AI search keeps shaping the first steps of many user journeys even though its share of traffic remains small.
The latest benchmarks from Conductor show AI referrals reaching just 1.08 percent of all website visits across ten industries. That sliver might look insignificant at first glance yet it tells a story about how often people rely on generated answers before they even think about clicking into a site. The pattern becomes clearer once the numbers spread out across the industries measured over more than 3.3 billion sessions.
ChatGPT drives almost all of this activity. It accounts for 87.4 percent of AI generated visits in the dataset which gives it an oversized influence on how users move from answers to websites. Once that dominance sets the baseline the rest of the engines fall into smaller pockets of influence. Perplexity stands next but still far behind. Some sectors scatter in their own directions. Gemini reaches twenty one percent of AI traffic inside the Utilities category while Copilot climbs to five percent in Financials. These pockets rise not because they compete evenly with ChatGPT but because certain topics pull data from different engines depending on the depth or the type of information involved.
Traffic shares across industries shift in ways that make the overall one percent figure feel less uniform. IT sits at 2.8 percent which makes it the strongest sector for AI referrals. Users in this segment often dig into technical problems that prompt follow up clicks when the answer in the AI window feels too brief to settle the issue. Consumer Staples follows at 1.9 percent since many of those searches revolve around product steps, recipes or household guidance that usually send people to read more. Communication Services drops far lower to 0.25 percent and Utilities sits at 0.35 percent where many questions resolve directly inside the AI summary. Those patterns explain why AI referral influence depends heavily on the type of intent flowing through each field.
Growth adds another layer. Month over month changes average around one percent across the industries studied from May through September 2025. Some categories rise steadily. Consumer Discretionary holds a consistent climb. Communication Services moves upward too. Other sectors slow down instead. Utilities turns downward by the later months and Health Care follows a similar curve. The variations remind us that AI adoption does not grow in a single straight line but spreads differently depending on the kind of information users expect from each field.
Organic search still leads by wide margins. It remains the strongest path into websites in every industry measured. Health Care stays at the top with 42.4 percent of visits coming through organic results. Communication Services follows at 39.6 percent and Industrials holds at 33.8 percent. These figures reinforce how established search continues to anchor discovery. AI sits above this in a parallel layer that shapes visibility but does not replace the older model. Users still depend heavily on traditional results even as AI adds another surface where brands appear inside summaries before anyone clicks.
The study also tracks which brands surface most often inside AI generated answers. The sample includes seventeen million responses and one hundred million citations which creates a wide lens on how engines distribute authority. In consumer categories retail giants take the lead since Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Chewy carry the kind of range that covers countless product related queries. In health and finance the engines lean on authoritative institutions and trusted publishers. Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic appear often in medical explanations while NerdWallet, Bankrate and Vanguard stand out across financial definitions and comparisons. Tech and B2B landscapes follow the influence of their largest players. Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Deloitte, McKinsey and SAP show up repeatedly since their documentation and research material respond to many expert queries. In Real Estate and Utilities the engines lean on the data rich domains such as Hines, Public Storage, CBRE, New Fortress Energy and GE Vernova which provide the depth needed for commercial and energy related topics.
Google’s AI Overview layer adds yet another surface to track. Out of 21.9 million queries measured between mid September and mid October 5.5 million displayed an AI Overview which equals 25.11 percent. That share rises sharply in Health Care where 48.7 percent of queries trigger an AI Overview. Financials follows with 25.7 percent and Utilities shows 25.4 percent. Real Estate sits near the bottom with only 4.4 percent and Consumer Staples reaches 6.8 percent. These spreads show how AI Overviews appear most often when queries require structured context rather than fast transactional steps.
The report also measures which page types the AI Overview system cites most often. Blogs show the highest count. Videos follow close behind. Articles, news stories and product pages fill out the top group. These types work well because they hold enough detail for the system to break down into shorter summaries at the top of the results.
All of this draws a picture where AI referrals may stay small for now yet still shape how brands get seen. The numbers show slow but steady growth. They also show how AI sits as a parallel surface that influences the first touchpoint long before a user reaches a site. Organic search keeps its lead but AI keeps building its own space inside the customer journey.
Notes: This post was edited/created using GenAI tools.
Read next: Real Upwork Job Data Shows AI Agents Fall Short Until Humans Step In
The latest benchmarks from Conductor show AI referrals reaching just 1.08 percent of all website visits across ten industries. That sliver might look insignificant at first glance yet it tells a story about how often people rely on generated answers before they even think about clicking into a site. The pattern becomes clearer once the numbers spread out across the industries measured over more than 3.3 billion sessions.
ChatGPT drives almost all of this activity. It accounts for 87.4 percent of AI generated visits in the dataset which gives it an oversized influence on how users move from answers to websites. Once that dominance sets the baseline the rest of the engines fall into smaller pockets of influence. Perplexity stands next but still far behind. Some sectors scatter in their own directions. Gemini reaches twenty one percent of AI traffic inside the Utilities category while Copilot climbs to five percent in Financials. These pockets rise not because they compete evenly with ChatGPT but because certain topics pull data from different engines depending on the depth or the type of information involved.
Traffic shares across industries shift in ways that make the overall one percent figure feel less uniform. IT sits at 2.8 percent which makes it the strongest sector for AI referrals. Users in this segment often dig into technical problems that prompt follow up clicks when the answer in the AI window feels too brief to settle the issue. Consumer Staples follows at 1.9 percent since many of those searches revolve around product steps, recipes or household guidance that usually send people to read more. Communication Services drops far lower to 0.25 percent and Utilities sits at 0.35 percent where many questions resolve directly inside the AI summary. Those patterns explain why AI referral influence depends heavily on the type of intent flowing through each field.
Growth adds another layer. Month over month changes average around one percent across the industries studied from May through September 2025. Some categories rise steadily. Consumer Discretionary holds a consistent climb. Communication Services moves upward too. Other sectors slow down instead. Utilities turns downward by the later months and Health Care follows a similar curve. The variations remind us that AI adoption does not grow in a single straight line but spreads differently depending on the kind of information users expect from each field.
Organic search still leads by wide margins. It remains the strongest path into websites in every industry measured. Health Care stays at the top with 42.4 percent of visits coming through organic results. Communication Services follows at 39.6 percent and Industrials holds at 33.8 percent. These figures reinforce how established search continues to anchor discovery. AI sits above this in a parallel layer that shapes visibility but does not replace the older model. Users still depend heavily on traditional results even as AI adds another surface where brands appear inside summaries before anyone clicks.
The study also tracks which brands surface most often inside AI generated answers. The sample includes seventeen million responses and one hundred million citations which creates a wide lens on how engines distribute authority. In consumer categories retail giants take the lead since Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Chewy carry the kind of range that covers countless product related queries. In health and finance the engines lean on authoritative institutions and trusted publishers. Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic appear often in medical explanations while NerdWallet, Bankrate and Vanguard stand out across financial definitions and comparisons. Tech and B2B landscapes follow the influence of their largest players. Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Deloitte, McKinsey and SAP show up repeatedly since their documentation and research material respond to many expert queries. In Real Estate and Utilities the engines lean on the data rich domains such as Hines, Public Storage, CBRE, New Fortress Energy and GE Vernova which provide the depth needed for commercial and energy related topics.
Google’s AI Overview layer adds yet another surface to track. Out of 21.9 million queries measured between mid September and mid October 5.5 million displayed an AI Overview which equals 25.11 percent. That share rises sharply in Health Care where 48.7 percent of queries trigger an AI Overview. Financials follows with 25.7 percent and Utilities shows 25.4 percent. Real Estate sits near the bottom with only 4.4 percent and Consumer Staples reaches 6.8 percent. These spreads show how AI Overviews appear most often when queries require structured context rather than fast transactional steps.
The report also measures which page types the AI Overview system cites most often. Blogs show the highest count. Videos follow close behind. Articles, news stories and product pages fill out the top group. These types work well because they hold enough detail for the system to break down into shorter summaries at the top of the results.
All of this draws a picture where AI referrals may stay small for now yet still shape how brands get seen. The numbers show slow but steady growth. They also show how AI sits as a parallel surface that influences the first touchpoint long before a user reaches a site. Organic search keeps its lead but AI keeps building its own space inside the customer journey.
Notes: This post was edited/created using GenAI tools.
Read next: Real Upwork Job Data Shows AI Agents Fall Short Until Humans Step In
