ChatGPT commands 92% of AI referral traffic. Here’s what 6.77 million sessions reveal.

Jul 06, 2026 11:15 PM - 1 week ago 8765

Twelve months ago, the manufacture was betting connected which AI level would triumph discovery. Perplexity looked for illustration the search-native challenger. Copilot looked for illustration the endeavor Trojan horse. Neither stake paid off.

Previsible (disclosure: I’m its CPO and co-founder) conscionable published its 3rd AI Traffic Study, analyzing 6.77 cardinal LLM-driven sessions. The information shows consolidation. Monthly LLM sessions grew 9.9x, reaching 644,478 successful May 2026. And 92.4% of that postulation comes from 1 platform.

The plateau was a pause

In mid-2025, AI postulation appeared to beryllium peaking successful immoderate sectors. It wasn’t.

Sessions roseate from 65,249 successful November 2024 to 396,278 by August 2025, past dropped sharply successful November 2025, earlier hitting caller highs of 428,203 successful February 2026 and 644,478 successful May.

That November dip needs context.

Sessions fell 50% successful 1 month, driven almost wholly by ChatGPT referrals dropping from 448,412 to 213,345. Other platforms held steady. This was apt a model-related change; we’ve seen humble merchandise tweaks massively plaything referral traffic, for illustration past autumn erstwhile galore sites mislaid half their ChatGPT postulation because the model began favoring Wikipedia and Reddit. Sessions recovered to 442,609 by December.

The lesson: 1 vendor’s merchandise decisions tin halve your AI postulation overnight. Plan for the volatility.

Consolidation, not competition

When we past published successful December 2025, ChatGPT held astir 84% share, followed by Perplexity astatine 8.9%, Gemini astatine 4.5%, Copilot astatine 2.1%, and Claude astatine 0.6%. Six months later, the section has collapsed toward the leader.

Across the afloat dataset, ChatGPT commands 92.4% of trackable LLM referral traffic, increasing 12.8x complete 19 months pinch nary motion of slowing. It’s the only LLM sending meaningful referral measurement astatine scale. Optimizing for “AI visibility” without prioritizing ChatGPT intends optimizing for an abstraction.

Important framing: this measures standalone LLM referral traffic. AI find wrong Google’s ain results, including AI Overviews, almost surely drives much AI postulation than each standalone platforms combined, but it operates connected a different measurement paradigm and is excluded here.

The challengers flipped

The astonishment isn’t astatine the top. It’s who’s moving underneath.

Claude

Claude grew 64x, from 133 sessions successful November 2024 to 8,528 successful May 2026, and overtook Perplexity successful March 2026 for the first time. It stayed ahead.

Claude was level done 2025, past accelerated 4x successful 2 months arsenic its agentic devices and endeavor integrations gained adoption. The endeavor advantage the manufacture expected Copilot to triumph whitethorn beryllium materializing for Claude instead.

If your assemblage includes method buyers, developers, aliases master services, Claude visibility is now material, and the model for early positioning is open.

Gemini

Gemini is the quiet number two: 3.2x maturation pinch almost nary volatility. Its Workspace and Android integration mean referral numbers apt undercount its existent find footprint.

Perplexity & Copilot

Perplexity peaked astatine 17,507 monthly sessions successful March 2025 and has fallen 61% since. Copilot collapsed 96% from its August 2025 peak, from 8,651 sessions to 339.

Neither is simply a maturation stake for postulation acquisition anymore. Both are shifting toward keeping users wrong their ain experiences: browsers, agents, and modes wherever they don’t request to nonstop you postulation astatine all.

Where LLMs nonstop users, and why it should alteration your roadmap

The study’s astir actionable uncovering isn’t marketplace share. It’s landing pages.

ChatGPT sends 28.8% of its postulation to soul hunt results pages. Across industries, astir 25% of AI-referred postulation lands connected soul search.

The exemplary trusts your domain but can’t prime the correct page, truthful it sends users to your hunt container and lets them navigate. This shape persists crossed verticals and clip periods, suggesting it’s structural to retrieval-augmented procreation alternatively than a impermanent quirk.

Think astir what that means. The exemplary did the difficult activity of choosing your domain. Your soul hunt UX now determines whether that high-intent sojourn converts aliases bounces.

For astir sites, soul hunt is simply a neglected navigation feature, not an acquisition surface. That has to change.

The vertical position tells respective different stories:

SaaS postulation lands connected hunt pages (34.6%).
Publisher postulation lands connected news pages (54%), yet against 120+ cardinal integrated sessions, patient penetration is 0.11%; publishers nutrient the contented LLMs mention and seizure almost nary of the resulting traffic.
Ecommerce postulation lands connected merchandise pages, pinch acquisition intent already formed.
Education postulation lands straight connected people pages (52%), bypassing trading content.
Health postulation lands connected About pages (42.1%), pinch users evaluating the root earlier the content.
Legal postulation spreads crossed blog, about, contact, and location pages: the afloat information arc.

The platforms person personalities, too:

ChatGPT and Gemini are search-pattern models: domain trust, page-level uncertainty.
Perplexity and Claude are content-selection models that prime circumstantial pages and over-index connected long-form.

If your strategy depends connected editorial contented driving qualified traffic, Perplexity and Claude matter disproportionately to their share.

What to do now

Optimize for ChatGPT first. Expand elsewhere erstwhile measurement justifies it.
Monitor Claude. It overtook Perplexity successful March. Early positioning compounds.
Treat merchandise pages arsenic AI introduction points. Product pages seizure 43% of e-commerce LLM traffic. Structured, comparable merchandise information is simply a discoverability request now.
Make pricing machine-readable. “Contact america for pricing” gives AI systems thing to summarize, compare, aliases recommend.
Prioritize soul search. It’s an acquisition tool, not a navigation feature.
Track AI postulation by page type, not site-wide. Your tract mean hides wherever AI postulation concentrates. Your pricing page mightiness tally 3x your site-wide penetration.

The adjacent mobility is the 1 cipher has answered: conversion complaint by LLM platform. Which platforms nonstop users who buy, and which nonstop users who bounce?

We built this dataset to reply that. If the past 19 months are immoderate indication, the answers will alteration faster than astir teams are fresh for.

About the data

166 GA4 properties, November 2024 done May 2026, spanning SaaS, ecommerce, finance, legal, health, insurance, education, publishing, and ticketing. All 166 properties are coming passim the afloat 19-month window, truthful the trajectories bespeak behavioral alteration alternatively than sample description .