ChatGPT Sent 0.62% as Many Visits as Google Organic Across 100 Sites, But Its Visitors Converted 4.5x Better

ChatGPT sent 0.62% as many sessions as Google organic search across 100 websites, SEO consultant Marie Haynes reported on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. Her analysis covered 12 months of Google Analytics 4 data and more than 145 million sessions. MarTech covered the findings the next day.

Adding referrals from every other AI assistant raised the figure to 0.73% of Google organic traffic. That's a share of Google organic visits, not of total site traffic.

The numbers

• Volume: ChatGPT at 0.62% of Google organic sessions; all LLMs combined at 0.73%.

• Conversion rate: on the 55 sites that track conversions, 13.8% of ChatGPT visitors converted, against 3.02% from Google organic. That's about 4.5 times higher.

• Total conversions: Google organic still drove 27 times as many conversions as all LLMs combined, and 96.5% of conversions across the channels analyzed.

• Trend: ChatGPT referrals stopped growing exponentially in August 2025 and have declined since, per Haynes.

Haynes's argument is that, for most businesses, the AI search sending people to them today is Google's, through AI Overviews, AI Mode and its core ranking systems. MarTech noted the study didn't give exact reporting dates, the industry mix or how conversions were defined. Haynes also found that 45 of the 100 sites tracked no conversions at all.

Why it matters

A visitor from ChatGPT is about 4.5 times as likely to convert. There are about 160 Google visitors for each one of them. On these sites, Google organic still produces most of the pipeline.

Haynes calls GEO a distraction. In traxy's view, the useful read is narrower. AI answers send few visitors, and the ones they send arrive further along. We saw the same pattern in which sources AI engines cite, and how fragile ChatGPT's referral tagging is. Track conversions per channel first, then decide where budget goes. And count pipeline from signals you own, such as who engages with your team's posts, which no change to an AI product can take away.

traxy detects which buyers engage with your LinkedIn content, qualifies them against your ICP automatically, and delivers them to Slack or your CRM while the attention is still warm. Start with a 7-day free trial.

Sources: Marie Haynes, "GEO is a distraction" (October 21, 2026); MarTech, "ChatGPT sends less than 1% of Google's traffic" (October 22, 2026).