By the Mayab Media Team
If you've been told AI search will replace Google next year, the latest data says calm down. If you've been told AI search doesn't matter, the same data says you're wrong too.
Three studies landed in October 2026. Search Engine Roundtable bundled them under a headline suggesting AI visibility isn't worth investing in. We read all three. Our view is more useful than that headline.
What the studies found
Study 1: Marie Haynes, "GEO is a distraction" (October 21). She looked at 12 months of GA4 data from 100 websites, over 145 million sessions. ChatGPT sessions equaled just 0.62% of Google organic. But ChatGPT visitors converted at 13.8%, versus 3.02% for Google organic. Even so, Google drove 96.5% of conversions, about 27 times more than all AI tools combined. Two caveats she notes herself: it's a small dataset, and only 55 of the 100 sites tracked conversions.
Study 2: SEO Works benchmark. They tracked 95 sites over 12 months, September 2025 to August 2026. Organic search sent about 39 times more traffic than AI assistants. AI converted at 7.18% versus 6.08% for organic, a modest edge. For every 100 organic conversions, AI produced about 3.2. AI referrals did grow, from about 2.3% of organic sessions to about 3.0% after May 2026. One interesting detail: AI converted worse than organic for B2B product sites (0.62x), and better for B2C (1.51x). Their scenario: a 5% lift in organic search adds more conversions than doubling AI referrals.
Study 3: Kevin Indig, Growth Memo (October 19). He asked whether AI visibility drives people to search your brand or visit directly later. Using 12 sites, he couldn't find a reliable link. He also found a lot of "direct" traffic growth was bots. One site logged 409,000 direct sessions and only 198 engaged ones. He's clear that an effect may still exist. He just couldn't prove it with this data.
How to actually read this
Here's what these studies measure: clicks from ChatGPT, Perplexity and friends to your website, and what those visitors do.
Here's what they mostly don't measure: Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode. SEO Works says outright that AI Overviews are excluded. Haynes counts Google traffic, AI features included, as Google.
That's the key point. The biggest AI search engine on the planet is still Google. Its AI answers now sit on top of most buying and brand searches. So "AI referral traffic is tiny" and "AI search matters a lot" can both be true. The AI that matters most is wearing a Google logo.
Second point: low volume, high intent. ChatGPT visitors converting at 13.8% in one dataset tells you these people show up ready. If AI tools are already recommending your competitor, that's a few very good leads a month you're not getting.
Third point: the dark side of measurement. Indig's bot finding should scare anyone reporting "direct traffic up 100%" as a win. Check engaged sessions before you celebrate anything.
Where to put your effort: a simple split
Here's the rule we use with clients right now.
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Spend most of your search effort on Google, including its AI answers. Rankings, AI Overview citations, AI Mode links, Business Profile, reviews. That's where 90%+ of conversions still come from in every dataset above.
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Do the AI-assistant basics once, then maintain. Allow AI search crawlers, keep clear pricing and comparison pages, fix your brand info on LinkedIn and review sites. Most of this also helps on Google. It's not a separate budget.
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Track conversions before you debate strategy. Haynes found 45 of 100 sites tracked no key events. If you can't see which channel produced a lead, every strategy argument is just opinion. Set up GA4 key events and a filter for AI referrers this week.
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Add "How did you hear about us?" to your forms. Analytics can't see someone who read a ChatGPT answer and then typed your URL. Asking them can.
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Filter bots out of your reports. Look at engaged sessions, not raw sessions, especially in direct traffic.
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Re-check every quarter. AI referrals grew in the SEO Works data. If yours double, shift a bit more effort. Let your own numbers decide, not headlines.
Our take
We don't think GEO is a distraction. We think "GEO as a separate thing from SEO" is a distraction. Showing up well in AI answers mostly comes from the same work that ranks you on Google: clear facts, good reviews, honest comparison content and a clean technical setup. Do that work once and it pays off in both places.
The takeaway: AI assistants send small but high-quality traffic, while Google's own AI answers are still where most of the money is.
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