How AI Mentions are impacting SEO?

[opkzzz]

Hi everyone

Here I come with a topic which I guess many people are interested: what impact might citations from AI sources (e.g: ChatGPT) to SEO?

This is a genuine question and I did not find an answer yet on this forum.

I will tell you my experience so far. I have around 10 visitors per month that are coming directly from ChatGPT only. They are coming to my blog articles but I have a sort of e-commerce website. To be honest I did not get that much impact on rankings/SERP placements for my website, despite having these. I understand that the number of visitors is low, however I find it powerful that actual people are coming to my website via ChatGPT - this must be a sign that I am recognized.

What's your experience with this? Have you seen improvements after finding that people are coming from AI sources?

 

[MegaSmith]

So far I haven’t seen direct ranking bumps from AI mentions.
Traffic is tiny usually.

It feels more like brand recognition than SEO impact right now.

 

[opkzzz]

So far I haven’t seen direct ranking bumps from AI mentions.
Traffic is tiny usually.

It feels more like brand recognition than SEO impact right now.

Understood. Indeed traffic is tiny usually, and this traffic feels more like brand recognition.

However I find this as a good sign, right? However what is a good sign worth if it does not push the rankings at least a little bit haha

 

[Fiducia]

One of my websites is an affiliate website where I have loaded 45K products from awin into woocommerce. The article descriptions, tags and meta descriptions where all generated with AI (using the Wordpress AI Puffer plugin). ChatGPT makes a good 5-10% of overall traffic to these. The products are all about chimney stove spare parts. Apparently, people are asking ChatGPT for help with their chimney stoves rather than browsing through 10 pages on Google search.

 

[opkzzz]

One of my websites is an affiliate website where I have loaded 45K products from awin into woocommerce. The article descriptions, tags and meta descriptions where all generated with AI (using the Wordpress AI Puffer plugin). ChatGPT makes a good 5-10% of overall traffic to these. The products are all about chimney stove spare parts. Apparently, people are asking ChatGPT for help with their chimney stoves rather than browsing through 10 pages on Google search.

Hm that's interesting. I'm no expert, but maybe because you have that many products related to this specific niche (chimney stove spare parts) makes ChatGPT to recommend you while helping others solving their issues?

Also, have you found a bump in rankings while you spotted this behavior?

 

[Fiducia]

Hm that's interesting. I'm no expert, but maybe because you have that many products related to this specific niche (chimney stove spare parts) makes ChatGPT to recommend you while helping others solving their issues?

Also, have you found a bump in rankings while you spotted this behavior?

No change in rankings at all. The raw data from awin is pretty short on product descriptions, so AI is extending these to 600+ words.

 

[Khawar2003]

not a g

Hi everyone

Here I come with a topic which I guess many people are interested: what impact might citations from AI sources (e.g: ChatGPT) to SEO?

This is a genuine question and I did not find an answer yet on this forum.

I will tell you my experience so far. I have around 10 visitors per month that are coming directly from ChatGPT only. They are coming to my blog articles but I have a sort of e-commerce website. To be honest I did not get that much impact on rankings/SERP placements for my website, despite having these. I understand that the number of visitors is low, however I find it powerful that actual people are coming to my website via ChatGPT - this must be a sign that I am recognized.

What's your experience with this? Have you seen improvements after finding that people are coming from AI sources?

not a good idea. citations form chatgpt are often not reliable and self-generated

 

[opkzzz]

No change in rankings at all. The raw data from awin is pretty short on product descriptions, so AI is extending these to 600+ words.

understood. thanks!

not a g

not a good idea. citations form chatgpt are often not reliable and self-generated

idk what to say about this haha. I see citations from gpt to be good, since they provide a way to get you to more reach. additionally, when users click on that citation means that they trust that source. So I was hoping in some juice/boost in website's authority

 

[Kingen Agency Network]

Hi everyone

Here I come with a topic which I guess many people are interested: what impact might citations from AI sources (e.g: ChatGPT) to SEO?

This is a genuine question and I did not find an answer yet on this forum.

I will tell you my experience so far. I have around 10 visitors per month that are coming directly from ChatGPT only. They are coming to my blog articles but I have a sort of e-commerce website. To be honest I did not get that much impact on rankings/SERP placements for my website, despite having these. I understand that the number of visitors is low, however I find it powerful that actual people are coming to my website via ChatGPT - this must be a sign that I am recognized.

What's your experience with this? Have you seen improvements after finding that people are coming from AI sources?

Those could be visits generated from ChatGPT recommendations, where your website was suggested to users. My website hasn’t received any traffic like that yet. However, it seems your website is of sufficient quality to be recommended by AI for users to reference.

 

[opkzzz]

Those could be visits generated from ChatGPT recommendations, where your website was suggested to users. My website hasn’t received any traffic like that yet. However, it seems your website is of sufficient quality to be recommended by AI for users to reference.

Good point, however I am 100% sure there were actual people looking in the citations by GPT. I have a cookie which shows me the user's session and I could clearly see how he navigated through my blog post.

About the quality of my website, while of course I'd like to think best of my work, it is not the really really best. Lots of improvements can be done. What actually I think worked is to have LLMs.txt file. search it up here on BHW as I don't remember the thread.

 

[hw01]

I have gotten some visitors via referral from chatgpt, most of the time on pages that are game guides queries like “How to,” “Where is,” etc. Usually the AI just cites your content without forwarding any traffic to your website. Funny enough, I just saw that Bing released a new feature in their Webmaster Tools where you can see citations of your pages in AI chats. I don’t have any data yet, but I hope it will show the actual visibility your content gets in AI answers and whether those citations ever translate into real traffic over time

 

[opkzzz]

I have gotten some visitors via referral from chatgpt, most of the time on pages that are game guides queries like “How to,” “Where is,” etc. Usually the AI just cites your content without forwarding any traffic to your website. Funny enough, I just saw that Bing released a new feature in their Webmaster Tools where you can see citations of your pages in AI chats. I don’t have any data yet, but I hope it will show the actual visibility your content gets in AI answers and whether those citations ever translate into real traffic over time

View attachment 505801

Yes exactly, some visitors via referral from chatgpt. usually with the url ending with "utm_source=chatGpt" or something.

really interesting feature from Bing, I will try it out too, thank you for sharing!

 

[SEO Intelligence]

Ai mentions don’t move rankings directly yet, but they act like early brand signals I’ve seen better crawl frequency and faster indexing once Ai driven visits start appearing consistently.

 

[Charlotte hayes]

I’ve noticed the same thing. Traffic from AI feels more like awareness than an SEO boost right now. Interesting signal though, and probably something Google will factor in later.

 

[dillybar]

I watch SERPAPI because I do not trust GSC/GA4 anymore. Negligible interference from what I've seen, except in certain verticals. AI O's have been walked back dramatically in the frequent verticals I work in.

It's way more enjoyable to watch server logs than SEMRush data on AI O's. These crawlers are crazy stupid. It's like Google invested a ton of money in making crawl logic better. I'm seeing major models pinging antiquated taxonomies, frequent re-visits to 404s, and finding good work to be done by watching this data. XOFU is my favorite tool out there, as it's Garrett French and he's been around the block when it comes to link building. He's pegging mentions to citations with new features coming out all of the time.

 

[nucleic]

I watch SERPAPI because I do not trust GSC/GA4 anymore. Negligible interference from what I've seen, except in certain verticals. AI O's have been walked back dramatically in the frequent verticals I work in.

It's way more enjoyable to watch server logs than SEMRush data on AI O's. These crawlers are crazy stupid. It's like Google invested a ton of money in making crawl logic better. I'm seeing major models pinging antiquated taxonomies, frequent re-visits to 404s, and finding good work to be done by watching this data. XOFU is my favorite tool out there, as it's Garrett French and he's been around the block when it comes to link building. He's pegging mentions to citations with new features coming out all of the time.

Good call on server logs over GSC. Way more raw and honest data.

 

[iAuthority]

It clearly shows that AI platforms are becoming a new traffic source when content and authority are done right. Even small numbers matter right now, because they indicate your pages are being recognized as helpful and trustworthy by AI systems.

At this stage, it may not directly boost rankings, but it usually reflects strong SEO fundamentals such as relevance, content quality, and backlinks. As AI usage grows, this can easily turn into a solid secondary traffic channel in the coming years.

 

[LinkRadar]

I think even the traffic from AI does not improve rankings in search results, though if you are running money site like e-commerce/product selling , that may bring sales sometimes.

 

[callum smith]

AI mentions are subtly changing SEO.

Even without direct backlinks, repeated references across trusted sources help brand recognition and entity authority.
They can increase branded searches, referral traffic, and indirectly strengthen trust signals.

In short: AI won’t replace traditional SEO, but it amplifies authority and visibility when your content and brand are consistently recognized.

Curious anyone tracking traffic or leads from AI mentions yet?

 

[theusualkeysersoze]

Hi everyone

Here I come with a topic which I guess many people are interested: what impact might citations from AI sources (e.g: ChatGPT) to SEO?

This is a genuine question and I did not find an answer yet on this forum.

I will tell you my experience so far. I have around 10 visitors per month that are coming directly from ChatGPT only. They are coming to my blog articles but I have a sort of e-commerce website. To be honest I did not get that much impact on rankings/SERP placements for my website, despite having these. I understand that the number of visitors is low, however I find it powerful that actual people are coming to my website via ChatGPT - this must be a sign that I am recognized.

What's your experience with this? Have you seen improvements after finding that people are coming from AI sources?

Mate, ai referrals if it's real users is as good or even more targeted than Google serp traffic, no such thing as "only" 10 visitors, once you're past a single one, that's already very good and something most never get. It's signals. If the blog raises brand awareness, great, if it converts, even better(try to make it convert).

You're doing something right, mate

Also

Since Google ads kinda suck and require acrobatics negative keywords etc , llm are like the media buyer layer to pre qualify, llm are also embedded right into Google serps now and they generally provide much more accurate leads. It's on the way to become the new Google serp once every Joe and Stacy realizes you can use llm in the browser