There is a big opportunity for businesses right now. A new dataset focused on 1.5 million AI search-engaged sessions, 175 websites, 70 brands and 20 industries exposed something interesting. AI Search traffic grew 392% year over year. Transactions attributed to that traffic? Up nearly 600%. Revenue growth? Up more than 300%. Let's go through it. By the way, if you want to see whether your business is appearing across Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok and broader AI search, start here. It's free: seo-stuff.com/free-audit Alright, so IDHL analyzed 13 months of AI-search referral data across 1.5 million AI-search-engaged sessions, 175 websites, 70 brands and 20 industries. Businesses in the U.S. and UK were included, and six major AI platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, etc. So this wasn't one SaaS company or one ecommerce store seeing a random spike. The headline numbers were pretty remarkable. AI-search sessions: +392%. Transactions: +553%. Revenue: +312%. There has been a lot of chatter in recent months about how much smaller, in terms of raw numbers, AI search is compared to Google search. That is totally true. That said, a marketing channel does not need to become your biggest source of traffic before it becomes worth optimizing. If traffic is growing nearly 5x year over year and transactions are growing even faster, you probably want to understand why. That is something SEO Stuff (seo-stuff.com) helps businesses with on a daily basis. The especially interesting part is that transaction growth outpaced traffic growth, which shows that the commercial activity associated with AI Search grew even faster than the traffic itself. And that lines up with a pattern we keep seeing. People increasingly use AI to research products, compare vendors, check pricing, find alternatives, evaluate businesses narrow down options and *then* click once they already have a much clearer idea of what they want. Think about the difference between: "CRM software" and: "What's the best CRM for a 20-person real estate company that needs automated follow-up, integrates with Gmail and costs under $500 per month?" The second customer has already told the AI their industry, company size, required features, integration, budget and intent. The AI can do a lot of the research before deciding which companies to surface. If your company appears in that answer, you may be entering the journey much closer to the decision. And it is why AI Search Optimization needs to move beyond: "Did ChatGPT cite my blog?" The better questions are: Does ChatGPT recommend my company for commercial searches? Does Gemini? Does Claude? Does Perplexity? Which buyer questions cause us to appear? Which questions cause competitors to appear instead? And what happens after somebody visits the website? Traffic, leads, transactions, revenue - these are the metrics businesses actually care about. There was another interesting finding. ChatGPT accounted for roughly 91% of the AI-search traffic IDHL measured. So in this dataset, ChatGPT remains the dominant referral source by a huge margin, but the broader ecosystem is growing too. That is another reason not to build an entire AI Search strategy around one platform. You may get most of your referral traffic from ChatGPT today, but that does not mean your customers aren't researching you elsewhere, and it does not mean the distribution will look the same 12 months from now. The job is increasingly to make your company easy for all of these systems to discover, understand, compare and recommend. That starts with your own website. It should clearly explain what you do, who you help, what you sell, how much it costs, which problems you solve, which industries you serve, how you compare, which use cases you fit and what evidence supports your claims. A homepage and five generic service pages probably are not enough if customers are asking dozens of different questions before making a decision. That is exactly what the SEO Stuff Premium Content Bundle is built around: seo-stuff.com/premium-conten… Build deeper coverage across comparisons, alternatives, pricing, use cases, industries, problems, objections and buying decisions. Every useful question you answer creates another potential entry point into the research process. Then there is authority. Your website tells AI systems what YOU say about the company and then the broader web gives them additional evidence. Editorial publications. That is why the SEO Stuff done-for-you package combines both sides: seo-stuff.com/ai-seo AI-search-optimized content. Plus contextual DR50+ authority placements. IDHL also found something else interesting - AI Search is starting to show recognizable seasonality. Travel engagement rose around major planning periods. Retail and property also showed seasonal movement. That matters because it suggests people are increasingly using AI around real-world demand cycles. So if your busiest season is approaching, do not wait until demand peaks to start thinking about AI visibility. Make sure the content exists, the important pages are current, the product/service info is accurate, etc. And if you want to see whether your business is already appearing across Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok and broader AI search, start here. It's free: seo-stuff.com/free-audit