ChatGPT Traffic: What My Client Data Shows

You probably would have been told that ChatGPT is replacing Google. I wanted to know what it is doing for the businesses I work with, so I went through a year of Google Analytics across my clients' websites.

The short version is that ChatGPT does send real visitors but not many - yet. The number is growing quickly. And for one type of business, those visitors were twice as likely to get in touch as a visitor from Google.

One of my clients first told me about an enquiry from ChatGPT earlier this year and to be honest, I jumped out of my chair. I was pretty excited!

How much traffic does ChatGPT send?

Not much, especially compared to Google.

Across five client websites, ChatGPT sent between 0.7 and 6 visits for every 100 that came from Google search. A commercial printer sat at the top with 6. A wedding venue and an online art store sat at the bottom with 0.7.

The printer's 6 is not as big as it sounds. It is a small site, so that is 91 visits from ChatGPT in a year.

One more thing from the data. On every site, around nine in ten visits from an AI tool came from ChatGPT. Perplexity, Copilot, Claude and the Gemini app barely registered. Google's AI Overviews are a separate matter. They sit inside Google search, so a click from one is counted as Google.

OpenAI says ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users. So why so few visits? Because most people get their answer inside the chat and never click anything. Being named in the answer and being clicked on are two different things. Your analytics only sees the second one.

Small, but growing fast

One of my clients, a Melbourne builder, had 22 visits from ChatGPT in October 2025. In September 2026, a different story - they had 64.

That is close to triple in a year. It is also 64 visits in a month where Google search sent 1,038. Both things are true.

Do ChatGPT visitors get in touch?

This is the part where I would be skeptical of anyone with one straight answer.

For the builder, 17 of the 347 visits from ChatGPT ended with someone tapping the phone number, clicking the email address or sending the enquiry form. That is 4.9%. Visits from Google search did the same 2.3% of the time.

For the wedding venue, 66 visits from ChatGPT produced no enquiries at all. Google search visitors enquired 2.8% of the time.

The online art store made one sale from 60 ChatGPT visits, which is about the same rate as Google.

My read on the builder: they sell something that costs six figures. People research it for weeks, and ChatGPT is good at research. By the time someone clicks through, they have already compared their options. Nobody researches an art print that way.

These are small numbers, so treat them as a signal and not a rule. They do line up with the bigger studies, which also disagree with each other. A study of 973 online stores in the journal Marketing Science found ChatGPT visitors bought less often than visitors from Google search, with stronger results for complex products. An analysis of 94 online stores by Visibility Labs found the reverse: ChatGPT visitors bought at 1.81% against 1.39% for unbranded Google search.

Researchers do not agree, and neither do my clients' numbers. What you sell decides it.

Why your analytics is undercounting it

Three reasons the real figure is higher than the one you can see.

1. Google Analytics only gave AI tools their own channel in May 2026. In my client accounts it starts showing in June. Before that, the same visits were filed under Referral or left unlabelled. For the builder, the AI Assistant channel shows 178 visits for the year. The real number is 383.
2. Some visitors arrive with no trail at all and are counted as Direct.
3. Plenty of people ask ChatGPT, get a name, then search that name on Google. Google gets the credit. I wrote about this problem in why last-click attribution lies about your marketing.

So read every number in this article as a floor.

What I would do with this

Do not walk away from Google. On these five sites it sent between 16 and 150 times the visitors ChatGPT did. SEO is still where nearly all of your search visitors come from.

If people research before they buy from you, start now. Builders, renovators, professional services, anything with a long decision. This is where being the business ChatGPT names pays off, and it is the work I do under ChatGPT and AI search optimisation for Melbourne businesses.

You do not need a separate project. Clear pages that answer one question, the same business details everywhere and a short FAQ help with Google and ChatGPT at once. I have covered the practical steps in how to show up in AI search, and the usual causes in why your business is not showing up in AI search.

Check your own numbers. In Google Analytics, open the Traffic acquisition report, switch the table to Session source / medium and type chatgpt into the search box. Add up every row.

For what it is worth, my own site had 19 visits from ChatGPT in the past year. Two of them sent me an enquiry.

One client - a Melbourne surgeon, found me through ChatGPT and reached out because they want to appear in AI results. Same with Royal Casino Events - a corporate event business needing SEO, AEO and Google Ads management.

If you want to know whether ChatGPT is sending you anyone, and whether it should be, get in touch and I will go through your numbers with you.

Frequently asked questions

How much traffic does ChatGPT send to a small business website?

In my client data, between 0.7 and 6 visits for every 100 from Google search. It is growing quickly, with one client close to tripling in a year, but it was a small share of traffic on every site I checked.

Does ChatGPT traffic convert better than Google traffic?

It depends on what you sell. A builder I work with saw ChatGPT visitors get in touch 4.9% of the time, against 2.3% for Google search. A wedding venue had no enquiries from 66 ChatGPT visits. Published research is split the same way.

How do I see ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics?

Open the Traffic acquisition report, switch the table to Session source / medium and search for chatgpt. Add up every row that mentions it. The AI Assistant channel only starts in mid 2026, so on its own it misses earlier visits.

Should I optimise for ChatGPT or for Google?

Google first, because it still sends far more visitors. The work overlaps though. Clear pages that each answer one question, consistent business details and a short FAQ help with both. ChatGPT matters most when your customers research before they buy.