New Similarweb research finds brands recommended by ChatGPT were 2.5x more likely to get a site visit within seven days, but most of that traffic arrives later through branded search. The AI shapes the decision early and your analytics miss the link.
The AI shapes the decision early. The traffic shows up later, in your branded search and your direct visits, where most analytics will never connect it back to the AI.
Here is a number that should change how you think about AI visibility. New Similarweb research finds that brands recommended by ChatGPT were 2.5 times more likely to get a site visit within seven days than brands that were not. The mention does something measurable, even when the click does not come straight away.
The study, published 21 June, tracked US desktop users who received a ChatGPT brand recommendation across finance, travel and beauty, using real clickstream data. The most useful finding is where the traffic actually came from. Of the visits that followed a recommendation, 55.9% arrived through branded search. People did not click a link in the chat. They saw the recommendation, then went and searched the brand by name later.
The visitors who came this way were also worth more. They looked at 12.0 pages and spent 11.8 minutes per session, against 6.5 pages and 5.6 minutes for everyone else.
Similarweb is clear this is correlation, not proven causation, and the data is US desktop only.
Why it matters
This is why your analytics feel like they are lying. The AI mention influences the customer at the start, then the visit lands days later under branded search or direct, with no AI source attached. If you judge AI visibility by referral clicks from ChatGPT, you will conclude it does nothing, and you will be wrong.
For Australian marketers it reframes the whole AI search question. Showing up in AI answers is brand building that pays out through your existing channels, not a new traffic source to measure on its own.
How much more likely a ChatGPT-recommended brand was to get a site visit within seven days.
What to do about it
The AI is moving the decision upstream. Measure the right end of it.