Figment Research · Vol. 01 · September 2026
State of AI Search 2026.
How ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI answers are affecting traffic and enquiries for UK business websites. Based on real analytics from 21 websites we work with, not a survey.
The short version.
- AI is a small but growing source of visitors. Around 1 in 100 website visits now comes from an AI assistant, and that share has risen by more than half in a year.
- Those visitors are at least as likely to take action. On 13 of the 14 sites we could compare, AI visitors took the actions each site tracks at least as often as visitors from Google.
- Most identifiable AI visitors come from ChatGPT. Google’s AI answers mention businesses far more often, but Google counts clicks from them as normal Google traffic, so you can’t see them separately.
- Google is sending fewer clicks. Sites appeared in Google more often than a year ago (up 8%) but got 22% fewer clicks, and service pages lost clicks at almost the same rate as blog posts.
Key terms
AI-referred session: a visit that arrived from a link in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude or DeepSeek. AI citation: a page being linked as a source in an AI answer, as tracked by Ahrefs on a sample of prompts. Conversion: an action the site owner has marked as valuable in Google Analytics (a “key event”), such as an enquiry form, call or booking. Impression: a page appearing in Google results, whether or not anyone clicks.
AI referrals are still small, but they are growing.
Visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude and DeepSeek rose from 0.83% of all traffic in September 2025 to 1.31% in September 2026 (1–24 September). August 2026 brought more AI visits than any other full month in our data.
More detail
We counted sessions from chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com, claude.ai and chat.deepseek.com. August 2026 brought 1,554 AI-referred sessions across the 21 sites. Some of the rise in share comes from Google sending fewer clicks (see Finding 06), but the volume is growing too: average daily AI referrals in September 2026 (to the 24th) were 38% higher than in September 2025.
AI-referred sessions across 21 UK business websites
Monthly, September 2025 – September 2026 (September 2026 runs to the 24th)
Source: GA4, 21 client properties. AI sources are ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude and DeepSeek.
View data table
ChatGPT sends the clicks. Google’s AI does most of the citing.
Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode mention these sites far more than any other AI tool, with 56% of the citations we tracked. Yet ChatGPT sends 92% of the identifiable AI referral traffic. The gap exists because Google records clicks from its AI answers as ordinary Google traffic.
More detail
We compared which AI platforms mention these sites (using Ahrefs’ tracked AI responses) with where their AI referral traffic comes from (GA4). ChatGPT accounts for fewer than 4% of tracked citations but 92% of identifiable AI referral traffic. When someone clicks a link in a Google AI answer, Google Analytics records it as a normal Google search visit, so it never shows up as “AI”.
Share of AI citations vs share of AI referral clicks, by platform
Citations: Ahrefs AI responses, 21 sites (2,488 platform citations). Clicks: GA4 referral sessions, Jun–Sep 2026 (4,418 sessions).
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks can’t be separated from Google organic in GA4, so they have no separate click share here. Claude isn’t tracked by Ahrefs. Ahrefs samples a fixed set of prompts, so treat citation counts as directional.
View data table
AI visitors usually match or beat Google visitors on tracked actions.
We compared AI visitors with Google visitors on the same website, using the actions each site already tracks, such as enquiry forms, calls, bookings or other key clicks. On 13 of the 14 sites with enough data, AI visitors took those actions at least as often as Google visitors. On several sites the gap was large.
More detail
We included sites with tracking in place and at least 20 AI-referred sessions in the period. Each site chooses its own tracked actions, and some of these are not enquiries (for example a download or a product comparison click). So we compare AI and Google visitors within each site rather than combining sites into one conversion rate. The one exception was within half a percentage point, based on 45 sessions.
AI visitors also spent longer on site on average: 3 min 27 s per session, against 2 min 44 s from Google. The data can’t tell us why. One plausible explanation is that the chatbot has already answered their early questions.
Conversion rate: AI-referred vs Google organic sessions, per site
Jun–Sep 2026, 14 sites. Hover for session counts. Hollow dots are based on fewer than 50 AI sessions.
Source: GA4 session key-event rate (share of sessions with at least one key event). Each site defines its own key events, so compare the two dots within a row rather than across rows.
View data table
AI visitors land on service pages and homepages, rarely on blog posts.
We classified the landing pages of 4,418 AI-referred sessions. 42% arrived on a service or product page and 34% on the homepage. Only 12% landed on a blog post or guide.
Where AI-referred visitors land
Share of AI-referred sessions by landing-page type, Jun–Sep 2026, 21 sites
Pages were classified from their URL patterns, so the split is approximate. “Unclassified” means GA4 recorded no landing page.
View data table
Being cited by AI doesn’t guarantee visits.
Being cited a lot in AI answers doesn’t guarantee clicks. Three sites hold 52% of all the citations in our sample, but only one of them is among the three sites with the most AI visitors. Sites with similar citation counts received very different amounts of AI traffic, as the chart on the right shows.
AI’s share of traffic also varied between sectors, from 1.77% of visits on our three hospitality and leisure sites to 0.37% among the sites grouped as “Other”. With only three sites in each group, read these as indicative.
AI share of sessions by sector
Jun–Sep 2026. Hover for the number of sites. Small groups, so read as indicative.
View data table
AI citations vs AI-referred sessions, per site
Each dot is one site. Scales are compressed so every site fits. Hover for detail.
View data table
Sectors with fewer than three sites in the sample are grouped as “Other”.
Google clicks are falling even as impressions rise.
Across 18 sites with a full year of Google Search Console data, clicks from Google fell 22% between Jun–Sep 2025 and Jun–Sep 2026, while the number of times they appeared in results rose 8%. People still see these sites in Google, but fewer click through.
It isn’t only blog posts. Blog and guide pages lost 21% of clicks and service pages lost 22%.
More detail
The biggest change is at the top of the results. Impressions at positions 1–3 rose 2.6×, but clicks from those positions fell 43%. One likely factor is that Google counts an appearance in an AI Overview or AI Mode answer as an impression near the top of the page, without necessarily generating a click. We can’t separate this from other causes in the data. Blogs fell harder than service pages on only 8 of 16 sites, so the common view that AI only takes informational clicks doesn’t hold in our sample.
Google clicks vs impressions, indexed (June 2025 = 100)
17 sites with 16 months of Search Console history. Hover for monthly totals.
View data table
Positions 1–3: year on year
Jun–Sep 2025 vs Jun–Sep 2026, query-level data, 18 sites
Click change by page type
Jun–Sep 2026 vs 2025, 16 sites with both page types
Caution on impressions: in September 2025 Google stopped returning 100 results per page to rank-tracking tools, which cut some deep-page impressions, and in 2025 it began counting AI Mode appearances. Clicks aren’t affected by either change, which is why we lead with them. Some sites in the sample also changed design or URLs during the period, so not all of the fall is caused by AI.
Tools
Apply the data to your site.
Two quick tools based on the findings above.
1. Estimate your AI traffic
Enter your own figures for an illustrative scenario, not a forecast. It uses the average AI share of sessions for your sector. It estimates visits only, not leads or revenue.
Benchmarks from 21 UK business sites, Jun–Sep 2026. AI share varied widely between sites, so treat this as a rough guide. To see your real figures, use the GA4 setup further down.
2. AI readiness check
Tick what’s true for your site to see how ready you are to be found through AI search – and measure what happens when you are. If you’re not sure, the checks in For your marketing team will tell you.
What to do next
Five actions to take now.
Measure it
Set up an AI channel in GA4 (5-minute guide) and make sure every form, call and booking is tracked as a key event. Without this you won’t know whether AI visitors are converting.
Unblock it
Check that AI crawlers can actually reach your site, not just that robots.txt allows them. Hosting and security settings can turn them away without anyone noticing (how to check).
Fix the landing pages
AI visitors mostly land on service pages and the homepage. Make sure each clearly explains what you offer, who it’s for, the areas you cover and, where appropriate, what it costs. Include proof and one clear call to action.
Make your details easy for AI to read
Add structured data (schema) to your site describing your business, address and services, to help search engines and AI systems understand who you are, where you work and what you offer.
Give AI something to quote
Publish original numbers, prices and comparisons that only you can provide, so AI tools have specific facts about your business to draw on.
Frequently asked questions.
How much website traffic comes from AI search in 2026?
Across 21 UK business websites we measured, AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude sent 0.98% of all sessions between late June and September 2026, up from 0.83% a year earlier. Hospitality and leisure sites saw the most (1.77%). These figures don’t include clicks from Google AI Overviews, which GA4 records as organic search.
How do AI visitors compare with Google visitors?
In our sample, AI visitors took each site’s tracked actions at least as often as Google visitors on 13 of the 14 sites with enough data to compare. Sites track different actions, so we don’t quote a single combined conversion rate.
Which AI platform sends the most traffic?
ChatGPT, by a wide margin: 92% of identifiable AI referral sessions. Gemini sent 4.6%, and Copilot, Perplexity and Claude sent about 1% each.
Are AI Overviews reducing clicks from Google?
They are likely one factor, but our data can’t isolate them. Across 18 sites, Google clicks fell 22% year on year while impressions rose 8%. Clicks from positions 1–3 fell 43% even though impressions at those positions rose 2.6×. Blog pages and service pages lost clicks at about the same rate.
Should I block AI crawlers?
Not necessarily. Different AI crawlers do different jobs. Some are used to collect content for AI model training, while others help AI search tools access and potentially cite content from your website. You can choose to block training crawlers if you don’t want your content used for that purpose, but allowing search crawlers gives AI platforms access to your site. It’s also worth checking that your hosting or security settings aren’t blocking them unintentionally, even if your robots.txt file allows access.
For your marketing team
The technical detail.
Practical steps for whoever looks after your website or analytics, and how we produced the numbers.
Track AI traffic in GA4 (5 minutes)
- In GA4 go to Admin → Data display → Channel groups and copy the default group.
- Add a new channel called AI Assistants. Set the condition to Source, matches regex, and paste the pattern below.
- Drag AI Assistants above Referral so it is matched first, then save.
- In Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition, switch the dimension to your new channel group.
^(chatgpt\.com|chat\.openai\.com|.*perplexity\.ai|gemini\.google\.com|bard\.google\.com|copilot\.microsoft\.com|.*copilot\.com|claude\.ai|chat\.deepseek\.com|.*meta\.ai|grok\.com|chat\.mistral\.ai)$
Visits from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode will still appear under Organic Search, because Google doesn’t pass a separate source for them.
Check AI crawlers can reach your site
Your robots.txt file only tells crawlers what they’re allowed to visit. Your hosting, firewall or a security plugin can still turn them away. There are two kinds of AI crawler, and they matter for different reasons:
Ask your developer to request your homepage using each crawler’s user-agent name, for example curl -I -A "OAI-SearchBot" https://www.yoursite.co.uk/, and confirm it returns a normal page (HTTP 200). If a test is blocked, check your server logs before changing anything: some hosts block requests that only claim to be a crawler but let the genuine one through.
Methodology and limitations
- Sample: 21 live UK business websites that Figment works with, grouped into seven sectors: healthcare (6), finance and legal (5), home and trade services (4), hospitality and leisure (3), and three in other sectors (B2B/industrial, property and retail), grouped together to protect anonymity. Figment’s own site is excluded. All figures are aggregated or anonymised, and no client is named.
- AI referrals: GA4 sessions whose source matches ChatGPT/OpenAI, Gemini/Bard, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude or DeepSeek. Trend: Sep 2025 – 24 Sep 2026. Snapshot: 26 Jun – 24 Sep 2026. Totals can differ by under 0.5% between GA4 reports because of GA4’s row limits.
- Conversion: GA4 session key-event rate, 26 Jun – 24 Sep 2026. Included for sites with key events configured and at least 20 AI sessions (14 sites). Each site defines its own key events, so we compare AI and Google visitors within each site and do not publish a pooled rate.
- Search: Google Search Console, 24 Jun – 21 Sep 2026 vs the same period in 2025 (18 sites with a year of history). Query-level figures exclude queries Google anonymises.
- Citations: Ahrefs Site Explorer AI-responses count, September 2026. Ahrefs tracks a sample of prompts, so these counts are directional.
- Limitations: 21 sites is a small sample, and some sector groups contain only three sites. The sites are ones Figment works with, not a random selection of UK businesses. Some sites changed design or URLs during the period. Treat exact percentages as indicative and the direction of each trend as the main finding.
The AI Visibility Accelerator
Want these numbers for your site.
Figment’s 30-day AI Visibility Accelerator checks how visible you are in AI search, sets up tracking to measure AI traffic and conversions, and strengthens the pages AI assistants send people to.
