Similarweb: Why Recommendations are far more important than Citations

Key Takeaways:

• Similarweb carried out a study on User Behavior in the US:

  • Methodology: We tracked thousands of real user journeys across three industries: Finance, Travel, and Beauty - focusing on users who asked ChatGPT for an industry-relevant question and received a specific brand in the answer. We then followed those users for the seven days after the AI conversation, tracking whether they visited the website of the recommended brand or a direct competitor. To isolate genuine new acquisition, we only included users who had not visited the site in the previous four weeks and had not mentioned the brand name in their prompt

• Results:

  • Recommended brands are 2.5x more likely to get visits to their website in the next 7 days than brands who were not recommended

  • 56% of that traffic arrives via branded search

  • AI-influenced visitors spend 2x longer on site

• Takeaways from Aleyda:

  • Don’t measure AI impact by referral traffic alone

  • Treat AI visibility as a leading indicator of demand

  • Protect and optimize your branded SERPs

  • Connect AI recommendations with later search, traffic, engagement, and conversions

  • Benchmark AI visibility against competitors, not only in isolation

    
    
    
    

Sources:

• https://www.similarweb.com/corp/the-downstream-impact-of-ai-visibility/

• https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/the-downstream-impact-of-ai-visibilty/

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adellekehoe_new-similarweb-research-how-ai-visibility-ugcPost-7473763473898815488-dxCC/

• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aleyda_fantastic-research-from-similarweb-with-ugcPost-7474915294289850368-aG8s/