AI vs Google, Who Sends You the Most Traffic?

Written by Jake Mercer, Senior SEO Consultant

Jake Mercer is a Brisbane-based SEO consultant with nine years of hands-on experience working with Australian small businesses and e-commerce brands. He writes the way he works, no fluff, no buzzwords, just what actually moves the needle.

The Short Answer: Google Still Wins, By a Mile

Google processes roughly 16.4 billion searches every day. All AI platforms combined handle under 1% of global web traffic (as of 2025). If you're wondering who sends you the most traffic right now, the answer is still Google, and it's not close.

But here's the thing: AI traffic grew 66% in 2025 alone, rising from 462 million to 767 million monthly visits across the web. The gap is closing. Slowly, but it is closing.

What Is AI SEO and Why Does It Matter Now?

AI SEO is the practice of optimising your content so it gets found, understood, and cited by AI-powered tools, not just ranked by Google. It covers platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's own AI Overviews.

Traditional SEO asked: Where do I rank? AI SEO asks: Do AI tools mention me when my customers are searching? That's a fundamentally different goal, and it needs a different approach.

How Much Traffic Does AI Actually Send?

The honest answer is: not much, yet. AI search accounts for under 0.15% of total web traffic, and under 0.5% for most individual sites. ChatGPT, for all its growth, sends roughly 3% of the traffic that Google organic delivers.

However, there's a catch. AI-referred traffic tends to convert better than standard organic traffic, because users arriving from AI tools have already had their question answered and are further along in their decision. Lower volume, higher quality.

Understanding AEO: Answer Engine Optimisation

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation. It means structuring your content so AI-powered platforms can extract it as a direct answer to a user's question. Instead of chasing a keyword ranking, you're chasing inclusion, being the source the AI cites.

AEO works best when you:

Lead each section with a clear, direct answer
Use H2s and H3s that mirror natural questions
Write in plain language a non-expert could follow
Add FAQ-style sections throughout your content

Pro tip: Every H2 in your article is a potential AEO target. Write them as if someone asked that question aloud. AI tools scan headings first.

Understanding AIO: AI Optimisation

AIO, AI Optimisation, is the broader discipline of making sure AI systems accurately understand and represent your brand. Where AEO focuses on getting cited in individual answers, AIO is about your overall presence across the AI ecosystem.

Think of it this way: AEO is about one answer. AIO is about your brand's reputation inside every large language model (LLM) that exists.

To do AIO well, you need:

Consistent brand mentions across trusted third-party sites
Clear, structured content that LLMs can summarise accurately
Strong topical authority in your niche, not just a few popular posts
Entity clarity: your brand name, location, and expertise should be unambiguous across the web

Common mistake: Many sites focus entirely on Google rankings and ignore off-site brand mentions. AI tools like ChatGPT don't just read your website, they read everything written about you.

The AI Robots Problem: Are You Being Crawled?

Most AI platforms use their own AI robots, automated crawlers, to index and learn from web content. These are separate from Google's Googlebot. If you've blocked them in your robots.txt file, AI tools cannot read your content, and will never cite you.

The main AI crawlers to be aware of include:

GPTBot, OpenAI / ChatGPT
Google-Extended, Google Gemini and Bard
PerplexityBot, Perplexity AI
ClaudeBot, Anthropic / Claude
Amazonbot, Amazon Alexa

Step 1: Check Your robots.txt File

Go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Look for any Disallow rules that block the crawlers listed above.

Why it matters: If GPTBot is blocked, ChatGPT cannot index or cite your content, full stop. Many sites accidentally block AI crawlers through catch-all Disallow: / rules set up years ago.

Pro tip: If you want AI visibility without giving everything away, allow specific crawlers for your key content pages only, not your entire site.

Google's AI Overviews: The Traffic Killer Inside Google Itself

Here's the twist most people miss: the biggest threat to your Google traffic isn't ChatGPT. It's Google's own AI Overviews, the AI-generated answer blocks that appear at the top of search results.

When AI Overviews appear, users click through to websites 47% less often (as of October 2025). Click-through rates drop from around 15% to just 8% for affected queries. That means even if you rank first on Google, you may be losing nearly half your expected clicks.

The good news: if your content is cited inside an AI Overview, you still get traffic, and it tends to be high-intent traffic. The goal shifts from ranking first to being cited inside the answer.

How to Optimise for AI Search Alongside Traditional SEO

The right approach isn't to choose between SEO and AI search optimisation, you need both. A strong SEO foundation covers most of what AI platforms need to understand your content. The extra steps are relatively small.

Step 2: Write Answer-First Content

Start every major section with a 1-2 sentence direct answer. Then add supporting detail below it.

Step 3: Build Topical Authority, Not Just Individual Pages

AI platforms favour sources that consistently cover a topic in depth. One great article won't cut it. You need a cluster of well-linked, well-researched content around your core topics.

Why it matters: An LLM deciding whether to cite your site asks, in effect: "Does this site know what it's talking about?" A content cluster says yes more convincingly than a single page.

Step 4: Get Mentioned on Third-Party Sites

Your own website accounts for only 5-10% of the sources AI search engines reference. The rest comes from review sites, industry publications, Reddit threads, forums, and news articles.

Why it matters: If no one outside your own site is talking about you, AI tools have very little reason to trust or cite you.

Step 5: Track AI Traffic in GA4

Set up a custom channel group in GA4 to isolate referral traffic from AI platforms.

Why it matters: You can't improve what you don't measure. AI referral traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini shows up as referral traffic by default, you need to segment it manually to see how it's performing.

Where Is This All Heading?

By 2028, AI search experiences could rival traditional Google search as a driver of website visits. Google's classic "ten blue links" may account for 30-50% fewer clicks than they did in the early 2020s.

That doesn't mean SEO is dead. It means the definition of AI SEO is broadening, from ranking on Google to being cited, trusted, and recommended across every platform where your customers are searching.

The sites that win will be the ones that build genuine authority, write clearly structured content, and show up consistently, on Google, in AI Overviews, and inside ChatGPT answers.

FAQs

Does AI search actually send traffic to websites?

Yes, but not much, yet. AI platforms account for under 0.15% of total web traffic (as of 2025). ChatGPT sends roughly 3% of the referral traffic that Google organic delivers. However, AI traffic grew 66% in 2025, and the quality of that traffic tends to be higher than standard organic visits.

What is AEO and how is it different from SEO?

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation. Traditional SEO targets keyword rankings on Google. AEO targets inclusion in direct answers generated by AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Instead of asking "where do I rank?", AEO asks "does the AI cite me as a source?"

What is AIO in SEO?

AIO stands for AI Optimisation. It's the broader practice of ensuring AI systems accurately understand your brand, not just a single answer. It covers off-site mentions, brand consistency, topical authority, and structured content, across every AI platform, not just Google.

How do I check if AI robots can crawl my website?

Go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for Disallow rules blocking crawlers like GPTBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, or ClaudeBot. If any are blocked, AI platforms cannot index your content. Remove the block for crawlers you want to allow.

Will AI search replace Google?

Not soon. Google holds roughly 90% of global search market share (as of 2025) and processes around 16 billion searches per day. AI search is growing fast, but it's still a fraction of Google's scale. Most forecasts suggest AI platforms may rival Google in traffic influence around 2028, not sooner.

Do I need a separate strategy for AI SEO and traditional SEO?

Not entirely. A strong traditional SEO foundation, good content structure, topical authority, clear writing, and internal linking, covers most of what AI platforms need. The main additions are: allowing AI crawlers in your robots.txt, writing answer-first content, and building off-site brand mentions.

Summary

Google still dominates web traffic by a massive margin, processing around 16 billion searches every day and holding roughly 90% of global search market share (as of 2025). AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini combined account for under 1% of total web traffic. If you're relying on organic search to bring visitors to your site, Google is still the one doing the heavy lifting.

That said, AI SEO is no longer something you can ignore. AI search traffic grew 66% in 2025, and the users arriving from AI platforms tend to be further along in their decision-making, which means they convert better. Concepts like AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and AIO (AI Optimisation) are quickly becoming standard parts of any serious content strategy.