Google is eternally telling us that AI search is best high quality…
Once they [users] get to a call to click on out, it’s a extra extremely certified click on… What we hope to see over time—and we don’t have any information to share on this—is extra time spent on web site, which is what we see organically in a rather more extremely certified customer for the web site.
“What you see with one thing like AI Overviews, once you deliver the friction down for customers, is folks search extra and that opens up new alternatives for web sites, for creators, for publishers to entry. And so they get higher-quality clicks.
Sadly, we will’t even validate or dispute these claims, as a result of Google doesn’t give us the flexibility to distinguish between AI-powered search visitors and conventional search visitors in Search Console or analytics instruments.
However we can assess person clicks from different main AI platforms… and that’s precisely what we’ve completed.
We’ve analyzed 81,947 websites to grasp the standard of AI visitors and person habits, vs. search and general person averages.
Right here’s what we’ve discovered…
We studied the visitors of ~82K web sites between Could and June 2025, to discover how person habits adjustments relying on the place guests come from—search, AI, or “all” channels.
By taking a look at person habits metrics like common web page visits, visits per session period, time on web site, and bounce fee, we had been capable of understand extra in regards to the high quality of “AI visitors”.
All through, I’ll confer with the channels as Search visitors, AI visitors, and Total visitors:
- Search visitors is when the referral area is recognized by analytics platforms as a search engine—resembling Google, Bing, or Yahoo. This will additionally embody visits from AI-powered search options like Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode.
- AI visitors refers to visitors from conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, and Gemini.
Guests from frequent AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity go to 4 pages on common. That’s 1.2 fewer pages than search guests, and 1.5 fewer than general guests.
AI customers additionally browse much less deeply.
We analyzed common session period divided by common web page period, and located that AI customers view considerably fewer pages per unit of session time (2.27) in comparison with Search (2.79) and Total (2.99).
That stated, AI guests do spend barely longer on web site–eight seconds longer, to be exact—however as we’ve already seen, they browse fewer pages general.
This implies their time is extra targeting a choose few items of content material–their classes are longer in period however shallower in depth.
One interpretation of that is that AI customers have clearer intent.
They’ve already completed their analysis through AI, in order that they land with particular targets and a greater thought of what they’re searching for–they don’t have to click on round to search out it.
Our information additionally exhibits that AI guests are 4.1% extra more likely to bounce than a search person, and 5.4% extra more likely to bounce than the typical person general.
This reinforces the notion that AI customers have much less intent to navigate and discover.
If a person lands, spends 60–90 seconds and leaves, there are two doable causes:
1. They acquired what they got here for
The person visited the location and it delivered effectively on expectation.
We’ve seen this to be the case–our AI guests convert at a 23x greater fee than our natural search guests.
2. They had been dissatisfied with the reply and left
However, greater bounces may, after all, sign dissatisfaction.
If what a person sees doesn’t instantly match their expectations, they bounce–particularly if the content material or on-site expertise isn’t but designed for these customers.
Wrapping up
So, is AI visitors actually higher high quality? From a person habits perspective, not fairly.
The one metric AI customers received was time on web site–and never by a lot.
Excessive bounces, low pages per session, and excessive time on web site factors to info validation or “one-and-done” habits.
That stated, AI visitors arguably drives extra “unplanned” discovery. If customers have interaction briefly and go away, that’s not essentially a poor sign, only a completely different context.
And, after all, there’s the matter of conversions.
As per our “anecdata” above, we’ve seen greater conversion charges (~12%) from AI, and so have others.
Vercel is managing 10% CVRs from AI, and AI is Tally’s largest acquisition channel–serving to them increase ARR by $1M.
We’ve solely simply launched conversion monitoring in Ahrefs Internet Analytics, however as quickly as we’ve sufficient information, I’m hoping to dig into AI conversions.
Till then, I’ll hold monitoring AI information and sharing what I discover.
