depth was generally lower than most channels.
Trendline. Conversion rate and revenue per session from ChatGPT improved, while average order value declined.
-
1 Reply
-
Makes sense but we can’t stop the hype.
-
The study is for e-commerce sites only.
For my clients (law firms), I’ve found ChatGPT traffic converts better. However, it only makes up like 1-3% of traffic.
-
I believe it converts better for service businesses
-
Interesting study! Thanks for sharing.
-
Everything here tracks with my numbers, too.
All LLM referrals to my sites stay for seconds, search traffic stays for minutes. If the users aren’t engaged, they sure AF aren’t gonna buy.
And of course socials are even worse 😂
-
Tracks with all I’ve seen. People are (1) not using llm’s for shopping yet and/or (2) are using it so high in their funnel (research phase) that by the time they’re down to a short list of actionable products or services, they are back on google in a new tab to find shopping options or going straight to Amazon or similar, cutting our any credit llm’s would have been given as part of their journey. The incentive to click links within these tools continues to be low, imo.
-
I’m so confused, Ahrefs reported the opposite
Log in to reply.