- 0.5%of Ahrefs' traffic came from AI search over the last 30 days
- 12.1%of sign-ups came from AI search in the same period
- 23xbetter conversion than visitors from traditional organic search
What Ahrefs measured
Patrick Stox looked at Ahrefs' own website data. He counted AI search as visits from assistants like ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini. Over the last 30 days they made up 0.5% of traffic, and 0.3% for the year to date. Most of that traffic came from ChatGPT, and so did the vast majority of the sign-ups.
Even so, those visitors produced 12.1% of all sign-ups, making AI search Ahrefs' channel with the highest conversions per visit.
“That's crazy right? 12.1% of signups from 0.5% of the traffic. This channel performs really well for us.”
Not all good news
Other measures were mixed. Fewer AI visitors left straight away and they viewed 50% more pages, but they spent less time on the site. Stox also estimated, from rough modelling, that people in AI search click links 75% less than in traditional search, and he was not sure the higher conversion rate would scale up enough to make up for it.
What other stores can take from this
- Judge AI by results, not visits. A tiny slice of traffic produced an outsized share of sign-ups.
- Check where AI visitors land. Ahrefs found most went to its home page, free tools and product pages, so those pages need to be ready.
- Expect fewer clicks overall. If people click less in AI answers, each visit you do get counts for more.
Worth knowing: This is one software company's 30-day snapshot. Ahrefs sells subscriptions, not products, and sign-ups are not sales.
Source
“Does AI Search Traffic Convert Better Than Traditional Search? For Ahrefs, Yes: 0.5% of Visitors Drove 12.1% of Signups”
Read the original article (opens in a new tab)Ahrefs is not a GEO customer. This page is our summary of the Ahrefs blog's reporting. The figures and quotes are theirs.
