AI Growth and Its (Greater by the Day) Impact on Site Traffic

Adam McCarthy
May 1
7 min read

A Look at How Our Clients Are Trending

TL;DR:

AI traffic is growing fast

AI-driven traffic, while still a small percentage of total sessions, is increasing exponentially and now deserves strategic focus.

ChatGPT leads, but other platforms are catching up

ChatGPT currently drives the majority of AI traffic, but Gemini, Perplexity, and Brave are showing rapid, industry-specific growth.

AI users favor niche, deep content

AI platforms surface detailed pages over broad landing pages, signaling a shift in content discovery patterns.

Key Takeaway

AI-generated traffic is no longer experimental — it’s becoming a meaningful channel with unique patterns and high engagement. Businesses should start optimizing for both chatbot and AI search platforms by enhancing structured data, long-tail content, and analytics segmentation to stay ahead in a fast-shifting landscape.

It may be hard to believe, but AI-driven website traffic was nearly nonexistent just a year ago — and now, it needs to be top of mind for any business concerned with keeping relevant, engaged traffic flowing. It’s not quite as simple as it was when Google was the most dominant organic source by far — well, Google is still pretty dominant but maybe not for long… we’ll get into that in a minute.

While still a small share of total site traffic, AI is already driving meaningful sessions, conversions, and engagement — and it’s growing exponentially. If you’re weighing your next SEO move, the early AI trends I explore in this article may help you decide how best to unlock this powerful new channel.

Below, using internal data from a cross section of Rooted Rock Marketing clients, I dive into monthly AI growth (March 2024–April 2025), compare platforms, benchmark AI vs. traditional search, unpack vertical winners, reveal page-level surprises, and — most importantly — show you how to put these insights to work.

The State of AI Traffic Today (Spoiler Alert: It’s Exploding!)

Below are charts created using anonymized data from one of Rooted Rock’s clients. The first chart shows site traffic from all sources — this is a client with a seasonal traffic pattern, and there are no surprises here. Overall traffic is showing slight year-over-year growth with peaks during busier seasons, but no significant trends indicative of big shifts in consumer behavior.

Site Traffic from All Sources

The second chart shows AI traffic only. You’ll notice that AI traffic was virtually nonexistent until June 2024, when it began growing — slowly at first, but now it appears to be on an exponential upward path. We’re seeing similar trends across all of our clients, regardless of industry or baseline traffic volume.

Site Traffic - AI Only

*About these charts: they are on very different scales. While AI traffic is showing significant growth, it’s still a small slice of total site traffic, as noted earlier.

Key Takeaway: Among our clients, AI traffic is growing more than 40× faster than non-AI site traffic. Even if AI still represents <0.2% of total sessions today, its trajectory demands attention.

Which AI Platforms Are Winning?

Not all AI sources are created equal. Across all clients, ChatGPT is by far the platform delivering the most traffic, sending an average of 64.7% of all AI traffic to our clients’ sites. Beyond that, some interesting trends emerge when looking at traffic by industry.

While the tourism industry reflects overall traffic patterns — with ChatGPT followed by Brave, Perplexity, and Gemini — other major industries are seeing different rates of traffic from different AI platforms.

For example, our clients in service industries are seeing similar percentages of traffic from Brave and Perplexity, but are receiving absolutely no traffic from any other AI source — including Gemini. That’s notable because Gemini is a quickly growing platform (although it currently has only about half the active user base of ChatGPT, Google is integrating it into more of its products, according to PCMag).

Share of AI Driven Sessions by Platform (March 2024-April 2025)

All Industries

Service Industry

Tourism Industry

Speaking of Gemini, the education industry is showing particularly interesting growth. Until February, Gemini was driving a small amount of traffic, while ChatGPT had already begun the significant climb we’ve seen across the board. But beginning in March, Gemini began skyrocketing — and by April, it had already surpassed ChatGPT in traffic volume. It’s still early, and this growth could prove to be an anomaly. However, it highlights the importance of not dismissing smaller AI platforms — especially when the AI space is still so young.

Education Industry

Growth of AI Session by Platform - Education Industry

AI vs. Non-AI Traffic: Engagement & Conversions

Broken down by industry, AI outperforms non-AI traffic sources by engagement rate (defined as Engaged Sessions / Total Sessions) across the board. However, depending on the industry, it either underperforms or only slightly outperforms traditional search engines (i.e., Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.), which means that both traditional search engines and AI tools are sending quality traffic to websites.

The three charts below compare engagement rates for AI traffic, traditional search engine traffic, and all other traffic (referrals, paid advertising, etc.). For service industries and education, AI has a slightly higher engagement rate, but for the tourism industry, traditional search engines generate more engaged visitors.

Engagement Rate vs. Source Share of AI Driven Sessions by Platform (March 2024 - April 2025)

Services Industry

Tourism Industry

Education Industry

AI Platforms Are Not All the Same

Broadly speaking, AI platforms fall into two main categories: Chatbots (like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot) and AI-Driven Search Engines (like Perplexity, Brave, You.com, and iAsk). While these tools are often used similarly — to answer queries — users’ intentions appear to be significantly different.

In the chart below you’ll see that both Engagement Rate and Conversion Rate (conversions per session) are higher for AI search engines compared to chatbots. This suggests it may be more valuable to focus on optimizing for AI search engines as part of your AI strategy.

Engagement Rates vs. AI Type - All Industries (March 2024 - April 2025)

Of course, the above finding begs the question: “how does AI search compare to traditional search then?” The answer to that is a very unsatisfying “it depends.”

The chart below shows engagement rates and conversion rates for the three studied industries. While tourism is seeing very similar results for each traffic source, the services industry is seeing a higher engagement rate for traditional search and, somewhat counterintuitively, a higher conversion rate for AI, and education is seeing better results from AI as a whole.

The bottom line is, there’s no consensus among industries (yet) as to which organic traffic is better quality. It’s important to look at your own data to know where your best-quality traffic is coming from.

Engagement Rate & Conversion Rate

Service Industry

Tourism Industry

Education Industry

Vertical Deep-Dive: Who’s Seeing the Biggest AI Lift?

AI adoption isn’t uniform across industries.

Between Mar 2024 and Apr 2025 there were universal increases in AI usage but great variation in the sizes of those increases when looked at by industry:

Industry	March 2024 AI Sessions	April 2025 AI Sessions
Service	1	27
Tourism	4	179
Education	0	112

Services are just entering the AI sweepstakes (but still saw 27x growth)
Tourism sites saw ~45× growth in AI sessions
Education went from zero to triple-digit AI visits

Action Point: If you sell experiences or learning, you’ll especially want to prioritize your AI crawlability (schema, FAQs, event markup).

Page-Level Surprises: AI vs. Organic

Which pages do AI engines surface? Here’s a normalized comparison of the top 5 pages of one of our tourism clients (Jan 2024–Apr 2025):

Top 5 Pages - AI vs. Organic (Normalized to 100% Max)

	Top Viewed Pages from AI Generated Traffic	Top Viewed Pages from Traditional Organic Search
1	General Events Page	General Events Page
2	homepage	General Things To Do Page
3	Things To Do: Hiking	Things To Do: Waterfront
4	Things To Do: Waterfront	homepage
5	Event: Christmas Ships Parade	Family Fun Page

Surprise: AI engines disproportionately send traffic to deep-dive “things to do” and event-specific URLs — pages that traditional SEO may undervalue.
Implication: Don’t focus solely on your hero landing pages or generic content — AI users want niche, detailed information.

Takeaways

Audit for AI Crawlability
- Run your URL list through an AI-bot emulator and verify structured data (JSON-LD, FAQ schema, event markup).
Prioritize Long-Tail Content
- Deep-dive pages (e.g. “best hiking routes,” “seasonal event details”) are AI favorites — optimize headings, intros, and schema there first.
Write for Dual Audiences
- Chatbot prompts differ from search queries. Create site content that reads naturally in both and keep your eye on which platforms are sending the best traffic — your situation may vary significantly depending on your industry.
Segment AI Traffic in Analytics
- Build a dedicated AI segment in GA4 or your preferred platform to more easily keep tabs on AI traffic growth and performance.
Test Conversational CTAs
- Structured Q&A and conversational calls to action (e.g. “Have questions? Ask us about spring events!”) can boost AI engagement.

Conclusion

AI traffic may still be a sliver of your overall sessions, but it’s likely one of the fastest-growing — and one of the most engaged — slices of your audience. Start treating AI platforms as first-class channels today — because at the rate they’re growing, they may become your top sources before long. Audit your site’s crawlability, enrich your deep-dive pages, and experiment with dual-format copy. And be sure to monitor your site traffic and engagement to catch the rapid foundational shifts that are bound to continue happening within this emerging world.

The future of SEO isn’t just about Google anymore — it’s about mastering both conversational and query-based AI in your 2025 strategy.

Methodology & Data Notes

All insights and metrics referenced in this article are based on anonymized traffic data from a cross-section of our clients, spanning multiple industries, and analyzed using GA4 and internal tracking tools. While trends presented here reflect real-world performance within our dataset, they may not represent industry-wide benchmarks. Platform-specific traffic shares (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) are subject to variation based on sector, site structure, and evolving AI integrations.

About the Author

Adam McCarthy is an SEO Specialist at Rooted Rock Marketing. With over 20 years of marketing experience, Adam loves diving into data analysis, especially when it leads him to some unexpected results.

About the Editor

Shelly Cihan is Founder and Lead Strategist at Rooted Rock Marketing. For over a decade she has dedicated her professional career to learning, executing, and speaking about SEO and Digital marketing.